During the final editing of the 2nd edition of TAoKM, I suggested this in a PM to BarbT regarding one of the links in the first edition.
Quote:
And then I discovered that the link is broken anyway - yet again a commercial site fails to keep "reference" matter in the same place and thus contributes to that blight on the internet: link-rot.
Perhaps that whole section should go away in favor of a links page on your own web site that can be kept up to date. If you do this you should include a mechanism for visitors to notify you when they discover links that no longer connect to the intended target.
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This leads me to a couple of things. This thread is about changes to the Celtic Dragon Press web site. The purpose of that web site is to sell books. Changes to the web site that don't aid in the accomplishment of that task or that diminish the value or need for the books should not be done.
Do not rename or relocate pages in your current web site. There maybe (are) already external links to those pages. If you move or rename a page that has been linked to from someone else's web site, when a prospective customer clicks that link and they get a 404 error they have a choice: look for the page they wanted or give up and go elsewhere. Don't make them choose.
There has been a significant call for more pictures. Fine, do that. Include larger versions of the pictures that are in TAoKM (some of those are rather tiny). Supplementary information that has been published on the XMTS forums (which is now public) should be condensed and edited and published on the CDP web site.
The other thing that I most vehemently suggest is that the CDP web site choose and adhere to the published markup grammar (html, xhtml, xml, css). These grammars are there to help browsers understand what you as the author intend - much like the grammar for the English language helps you to understand what I'm writing.
The World Wide Web Consortium (w3c) publishes and maintains these grammars. They also have a
validator service for the markup (the XMTS web site, by the way, does not comply with the author's chosen grammar - shame, shame).
Because it is important that the various pages of a web site have a common look and feel, the w3c grammar for xhtml removed a lot of the presentation tags that were part of html. The presentation functionality was moved to cascaded style sheets (css). Once the presentation is figured out, the maintenance of content becomes much easier. I would highly recommend xhtml and css for the upgrade of the CDP site. W3C also has a
css validation service.
And one last thing: keep it simple. Minimize the bells and whistles focus on the content, the message. If you get this right first then you can embellish. Simplicity also helps when dealing with the vagaries of the various browsers - actually only one browser, internet exploder. <rant>Microsoft hasn't seen fit to ever make any of their browsers compliant with the w3c standards. What works properly in quality browsers (FireFox, Opera) doesn't work as expected in IE.</rant> Make sure that you use the w3c validation services and test your markup and css in several different browsers so that your customers and site visitors get a quality experience.
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