Organizational Standards

[Sophosaurus]

I recently put some efforts to improve the international section by adding a new tutorial. I wrote it by hand in plain HTML4.0, divided it into logical chapters, kept them in a logical order, formatted as clear as possible, optimized it using basic html-options for structuring, using headline-tags, linked paragraphes and even structured them by name for search-engines, put  atable og chapter-links on top, used standard css and kept it identical in style like other pages on wmw are.

I had to spend some hours with it, working on it's formatting and rewrote most paragraphs more than one time as the formatting showed how they could become more structured and easier to read.

I put up everything including graphics in one zip-file and sent it to MH, thinking it could be checked and uploaded via FTP.

Now i know, MH had to put more time to copy each paragraph in some html-editor, than i had to spend writing it. So. Where usually most work is done, hours of work and energy have to be invested to produce something that needs more work to become useful.

That's not the way it should be.

Using a html-editor means losing internal- links, thus destroying and limiting structural content, limiting usage of html4.0 options and producing some html2.0-like code that's inacceptable.

An example shall illustrate this. A headline in very large letters looks like this:

<h1>This is a headline</h1>

(headline-tags are used by search-engines to identify important keywords)

The Editor made something like this of it:

<font color="#CCCC99" size=3><center><font color="#FFBB77" size=6><b>This is a headline</b></font></center><br><br>

Now... what is this exactly?
First there is a tag setting a colour, then the following shall get centered and even before anything follows the colour gets changed...

Write in red, don't write in red, write blue???

While headline-tags setup very large characters which nevertheless stay under control by the users browsersettings (you can always switch between larger oder smaller characters and if you do the page will change), the editor forces the character-size by an atrtribute to size 6 - so the user loses control.

Next point is the usage of void html-tags which aren't longer supported since nearly seven years. Font-tags are outdated because they block centralized or page-wide styling, thus producing a hell of work if you want to change the design of pages. They lead to unreadable code afainst all intentions of html itself, developed to be a user-friendly way of formatting pages with an open to all standard-language that can be used by everyone.

I don't want to annoy with more details on the technical aspects.

I want to thank Me Here for her efforts but i have to say that there is something going wrong, if she has to rework wellformatted and completed work with tools that produce more work than needed.

What could be done? I think:

There should be a style-guide, written as a tutorial on how to do Tutorials, defining a standard structure, some easy to use Templates with headers, linked chapters and a standard site-footer.

There should be clear rules, i. e. the usage of style-elements on single pages should be avoided to keep the control in one hand.

There should be a names-convention for links. folders, pages and such.

There should be organizational changes, because there should be someone being responsible for file-uploads via ftp including the checking of file integrity, so none of the others should have to mess around with uploading-issues. Uploading and formatting have to stay divided to ease everyones work.

There should be someone responsible for technical integrity and structure-issues, i. e. links integrity (found a few dead links)

There should be a page listing those responsible.

There should be a todo-page listing what's needed to complete the site.

There should be lots chocolate and wine and gurls 4 me to cool down my frustration now. I think that's the most important of all.

[KM]

there are no FTP uploads, there is no HTML, the site is written using a syntax similar to forums bbcode and converted to completely valid HTML by the site editor... considering the people who do the pages on the site don't know any HTML using a bbcode style syntax has been much simpler for them, even if it does restrict some complex things those generally aren't needed anyway, it was only because you combined several pages in to one page that you used links to a specific portion of a page - that has never need required before (hence not being supported in the editor) i believe she changed that anyway now so there is no need to add support as it probablty won't come up again

as for the structure of the site... i've been pestering them about having to click "tutorials" then do a CTRL+F and type what i want to find the "help" pages for quite a while... lol

and a to-do list would serve no purpose at this current time than to show how much stuff doesn't get done... lol, each of us has a rough to-do list, unfortunately mine is by far the largest :-S but having something on a to-do list rarely means it gets done... i have a good weeks worth of solid work to do on my to-do list for this site alone (as in every waking hour for a week to get through it, if i'm lucky) - and me here also has a long list as well, you really want a public page showing all of the stuff that doesn't get done? lol

btw, search engines don't use a h1 tag to tell what is important, google for example renders the pages using the gecko engine in firefox to decide what is important with the page (i have no idea what good a rendered page is to the search engines, but that would be why they work for google and i don't), the primary concern with a site is having it display correctly in firefox

and the page is valid as in all browsers will load it properly, yes it is missing a few things listed as required in the HTML 4.01 specs but browsers don't need those, and yes it has some things not listed in the specs that all browsers support (like the center tag) - the nesting is completely supported by browsers, and therefore nested HTML is used in the output of the pages, because the editor also allows nesting, and it is simpler to keep it as it is than try and convert it to "best practice" rubbish which serves no practical purpose - "best practices" are how you end up with rubbish like robomx that bogs down me here's computer all the time because she doesn't have the "best practice" amount of RAM...

