Website Design Forum - Targeting individual topics and pages

Author

Targeting individual topics and pages

Eric Lindsay

2005-12-21, 6:50 pm

I am wondering about good styling approaches to targeting individual
topics and pages. Specifically each page <html> and/or <body> element
having a range of id and/or class names, related to the topic (in which
case I would use the directory name), the individual file name, and
perhaps the type of file they are.

For example <html id="CSS-signature" class="sitename" "topicA"
"filename" "index" "glossary"> or <body id="CSS-signature"
class="sitename" "topicA" "filename" "index" "glossary">.

While I have seen several tutorials suggesting this approach, while
reading the DTD for HTML 4.01 Strict, it seemed to me that the only
allowable attributes on <html> were language and direction. Therefore
it seemed that I could only use this approach on <body>. Am I missing
something here?

If styling on <html> is allowed (perhaps in some version of XHTML) can
someone point me to a discussion of the relative merits of using <html>
vs using <body>?

While I am happy with the idea of giving my pages a <body
class="dir-name" "file-name"> to enable styling of all files in a
directory, plus specific files that may need special treatment (such as
say index.html), I was wondering about more general groups of files
within a topic. For example, I might have a bunch of pages in a
directory containing book reviews, another bunch containing say forums,
and so on. Has anyone seen any articles discussing approaches to
grouping files for styling purposes. I can't seem to come up with a
good Google search pattern for this.

--
http://www.ericlindsay.com

Lauri Raittila

2005-12-21, 10:31 pm

in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.site-design, Eric Lindsay wrote:
> I am wondering about good styling approaches to targeting individual
> topics and pages. Specifically each page <html> and/or <body> element
> having a range of id and/or class names, related to the topic (in which
> case I would use the directory name), the individual file name, and
> perhaps the type of file they are.
>
> For example <html id="CSS-signature" class="sitename" "topicA"
> "filename" "index" "glossary"> or <body id="CSS-signature"
> class="sitename" "topicA" "filename" "index" "glossary">.

use meta elements for meta information

syntax is invalid, should be

class="sitename topicA filename"

> While I have seen several tutorials suggesting this approach, while
> reading the DTD for HTML 4.01 Strict, it seemed to me that the only
> allowable attributes on <html> were language and direction. Therefore
> it seemed that I could only use this approach on <body>. Am I missing
> something here?

Nope, exept that don't trust too much on tutorials. They have propably
copied this disinformation from one another

> If styling on <html> is allowed (perhaps in some version of XHTML) can
> someone point me to a discussion of the relative merits of using <html>
> vs using <body>?

It is, exept IE and older. Some new browsers redisabled id and class
styling of html

> While I am happy with the idea of giving my pages a <body
> class="dir-name" "file-name"> ...

you should give classes based on what is content structure, not directory
or filename IMHO. That also allows you use as good URLs as possible.

If you are doing CMS, please use lots of time to consider URL schemes.
Try to get this:

* lasts foreever
* no more than 78 chars (might be impossible depending on domain or site
size)
* no numbers/letters that human can't understand
* makes good sence

Good URL scheme is about 200 times more important than issues you are
talking now (from my point of view). I hope this means you have already
found real good URL scheme for your site...

--
Lauri Raittila <http://www.iki.fi/lr> <http://www.iki.fi/zwak/fonts>

Eric Lindsay

2005-12-22, 3:32 am

In article <MPG.1e141a9a92cbf57d98a6dc@news.individual.net>,
Lauri Raittila <lauri@raittila.cjb.net> wrote:

> in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.site-design, Eric Lindsay wrote:
> syntax is invalid, should be
> class="sitename topicA filename"

Thanks.

> Nope, exept that don't trust too much on tutorials. They have propably
> copied this disinformation from one another

Yes, I have discovered this all too well over the past month or so.
Hence so many questions here.

