| I am an old time web designer that has been creating | | | | page should contain your text content only if |
| websites before CSS Style sheets and DIV tags | | | | possible. |
| became popular. Until recently, I resisted the urge to | | | | - Tables - never use tables for formatting. Never use |
| have all my fonts and site formatting controlled by an | | | | imbedded tables. Google will penalize for content |
| external CSS Style sheet or CSS File. | | | | located in imbedded tables. Replace tables with DIV's |
| One of my clients insisted that I do everything | | | | wherever possible. Keep your JavaScripts as a |
| possible to make his site as SEO compatible. After | | | | separate .js file to be included on each page. |
| my research was completed I learned that CSS could | | | | Putting my new skills to test, our new design process |
| be a valuable tool for my own website. | | | | will be as follows: |
| Here is what I have learned. | | | | - Create PhotoShop version of template for client |
| Use your CSS File to control all of your website | | | | approval. |
| formatting. | | | | - Create html version of template on Dreamweaver |
| - Font styles, colours and sizes. | | | | using only the external style sheet feature. |
| - Table definitions. | | | | - Go through the Dreamweaver version using a |
| - Background colours & photos. | | | | simple text editor and take out any extra |
| - Put all the photos that you can into the CSS Style | | | | unnecessary code. Make sure all tags are opened and |
| Sheet because to the search engines, text content is | | | | closed properly. |
| what matters and not photos. Google will sometimes | | | | - Put every formatting options possible into my CSS |
| penalize you if you have too many photos, or photos | | | | Files using meaningful style names. |
| that are too large. | | | | - Create the rest of the site based on the template |
| - Use meaningful names for your CSS style classes | | | | approved by the client. |
| and other definitions. When you have a whole site | | | | - Test your website on Explorer, FireFox, Safari and |
| completed and you look back at your site, style89 | | | | Opera. I found that even though the browsers are |
| won't mean anything to you. | | | | supposed to be 100% compatible, they all act |
| - Put all of your website content (text) into your | | | | differently and sometimes produce unexpected |
| website pages without formatting. All formatting | | | | results. |
| should be in an external stylesheet. Your html web | | | | |