tech
This site, apart from the photo gallery, is entirely coded by hand in HTML and CSS. The HTML is XHTML 1.0 compliant.
Before publication each page is run through the excellent HTMLTidy tool, which cleans up most syntax problems automatically and highlights other errors. Each page is then validated using the W3C's tools, as shown by the logos at the bottom of each page.
When working on these pages I use the excellent editor
EditPad Pro. This has a host
of handy functions built in and, even better, is very easily
extended using macros, code clips and syntax highlighting
files. For example, I've written a small macro which calls the
HTMLTidy program and captures its output so that rather than
running it in a separate shell I can stay in the editor and tidy my
files with one click. The syntax highlighting which comes as
standard is very good, but if it doesn't include a programming
language you use, or you just want to tweak a few settings, then
you can modify the syntax files or create your own from scratch;
all the details are in the help file. Several kind folk have
provided their macro and syntax files for general use and these can
be found on the website.
Although you have to pay for EditPad Pro the amount is pretty small,
and there is a free version (EditPad Lite) with fewer extras.
The 'photos' section of the site is run using the great open
source project Gallery. This allows you to
maintain huge sets of photos online with built in uploading,
resizing, captioning etc. It is all written in PHP so your webhost needs to
include that, but quite a few do these days.
When it comes to uploading the files I use Directory Opus. This
fantastic piece of software is much more than an ftp client, in
fact it is a complete file management system, and includes a
staggering array of features which eclipse the basic explorer that
is built into Windows. It is enormously customisable and anything
you think they've forgotten to include you can create for yourself
using the raw command set. It includes zip file and ftp support,
and with a little bit of effort I now have a single button (with
keyboard shortcut, of course) which updates every modified file
from the website folder on my PC to the public_html directory on
the server.
As with EditPad you have to pay for this one, but I don't think
I have ever come across a program that justifies the cost as well
as this does!
The site is hosted by OneAndOne who provide a straight-forward, no-nonsense service at a pretty good price.
