SKJ Ancient Bead Art

Here is a beautiful black website that showcases the art it's displaying perfectly, even if the HTML it uses could use some improvements.

Read More: SKJ Ancient Bead Art

What inspires you? Do you have a favorite site you visit for inspiration? Or are there just designs that you think are particularly good? Are there people you like to read on social media for inspiration?

• Where Do You Go For Inspiration or a Fresh Perspective?
• HTML5 Designs
• Show Off Your Favorite Web Page Design
• What Design Scares You? - Examples of Bad Web Design
• What Web Design Are You Working On Right Now?
• Favorite Favicons
• Iframe and CSS Designs
• Who do you follow for Web design on Twitter?
• Do You Need Help with Your Web Page Design?
• What are Some Great Ideas for Web Page Content?
• What design techniques do you hate?

Screen shot by J Kyrnin courtesy SKJ Ancient Bead Art

Rendera showing CSS3 Columns in Chrome

If you're still not sure you want to use HTML5, one tool that might change your mind is Rendera. Rendera is an online HTML text editor. While it's not an HTML editor you could use to build your whole site (there's no FTP, you can edit existing files except by copy/paste, and it only handles one file at a time), but if you want to test some HTML5 or CSS3 features, you can put them into Rendera and see how they look in your current browser. Then if you want to switch to another browser (or a mobile device) you can save your file as a permalink in Rendera and then view it in the new browser through the permalink.

Find out more about Rendera by reading my profile.

Screen shot by J Kyrnin courtesy Rendera

Add A Quick Table To A Page With KompoZer

One of the reasons I like WYSIWYG editors like Dreamweaver and KompoZer is that they make it easy to add features like tables quickly and accurately. In most of these editors you simply click a button, select a few options and then add your tabular data. It's as easy as entering that data into Excel.

This tutorial by Jon Morin will help you learn how to use the WYSIWYG editor KompoZer to add tables to your web pages in a snap.

Read the full article: How to Add a Table with KompoZer

More KompoZer Tutorials

• How to Format Text with KompoZer
• Build a Mailto Form in KompoZer
• Introduction to KompoZer

Screen shot courtesy Jon Morin

I run a lot of websites. And one of the first things I always do with a new site is set up security protocols to protect the site from hackers. I've had clients tell me that they don't need that level of security because “my site isn't nearly popular enough to need high level security.” But small sites are often the most vulnerable, because the owners think “I'm too small for hackers to care.”

I have a website that has been live only for two weeks. I haven't started promoting it, and the only visitors should be me and the team working on the site (10 people). And yet, my security software detected and blocked three clear attempts to breach the site in just one week.

Just because a site is new or doesn't get a lot of page views doesn't make it safe. In fact, one of the ways hackers find sites to exploit is through the domain registration system. When a domain is registered, that information is publicized. And then hackers send out bots and script kiddies to try and breach the system. If the hacker can breach a brand new site, this can give them a machine for life because new website owners think they are safe because they are obscure, and most site owners don't implement any security protocols until after they've been hacked.

Find out why Your Files are Not Secure.

Image courtesy saavem stock.xchng

">

Do you think about security when building or maintaining your website? How important is security to you? Do you think your site is likely or not-likely to be hacked?

I have had sites I work on hacked and it's not a good feeling. The idea that someone is walking around my files, changing them still makes my skin crawl. And many sites that I've looked at have evidence of hacker activity. One site I was asked to fix had been turned into a botnet. This is a computer that has been turned into a remote tool for the hackers to use however they wish. A hacked website can cause huge problems for your company.

About.com has two sites (besides mine, of course) that can help you learn more about security for your computer and your website:

• Antivirus Software—Welcome new Guide Tommy Armendariz!
• Internet / Network Security—With Guide Andy O'Donnell

Make a Facebook Cover HTML5 App
Screen shot by J Kyrnin courtesy Make a Facebook Cover

See what an HTML5 app really is like.

Read More: Make a Facebook Cover

What inspires you? Do you have a favorite site you visit for inspiration? Or are there just designs that you think are particularly good? Are there people you like to read on social media for inspiration?