>
> you should give classes based on what is content structure, not directory
> or filename IMHO. That also allows you use as good URLs as possible.
>
> If you are doing CMS, please use lots of time to consider URL schemes.
> Try to get this:
>
> * lasts foreever
> * no more than 78 chars (might be impossible depending on domain or site
> size)
> * no numbers/letters that human can't understand
> * makes good sence
>
> Good URL scheme is about 200 times more important than issues you are
> talking now (from my point of view). I hope this means you have already
> found real good URL scheme for your site...

Thank you very much for raising the point of a good URL scheme. That is
exactly the sort of overview I wanted to see whether I was missing.

Given the current low cost of Domain Names, I look fairly hard for a
suitable name that isn't too long, as a starting point. Naturally most
of the really good short names are gone, but combined names like
www.queenslandarchitect.com were still available. A bit too long, but
at least it consists of only two familiar words, for the intended
audience.

I'll be doing static page sites only, uploaded when changes are made.
There will be no strange characters or weird number strings in any of
the final URLs (most pages will not be coming from a database, just
combined and modified from flat files). Page counts are likely to all
be between 10 and 200, although I guess a few could blow out to more. I
have been pretty impressed with the idea of a very flat file structure,
with meaningful names for the topic directories. That is why I was
targeting the topic directories in my <body class="dir-name file-name">
suggestion.

As I mentioned elsewhere:
Site directories will have the same structure on the server as locally
and probably be:
Site
Boilerplate (DTD, headers, footers, site navigation, etc.)
CSS (site wide CSS)
images (images used by CSS as backgrounds, etc)
images (site wide images)
TopicA
TopicB
TopicC
...
TopicN
boilerplate (any special headers, footers and local navigation)
CSS (topic and individual page CSS)
images (all the graphics for that set of pages)
texts (all the main content text for TopicN)

The boilerplate, and texts pages don't actually need to be on the web
server, since they will only be used while writing and by the CMS to
generate the HTML.

My own site (it long ago got out of control) is the first target for the
change over to CMS. The topic directories have names like:
airlie (pages about Airlie Beach)
epoc (about Psion Epoc PDAs)
sf (about science fiction)

Within say airlie, I managed names like boats.htm, shops.htm,
school.htm, which I thought were OK. However I also have a bunch of
much worse names like 0306.htm and 0403.htm ( events in June 2003 and
March 2004). Plus much of the name structure of my site dates from the
MS-DOS days, and for convenience that has 8.3 names instead of more
meaningful names. I believe I can stay with a very flat topic
structure, however I will now use more than 8 letters where appropriate.
I will also expand the name of files beyond 8.3. Plus I will get rid of
inappropriate number names.

Thank you for bringing up the need for a much better URL scheme. I'll
go think up some extra rules to add to the ones you have kindly
suggested.

--
http://www.ericlindsay.com

Lauri Raittila

2005-12-22, 6:51 am

in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.site-design, Eric Lindsay wrote:
> I
> have been pretty impressed with the idea of a very flat file structure,
> with meaningful names for the topic directories. That is why I was
> targeting the topic directories in my <body class="dir-name file-name">
> suggestion.

Remember to not limit your CMS to put one page to two categories. That
was mistake I first made. So for example book review of bycycling book
goes to bookreviews and bicycles, with one URL (which is more relevant).

> My own site (it long ago got out of control) is the first target for the
> change over to CMS. The topic directories have names like:
> airlie (pages about Airlie Beach)
> epoc (about Psion Epoc PDAs)
> sf (about science fiction)

And story of using Epoc to read SF on Airlie beach would go to each I
hope?

> Within say airlie, I managed names like boats.htm, shops.htm,
> school.htm, which I thought were OK. However I also have a bunch of
> much worse names like 0306.htm and 0403.htm ( events in June 2003 and
> March 2004).

airlie/events/2003/04

Especially if you have it for every month.

Adding that extra part "events" clarifies numbers. Spelled out month
names are good as well, especially when audience is not international or
if day is also involved.