the outputted page always displays correctly in all browsers (unless you count the IE bug of displaying the background wrong which means you see borders on some images) and all search engines can read it just fine, those are the main concerns - i think the biggest complaint you had there was the fact that the site uses a site editor instead of uploading HTML, but considering the people who have to do the work on the site wanted a simple editor and not to have to do pages in HTML... currently only 1 page on the site (excluding the forum) is not done using the editor, that is the bandwidth tester (for obvious reasons) and even that outputs the bbcode style syntax and then has the page generated by the same script used by the editor (so if i make a change somewhere it is applied to that as well) - using HTML as well as being harder also leads to inconsistency in page layouts - that is why i also made vladds site using a similar system rather than HTML (as he had a problem keeping things consistent)

[Sophosaurus]

this way you force any work that is done being done once again.

also your diction looks strange to me. obviously this editor isn't even capable of doing the simplest formatting or even slightest structural work on pages like internal links or have text flowing around graphics or set it on the right or left of an image to illustrate them. I never heard of someone calling such details "complicated things". Some chapter-overwview with internal pagelinks is using basics on structuring. did i forget titles?

i'm definitly not going to work on some 40 or 50 pages that way just to have them edited again by someone else with an amount of work that is in fact larger than that i had to invest in them.

usually pages are to be reworked over which would even make it worse doubling up the time once again.

and even if something like html2.0 works on all existing browsers, that doesn't mean it should be called "valid" in 2006.

i try to believe that there is no ftp, but sadly i'm not able.
(or maybe i'm not even willing to believe such a statement).

some dozens of pages translated into multiple languages and me here had to mess around with ONE of those for hours - i'd say you must be joking.

[KM]

HTML 4.01 is the latest of the HTML specifications, and the sites HTML 4.01 (Transitional) is valid, apart from a few minor things like making use of things browsers support which isn't in specs (like center) and of course it doesn't bother with the specifying of the version as that would be redundant anyway as failing to specify a version defaults to 4.01 Transitional which is correct

and as mentioned the site editor was made specifically for this site, for someone who wanted to just type text in, if they want a heading then select it and click heading (or type [heading]something[/heading] manually if preferred)

and the reason for the messing about was because you went and converted them to HTML, and she had to convert it all back again, had it not been converted it all then it would have been much less work

the site editor is done deliberately to make the site look consistent and to make the site a lot less maintenance, whilst also making it easy to make/edit pages, simply typing text in works much better than having to mess about making entire web pages

the only sites that anyone would dream of doing in HTML are ones they planned on making then never updating, can you imagine the hassle that would be caused if the page were in HTML and we wanted to change the menu at the top of the site to add a section or something? or suddenly decided to change the colour scheme of the entire site? even a small edit like shortly after the site went "live" a small change was made to the template, all i did was make the small change to the template file and click rebuild site, done - if we had a load of pages written in HTML then it would have been hell

i didn't see a complaint when you made a post in both english and german about how you went and converted the post to HTML first then translated it then couldn't post the HTML for the page...

and no, you can easily check, there is no FTP server operating on the web server - it is a potential security hole that is simply not needed, the only changes that need doing to the site are editing pages which is done via the editor or uploading images/files which again is done via the editor, the site wasn't made for someone who wanted to upload HTML files that would never be changed, it was made for someone who wanted to just post tutorials and be able to easily edit them if required

[Sophosaurus]

and the reason for the messing about was because you went and converted them to HTML, and she had to convert it all back again, had it not been converted it all then it would have been much less work

You have rather weird fantasies. What are you talking about?
As i told you before, i wrote it in html. There is no converting.

The pages aren't even existing in other versions than plain html and i am not willing to mess around with Tools that would complicate everything like Word or any other Formatting-Software which isn't able to structure simple pages without a hell of a work.

That's your site and you can manage it however you like - i just won't participate in that way.
About 40 Pages in three languages deleted. I don't have time to waste.

[Bearded Blunder]

Please don't get so worked up, OBVIOUSLY you went to a lot of work & trouble producing html & it's a shame a misunderstanding evidently took place, i know from the one i did, i was asked for plain text, pictures as needed & a simple indication where in the narrative each picture belonged, that evidently being what the site is geared up to use.

Personally being html illiterate i dreaded being asked, as i thought i was in for a very steep learning curve, but i'm sorry you feel your time was wasted all the same, perhaps if you give yourself some time to reflect & calm down?