{"id":562,"date":"2004-09-21T16:13:49","date_gmt":"2004-09-21T16:13:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.guyweb.co.uk\/?p=562"},"modified":"2004-09-21T16:13:49","modified_gmt":"2004-09-21T16:13:49","slug":"redesign-phase-1-metadata-keywords-and-description","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/guycarberry.co.uk\/guyweb\/2004\/09\/21\/redesign-phase-1-metadata-keywords-and-description\/","title":{"rendered":"Redesign phase 1: Metadata (keywords and description)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been working out the complete redesign process of this site. It not only involves a visual overhaul to the front end GUI<\/acronym> but to the inner workings behind the scenes and under the hood. I’ve now implemented something I’ve been working on for sometime – metadata. Whilst many believe that meta tags such as keywords and description are a thing of the past (they don’t really effect Google<\/a>), I’m of the opinion that even if the keywords tag is not massively useful, the description is. And now I’ve modified the CMS<\/acronym> to output a brief description for (nearly) every page on the site.<\/p>\n

I’ve also made the first step away from using Microsoft’s technology, ASP, as the server-side language. The aim is to eventually use the easier and better-supported open-source PHP instead. So the main blog is no longer using ASP include files. For the time being, I’ve moved over to the Movable Type<\/a> template include modules. As many of you know, I plan to move over to Textpattern eventually so I’m hoping that Dean Allen’s fab CVS<\/acronym>, Textpattern<\/a> will port this facility. Even if it doesn’t, I’ll just use PHP includes instead. The main problem with using PHP over ASP is that I’m currently on a Windows server. Whilst PHP is installed on this server, it’s a lot less easy to use than with Apache. PHP<\/a>, MySQL<\/a> and Apache<\/a> are without a doubt the best open-source web solution out there.<\/p>\n

I effortlessly set up these technologies here at work and on my home PC. A little tinkering with the Apache httpd.conf and .htaccess files enables some really great functionality that just isn’t available on IIS<\/acronym>. So maybe I’ll look to switch hosts, or enquire from my existing host to see if a UNIX server is available to use. The security benefits are obvious but it would also be nice to have a little more server-side control that Apache enables the administrator.<\/p>\n

So, aside from introducing new metadata, phase 1 involves preparing the site to move away from proprietory\/expensive technologies (IIS, ASP, Movable Type). Phase 2 will be a little more radical – inevitably changing all the site URLs and reshaping the information architecture. Phase 3 will see the new design slotted into place and all those usability bits and bobs ive been toying with finally getting added. Some fun ahead then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been working out the complete redesign process of this site. It not only involves a visual overhaul to the front end GUI but to the inner workings behind the scenes and under the hood. I’ve now implemented something I’ve been working on for sometime – metadata. Whilst many believe that meta tags such as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[87],"class_list":["post-562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-web-design"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/guycarberry.co.uk\/guyweb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/guycarberry.co.uk\/guyweb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/guycarberry.co.uk\/guyweb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guycarberry.co.uk\/guyweb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guycarberry.co.uk\/guyweb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/guycarberry.co.uk\/guyweb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/guycarberry.co.uk\/guyweb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guycarberry.co.uk\/guyweb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guycarberry.co.uk\/guyweb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}