Pixelwave Website Design Weblog

Website Updates to old sites

I've had few major projects on the last few weeks (I'm always available for new projects!), but I have been keeping fairly busy with updates to numerous websites. Kite Surf Wales, one of the first websites I built, has had a few updates. It was a little strange working on this site again as it is now quite old and built in a completely different way to my newer sites. Back then I (and most other people) weren't building sites that conformed to modern day web standards. The layout of sites were built using tables nested inside of each other instead of using CSS to control the layout of the page. There was no thought given to accessibility issues, although even then I was always keen to ensure that websites were easy to use, as intuitive as possible and easy to read. Even certain SEO techniques were negelcted, whereas nowadays SEO is of prime importance to any website and a subject I spend a lot of time discussing with clients. Of course, the actual scripting language used was a little different as well as HTML has now grown up to xHTML. In actual fact this isn't a huge change, but it does have a much stricter syntax and I actually prefer it.

Of course, Kite-Surf-Wales' website still works and will continue to do so even with it slightly old-fashioned back-end programming. There was no need to re-design this particular website, it works well and brings in plenty of business for its owner and I am expecting to do a more dramatic update to this site in the near future at which time the layout may be changed.

In fact, most websites on the web are still using these outdated techniques and even most that are built today still use them. However, modern websites that use CSS and semantic xHTML that validates, don't use tables for layout and aim to be conformable and accessible are not only more efficient. socially responsible and more future-proof but also tend to be more elegant in their design and present a more professional attitude to your clients.

Pixelwave Design can do complete website re-designs to bring your site up to date and give it a more professional persona. Don't get left behind!

posted by Alan
7:31 AM - Sunday, November 13, 2005