I am currently design a website for this small hotel. I have never in the past made website that weren't for myself of for friends, so I want to make everything perfect becuase I'm going to earn a small bit of pocket money this time.

This is currently my checklist of things that I will do, just to make sure the website runs nice and smoothly.

- optimize graphics and photos for faster loading times
- approximate loding speeds across diferent internet connection
- make my HTML upto HTML 4.01 strickt (W3C checker)
- use style sheet to control formatting of site, check for validity (in WC3's cheker)
- test site in the following browsers and make necessary adjustments: Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Netscape, Opera
- keep the coding clean and easy to modify
- tesing in different screen resolutions

Is there anything else I should check?


Thanks for reading this.

I would add the following guidelines :

- Keep the used graphics to bare minimum, this will decrease page loading time; eg. Use a background color, but not a graphic and if you do, make the graphic TINY but tileable.

- Use enough comments in your code, this will make it easier to go back and work on it some more later on.

- Use the cleanest, easiest code possible.

- Use stylesheets to do ALL of the looks, including the graphics. Make sure no graphic is statically coded, that way again a new look will be easier.

There's quite a few good resources about Web Designing here in Astahost in a few of our forums you might want to look at, that will help with your checklist.

I see no checking for accessibility, in some countries that is discrimination. It's not over here but I still think designers should use their talents to cater for everyone equally.


Cheers,


MC

Thanks MC, I completely forgot about that.

I *try* to make all pages of my site accessible within 2 clicks, also a sitemap (which is what I didn't do in my last websites) should be there, it allows people to find what they need more easily.

I do! keep a few rules in mind, or let me say that I "forgot" that in my previous grey-red Gothika design, bear in mind that visually impaired people - even blind at times - will and can visit your site. THey use screen readers or a magnifying program that let's them see your site. Also people with epilepsy will stumble on your site, for them (and some visually impaired people - and others too) it is best to not use bright red, bright blue, neon green, flashy pink, etc in larger portions of your site.

So in short, try to use muted colors, colors that are slightly desaturated, it will give your site an overal feeling of calm - which is a key-element to keeping a visitor on a site.

Just imagine, you come across a bright red backgrounded site where they also liked using the blink-element and bright green text on that red background. In addition they "provided" you with a loud song in the background. Will you stay longer than 5 seconds? I know I wouldn't.

I recently designed and built a website for a local air cadet squadron. I changed all the photos using a photo editing package as most have an export to web feature. The loading speeds should be based around a 56k modem as this is still the standard speed designed to work around in the professional business. making the HTML to HTML 4.01 is not important because if you are using software such as Dreamweaver MX or Dreamweaver 8 it will automatically write in that language. It is always a good idea to test your site in a variety of browsers and to validate your CSS Sheets. Again with the coding, if you are using a program such as Dreamweaver, it keeps it neat itself. Testing on different screen resolutions is also a very important point, but don't go over the top, 800x600 and 1024x768 should be the only two that you need to check.

You must also make sure that all your images and links have ALT Tags to comply with new disability laws. Another good idea is to use META tags as these will increase your success in being found on a search engine.

I hope this helps you
Chris

Beg to differ. Those packages have a tendency to include proprietary tags and methods which are not standard compliant. And they include too much code for the site to load fast. I reccomend doing it the old fashion way -- by hand-coding. More control over the code and how it behaves. Any increase time that it takes is about equal to the time it will take to 'un-code' the bad stuff if you use the programs. Just my opinion...

I like dreamweaver, but that's just a preference. I think you have all your bases covered, but make sure you know what the customer wants and has in mind, what image he wants the site to portray. Otherwise it seems you're in the good