Web Site Cookbook, by Doug Addison

I'm not a big fan of cookbooks. My idea of a recipe is poking around in the kitchen and seeing what I have left from my last trip to the store, and creating some concoction from the captured ingredients that will hopefully taste good and may even be something that doctors will not frown at. Over time, I've found things that are palatable, that I like, and probably are things that doctors will frown at. Some people, perhaps smarter or less adventurous (or both) like to get cookbooks and use that to shop for ingredients, and create less creative and more palatable things.

Over the last 20 years, I have come to find that cookbooks can make life easier. I'm a big fan of reckless experimentation, yet I also have this strange addiction to food which there is no twelve step program for. I'd wager that most webmasters and businesspeople interested in a website are people who have a similar addiction. While I've been creating extraordinary food and lifeforms in my kitchen (some of them edible) it seemed worthwhile to take a peek into what a 'website cookbook' looked like.

Designing, Maintaining, Marketing

The Web Site Cookbook weighs in at 256 pages, putting it into the encouraging category; some of the website books I have seen for people of questionable intelligence who like the colors yellow or orange are easily three times the size of this book. It immediately begs the question, 'Why are those other books so large in comparison?' A smaller font wasn't used in this book, so maybe those other books have a lot more words, but I also know that when I want to buy a book with lots of words in it I browse the dictionary section of the bookstore. More words does not a better book make, most of the time. O'Reilly has a great track record for using words, so I set the standard high for Doug Addison's Web Site Cookbook. From the Preface: ...Rather than being the authoritative volume on how to be a webmaster, web designer, web developer, or expert in any of the Internet's myriad technologies, acronyms, or buzzwords, the Website Cookbook instead shows you how all of those disciplines (and others) can be combined for a common purpose: serving and engaging - even delighting - an audience of visitors to your site. Without them, of course, you efforts will be for naught. That's right on target as far as I'm concerned. Even an unsuccessful website requires a collection of different skills and abilities, and a successful website requires those same skills and abilities working together. And visitors are the center of the universe for any website, even if it's your own internal (intranet) website and your visitors are your coworkers. The first chapter covers the arcane art of setting up a web server - from registering a domain name, choosing a server platform1 and hosting plans, which are really big issues for very new webmasters. In fact, about 10 years ago I recall bumbling through all of that the very first time, and how unfriendly it can be for a novice. I was impressed that top level domains were covered as well; even mentioning four notable ccTLDs (Country code top-level domains) 0 .md, .tv, .us, and .eu. It even has a little note on the proposed .xxx top level domain, that the Bush Administration shot down in 2005.2 That's a strong indicator that the book is up to date.

Chapter One goes on to include managing and protecting your domain name, enabling Server Side Includes (and telling you what that means!), setting default filenames for a directory and an entire site, automating routine tasks on your website, restarting and monitoring your web server, and even building an easy to maintain site with free tools. And, you know, people everywhere just want to have free.

The site planning and setup covered in Chapter 2 covers a lot of things that most people learn the hard way. Creating naming conventions for files, page titles and variables is something most people don't realize that they need until the site they are working on has grown grotesquely larger than planned; that the creation of a functional specification for a site is covered earlier in the chapter gives a good foundation for this. Making URLs easy to find and remember is very important, and the flowcharting section is well worth reading for simple sites.

The chapters that follow get more into specifics, such as:

• Page Design and Navigation: Including designing pages for advertisements, and expanding your website - as well as tips and tricks for allowing your website to scale (expand) well
• Formatting Text And Code:
  • Standards compliant webpages (and why they are important),
  • Displaying foreign and special characters,
  • Picking the right size of text for pages,
  • Adding dynamic content to static pages,
  • Sticking discretionary hy-phens into words,
  • Dividing text blocks into multiple pages,
  • Reformatting your database content as HTML,
  • Optimizing your web page code...
• Formatting Graphics:
  • Optimizing your images,
  • Creating watermarked images on the fly,
  • keeping people from downloading your images,
  • Creating a web-friendly logo...
• Displaying And Delivering Information:
  • Telling people who to blame (who is responsible) for your site,
  • Meaningful link text (read the book),
  • Randomizing text/images,
  • Rich Site Syndication creation and usage,
  • Creating a printer friendly version of the site
• Interacting With Visitors:
  • Preventing Blank Form Fields,
  • Duplicating Form Field Data,
  • Using Sample input to reduce errors,
  • Formatting information provided by a user,
  • Generating form menu choices from a database,
  • Storing multiple values in a single database field,
  • Using a graphical character string (Captcha)for form authentication,
  • Adding additional information to email links,
  • Send visitor messages to your mobile phone,
  • Handing out cookies to remember visitor choices,
  • Internationalizing your site,
  • Creating an email newsletter.
• Promotion and E-Commerce:
  • Converting site traffic to loyal visitors,
  • Creating an effective landing page,
  • Creating an icon for the site (favicon)
  • Forcing a secure connection,
  • Creating a self-signed SSL certificate,
  • Disabling a form submit button after it's already been clicked,
  • Creating complex select menus with optgroup,
  • Protecting your site from fraud,
  • Generating income from traffic and content,
  • Tracking and blocking visitors based on their IP address,
  • Soliciting donations and contributions
• Maintenance and Troubleshooting
  • Handling requests for missing or relocated pages (404 errors),
  • Adding the referring page to a form,
  • Improving site performance,
  • Tracking and documenting site changes,
  • Modifying an auto-indexed file list to match your site's design,
  • Converting source documents to web pages,
  • Feeding and Care of your database,
  • Evaluating your site with Metrics,
  • Developing Test Procedures for your site,
  • Preventing email address harvesting.

Better Recipes Don't Make a Better Chef... But It Helps

To get up and running fast, a person fairly new to web design can get up to speed fairly quickly with this book; the focus on problems and their solutions allows for someone doing a website to quickly progress through the book within the context of their site. The discussions in the book are very objective but definitely readable, allowing the reader to make informed decisions instead of being railroaded into some standardized website format. Nobody wants a 'standard website', except 'standard people' who are easily identified by the 2.5 children that follow them everywhere.

A book like this doesn't make great websites, it allows people to create as good a website as they are capable of. It gives the information needed, and how you mix it is your business.

Web Site Cookbook is a very interesting mix of a lot of things that have, unfortunately, become regarded as separate things - website marketing, website development, amongst other things. The books should be valuable to people who understand the technical basics of HTML or someone who wants a better idea of what their website can do, could do and perhaps even should do.

As website cookbooks go, this is not your mother's cookbook. If you're not your mother and you have a business idea that involves a website, you should take a look at the recipes within. Season to taste, of course, and wear appropriate safety equipment.³

¹ There are some web hosting services that still don't use Linux, Apache, PHP and MySQL?!
²Maybe www.knowprose.xxx would generate more traffic, but I daresay I might have to find more inappropriate content...
³No websites were harmed during this book review.