• Where Do You Go For Inspiration or a Fresh Perspective?
• HTML5 Designs
• Show Off Your Favorite Web Page Design
• What Design Scares You? - Examples of Bad Web Design
• What Web Design Are You Working On Right Now?
• Favorite Favicons
• Iframe and CSS Designs
• Who do you follow for Web design on Twitter?
• Do You Need Help with Your Web Page Design?
• What are Some Great Ideas for Web Page Content?
• What design techniques do you hate?

One of my favorite new features of HTML5 is the custom data attribute, often referred to as the data-* attribute. These attributes can be placed in any of your HTML elements and used to store data that used to be stored in things like class attributes and rel attributes. But neither of these attributes are well suited to the task of storing data, as they both serve other purposes. So the custom data-* attributes are perfect. They let you store data with names that make sense to you and then access that data using the same scripts you would use to access and change the classes before.

Learn more about custom data attributes by reading the full article: Using the HTML5 Custom Data Attributes (data-*)

As a web designer, I've learned not to ask that question, not under my breath or even just thought. It seems like that is the time when the universe conspires to answer the question. For instance, last week, we had to do a standard upgrade to our servers that included updating Apache. Now, this wasn't a major release or update and it shouldn't have been more than a 2-3 minute downtime. But for whatever reason, the build of Apache we had did not want to install correctly. It claimed it needed all these other tools to be included at build time to install (most of which were supposed to already be installed at build). Then it required that we update PHP and a few other systems.

Ultimately, the web server itself was only down about 5 minutes, but then there was an hour or more where most of the sites we run on that server had some type of error message. I'm glad I hadn't asked what the worst could be, as that would have probably entailed 3–4 hours or possibly days of downtime. That would have involved a lot of chanting and possibly seppuku if I couldn't get it working.

I had a friend last week tell me that one of his clients decided to “fix” her WordPress installation by deleting the whole thing. “Oh, I don't think you deleted the whole thing,” he said. He was wrong… Thank goodness for backups!

Read other horror stories or share your own.

One of the less well known aspects of web design is web caching. It's a confusing, hard-to-test aspect of how your pages are displayed on the web server. But there are some meta tags you can use to control how your pages are cached. This article explains how to use the expires meta tag to control how your web pages are cached.

Read more: Manipulating the Cache

">

If you know HTML it is fairly easy to take that knowledge to create ebooks. ePub uses HTML as the base, and so does the Kindle format Mobipocket. Only unlike web pages, there are fewer tags you need to know to create a complete and usable ebook. It's also possible to convert HTML to PDF. Have you written or are you planning to write an ebook? If not, why not? Share in the comments.

Postmates Website

I like this site because the color scheme is black and white (and grays). But there is a lot of color on the site too. Find out what I like about this site by reading the full review. And remember, if there are sites that inspire you, I’d like to know about them. Post to the comments or show off your favorite web page design

Read the Review: Postmates

Screen shot by J Kyrnin courtesy Postmates

If you have an iPhone, you can pay just $5 and have a tool that will help you transfer files and even edit them right on the server. FTP on the Go is a great tool for managing and editing web pages while you're, well, on the go. Find out more about this useful app in my review.

Read the review: FTP on the Go version 3.1.3 Review

If you use the vCard microformat and a simple URL conversion, then they could. But very few websites actually use these tools to make their sites more accessible and useable for their customers. In this article, you'll learn more about how to use microformats on your web pages, and how to add a vCard to your address and contact information so that your readers can connect with you more easily.

Read the full article: How to Markup Your Contact Information with VCard Microformats

More Help with Microformats and Microdata

• What is Microdata?
• What are Microformats?

It's easy to think that content management is just a way of putting your articles or images on your website. Most good content management systems do more than that. Including things like:

• data management
• life-cycle management
• templating
• personalization
• syndication
• even DRM

If you still aren't sure if you want or need content management, or what some of those things are, then you should read the article: A Closer Look at Content Management Systems

">

I gave up television in 2005 and I haven't really missed it because there are so many other options for watching videos. I watch episodic shows on YouTube, older TV on Netflix streaming and Amazon Prime, and random weird videos on web pages. As you can see from yesterday's inspiration post, you can even watch the Oscars ceremony online.

