development
02
web development by mike wiemholt
Let me just state right now... I love building web sites. I am a designer at heart, but the process of taking a design from image to web site has, over the years, become what I enjoy the most about this work.
I currently code all of my web sites using CSS, aka "table-less", structure. My process includes taking the design and breaking it apart down to multiple images that will be used in the CSS to build the site. I build my style sheets almost entirely from scratch each time I do them and use divs in the HTML. All of the HTML is managed via the style sheet.
Once I have what I call a "setup" file complete (one fully coded page of the site, generally the home page), I then break the page into 3 separate portions. The first is the header - this entails all the code from the top of the file, down to where the content begins. I save this code out into its own file I simply call "top". I then pull out the code which begins immediately after the content of the page and goes all the way to the end of the document. This is saved out into a file called "bottom".
At this point, all that is left is the content of the page. I then use PHP to include the top (above the content) and the bottom (below the content). These two files ("top" and "bottom") can now be edited any time, and their changes will be reflected across the entire site (since each page pulls in "top" and "bottom").
Next, I pull out the more complex portions of code from the top and bottom files and save them as their own files, after which I use PHP includes to pull them back in. Now, if we need to edit the navigation of a site (for example) there is simply a "navigation" file that can be edited, and it only contains what I need to edit - nothing more.
Finally, I build all of the pages of the site and link them all together. This process includes the creation of all forms, the stylizing of an admin interface (in cases where we use it) and all other aspects that must be cleaned up or created before passing everything over to one of our programmers for any custom programming that needs to be done.