> Plus much of the name structure of my site dates from the
> MS-DOS days, and for convenience that has 8.3 names instead of more
> meaningful names. I believe I can stay with a very flat topic
> structure, however I will now use more than 8 letters where appropriate.
> I will also expand the name of files beyond 8.3. Plus I will get rid of
> inappropriate number names.

I suggest not using .htm, rather .html, and better just slash with non
slash redirect (or other way around)

> Thank you for bringing up the need for a much better URL scheme. I'll
> go think up some extra rules to add to the ones you have kindly
> suggested.

Please post them here afterwards.

--
Lauri Raittila <http://www.iki.fi/lr> <http://www.iki.fi/zwak/fonts>

Eric Lindsay

2005-12-22, 7:08 pm

In article <MPG.1e14a87afacf27bb98a6e1@news.individual.net>,
Lauri Raittila <lauri@raittila.cjb.net> wrote:

> in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.site-design, Eric Lindsay wrote:
> Remember to not limit your CMS to put one page to two categories. That
> was mistake I first made. So for example book review of bycycling book
> goes to bookreviews and bicycles, with one URL (which is more relevant).

Lauri, I don't think I am understanding you correctly as yet. If I
write a book review of a bicycling book, then the page where that
appears would surely depend upon my purpose when I was writing? For
example, if I were writing a set of reviews of books, then it would
(only) appear in a reviews page. If I were writing an account of a
bicycling trip, then it would be part of a trip account.

Do you mean I should come up with some system to tag all my pages with
all the topics under which someone may seek to read them? This seems to
be what some blogs do, but I am not familiar with how they get the tag
system to work. You do seem to be saying I should organise something
very similar or identical.

>
> And story of using Epoc to read SF on Airlie beach would go to each I
> hope?

I guess you do mean I should tag each item with multiple tags. I can
see it could be a good idea, but have no idea where to start. For
instance, I would need a list of potential tags that have meaning to me
and to all potential readers. Plus the tags appropriate to one site may
not be appropriate to another. Do you use a flat list of tags, or do
you try to make a hierarchy of tags. If a hierarchy, do you have
multiples, such as one by date, one by say species, etc? This is
starting to sound quite complicated already. Do you expose the entire
tag list, so readers can pick a tag to follow (awkward if you end up
with 1000 tags) or do you try to present tags in a classified manner
leading from most general to most specific?

> airlie/events/2003/04
> Especially if you have it for every month.

> Adding that extra part "events" clarifies numbers. Spelled out month
> names are good as well, especially when audience is not international or
> if day is also involved.

So you think a deep file structure is better for inherently organised
material such as dates? I note Macintosh iPhoto files all photos by the
date taken in year/month/day (2005/12/22/photo1.jpg) where the default
name is that provided by the camera (some of which repeat numbers on
each memory card change). It seems logical and well ordered to me, but
many people complain bitterly about it. They would prefer organisation
by topic or something else.

I can see this applying to say a daily blog. The organising principle
is daily posts, however specific topics are more likely to be what an
audience is following, so you have this need to link by topic. I guess
this is what you are trying to make me consider. At the moment, I don't
have any idea how to best do it. Especially in the case of a new topic,
one not considered previously, but not at the time seen to be a new
topic. For example, say I see a snake around the resort, so I mention
it a few times and include a photo. Then three months later it turns
out to be a new species never seen elsewhere, so now we have a new
topic. What do you do about linking the old web pages?

> I suggest not using .htm, rather .html, and better just slash with non
> slash redirect (or other way around)

I will be using .html on new posts. However I am somewhat worried about
search engines losing me if I just change all my old page names from
..htm to .html Plus locating and safely changing all the links might be
painful.

--
http://www.ericlindsay.com

ecardica

2006-02-08, 4:32 am

You can do a 301 redirect on the old pages to direct to the new pages, this will ensure the search engines dont lose your site.