Sorry about the delay. I came up with the poll yesterday, but apparently, if you don't post it to your blog and hit “Publish” it doesn’t go live! :-)

The Oscars Website

Did you watch the Oscars? I have to admit I didn't, but I was interested in seeing what their website looked like. As you can see, it is an elegant website that uses the black background and gold accents to create a site like you would expect from a major Hollywood award.

Read More: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

What inspires you? Do you have a favorite site you visit for inspiration? Or are there just designs that you think are particularly good? Are there people you like to read on social media for inspiration?

• Where Do You Go For Inspiration or a Fresh Perspective?
• HTML5 Designs
• Show Off Your Favorite Web Page Design
• What Design Scares You? - Examples of Bad Web Design
• What Web Design Are You Working On Right Now?
• Favorite Favicons
• Iframe and CSS Designs
• Who do you follow for Web design on Twitter?
• Do You Need Help with Your Web Page Design?
• What are Some Great Ideas for Web Page Content?
• What design techniques do you hate?

Screen shot by J Kyrnin courtesy The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

The Oscars Website

Did you watch the Oscars? I have to admit I didn't, but I was interested in seeing what their website looked like. As you can see, it is an elegant website that uses the black background and gold accents to create a site like you would expect from a major Hollywood award.

Read More: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

What inspires you? Do you have a favorite site you visit for inspiration? Or are there just designs that you think are particularly good? Are there people you like to read on social media for inspiration?

• Where Do You Go For Inspiration or a Fresh Perspective?
• HTML5 Designs
• Show Off Your Favorite Web Page Design
• What Design Scares You? - Examples of Bad Web Design
• What Web Design Are You Working On Right Now?
• Favorite Favicons
• Iframe and CSS Designs
• Who do you follow for Web design on Twitter?
• Do You Need Help with Your Web Page Design?
• What are Some Great Ideas for Web Page Content?
• What design techniques do you hate?

Screen shot by J Kyrnin courtesy The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

This user submission made my day this morning. When asked “What is Your Favorite CSS Editor?” Chris replied:

VIM
It's my favorite everything editor! It hilights and properly indents pretty much everything you could throw at it. It has lots of powerful keybord shortcuts so there is no time wasted grabbing the mouse. I see no reason why anyone would use anything other than VIM.

VIM can be used as an HTML editor as well as a CSS editor. But what I like best about this comment is that Chris knows exactly what he wants and how to do it, so he knows how to get the best editor for him (it probably doesn't hurt that VIM is free…).

But what if you don't know what you want in a web editor? It's a lot harder to pick one that works for you if you don't know what to look for. It's easy, then, to settle for an editor that is just on your computer like Notepad or one that is free.

This article: Before You Buy a Web Editor is a good tool to help you understand what you need to know to be able to choose a good web page editor for you. Everything has a cost, even things that are free, and you don't want your web editor to cost you poor web designs.

KompoZer is a powerful tool for building websites, and you may have dismissed it because it is free. But as you'll see in the tutorials by Jon Morin, KompoZer is a great web page editor for any OS. In this tutorial Jon takes you through the steps to build a new website.

Read the full article: Introduction to KompoZer

More KompoZer Tutorials

• How to Format Text with KompoZer
• Publish a Web Page with KompoZer
• Build a Mailto Form in KompoZer

Screen shot by J Kyrnin

When you work with CSS to design the look and feel of your page, you want a lot of it to be background colors and textures. And now you can learn how to do that. This article explains how to use CSS2 properties which are supported in all modern browsers to dress up your page and element backgrounds.

Read the full article: Stylish Backgrounds

CSS3 Styles Backgrounds Too

• How to Create a Background Image that Scales with the Browser Window
• Multiple Backgrounds with CSS3
• Positioning and Clipping Background Images with CSS3
• Backgrounds and Borders in CSS3