Why I Redid My Web Site

There was lots and lots of crap on my old Web site; this remaking is an attempt to fix that. The plan is as follows:

1. Recreate the pages such that stuff I don't want linked to is not linked to internally.
2. Use Google, and perhaps other search engines, to determine which Web pages link to my old Web pages. Wait for those pages to die off.
3. Given the set of the remaining Web pages that link to my old Web pages, email the maintainers requesting that the links be changed.
4. Finally, delete the unsupported Web pages and other items. A Web-accessible copy will be kept.

The Construction

I've done many Web pages in my life, and have thus learned a lot about how to organize them. Notable use of SSI iswas present in the new Web site. Also, XHTML 1.0 Strict iswas finally being used on my own Web pages.

Normally, CSS would be heavily used; however, I have concluded that the job of rendering the Web page is the responsibility of the Web browser, not the author of the Web page. I have left hooks for potential future CSS usage, and alternate stylesheets are very likely to be installed soon.

The link element of XHTML was extensively used to serve as a navigation aid, as was the accesskey attribute of hyperlinks.

The Future

I have recently fallen in love with RSS feeds, thanks to RSS aggregators such as Straw or Liferea; therefore, a RSS feed for this Web site is definitely in the future.

To make my life easier, some custom tools to trivially update this Web site will be developed. As-is, some SSI boilerplate must still be written; this custom tool will abstract over that and simplify common idioms such as hyperlinking, abbreviation-marking, and sectioning.

I hope to write, or perhaps coauthor, a comments CGI for most of my Web pages. That way feedback can be more immediate.

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