Tips for quality website design

A very long time ago…A few people asked me: “Why don’t you have a real website?

I’m amazed, ask them “what you mean I don’t have?!”

-Well, you don’t have that .com at the end

-Omg… So if I don’t have it my website isn’t real?

Then a few years passed…So the same question came again, but now for other side of a address
-Why don’t you start the address with www as a all real sites???

omg again…

Here are a few citations from ancient discussions:

I think most people are used to having www. in front of a url. If they even notice it, I think it will confuse them not having that.

I’ve seen some sites that redirect to m.example.com if you’re accessing them from a phone. Do you think people are getting confused by that?

You’re describing a world where everybody expected a website to end in .com, and if not that, then maybe a handful of others. That world is changing; what will people’s expectations be in the future?

The thing is, www prefix was never a requirement. It came about as a convention to very specifically indicate that www.example.com = web server, and ftp.example.com = ftp server, etc.
There’s no real reason to do it, other than convention from the early days. The CNAME restriction is really the only technical gotcha, and this is slowly becoming a non-issue with DNS services like Route 53 that now allow CNAME on roots.

I just find it odd that www is still considered a convention by some. If you’re redirecting the root to www anyway, there is no reason to use www. You may as well use hi.example.com
as your primary domain and just redirect example.com to hi.example.com. www has no intrinsic meaning, it’s just a regular subdomain with DNS records like any other subdomain.

WOW - We have a lot of similarities, I’m so glad :laughing::heart_eyes:

My website doesn’t have many visits
so I don’t need any of that
It’s a simple private site that uses everything that is free

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Well, you answered my question. InfinityFree is lucky to have a knowledgeable contributor as you participating, offering guidance in their forum. You should ask Admin to pin a Development category, in which you and other advanced developers can head up. I know the majority login to post InfinityFree issues, but a Development section would be a breath of fresh air, a great asset.

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Thank you very much for those words :slight_smile: I appreciate it

it’s good that you ask a lot and make this subject much more interesting :slight_smile: thx !

Mr. Admin also had the desire to make from this forum something like a webmaster hub.
but it is difficult to create/collect a critical mass

because 95% of users are beginners, and those who know more; they do not want to waste time because they are not paid for it.

I also greatly appreciate my life time and try not to lose it
I help those who show interest and will or at least tried to write a question with enough information

it’s hard to help people here without enough information
beginners think it’s just enough to declare my website does not work
and that someone else would do a job for them.

they think that it can be only one problem … and in fact it can be at least 10 problems.
and writing every time all possible causes of the problem requires so many texts (essay every time)
and that is very tedious.

many users do not even give the URL of their site

they do not realize that I sacrifice my time
and every time I have to ask for the URL and more info from them



it’s as if they come to the doctor and the doctor asks them:

:mage: What’s your problem?

:crazy_face: I feel pain!!!

:mage: ok where does it hurt you?

:crazy_face: I do not know…

:mage: So what did you last do before you started feeling pain?

:crazy_face: nothing…

:mage: nothing?

:crazy_face: yes! absolutely nothing…

and then after 10 posts it turns out that the user installed wordpress, he uses cloudflare,
also edited the .htaccess file, moved it all to https, etc.

we are like idiots who have to persuade users to get more information from them…
THEY do not understand that it is in their interest that their site begins to work properly
for me is absolutely irrelevant if their website is working or not :sleeping:

Development category
script work and OOP require much more time, just to get to know the code, what it does, etc.
let alone to find the cause of the problem

if it’s fun enough and the OP has enough knowledge, than It is known that admin, me or someone else can help, but time is the most valuable thing we all have and we do not waste it

https://infinityfree.net/support/can-i-contact-support-for-script-help/

several times I spent a couple of hours trying to help people when thay write something like:
“please help !!! heeeelp !! My page does not do this and that, my theme does not work”

and then I tell them all problems in code… do this and that, change it there and there, here put xyxyyxy, blah, blah…
and after two days they completely changed website/plugins and did not use anything they asked for (topic and problems) or and what I told them…

what do you think how do I feel after that?
as an idiot who has lost a few hours of my life for someone who even does not know what he wants and actually just experimenting…

but everything seemed like he could not live without it

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I agree about devoting time. What I had in mind, was a Development category, under which divided into two sections; ‘Managed Website Design’ and ‘HTML Website Design’ with moderators pinning essential guides at the top like this thread. I think of ‘Other’ category being photography, bicycling… The idea is so guides would have a place pinned, not buried over time in run-of-the-mill discussions.

At first, I was going to ask you if you knew of any good website design forums. But, between here and own research I got HTML site up quickly. With above, there’d be no need to repeat fundamental guides to every newcomer.

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I just found Something when compressing my HTML and CSS files. Garbled characters appeared after compressing HTML. I found that HTML and CSS files should be saved as UTF-8 without BOM. After doing so, loading into compressor and setting Charset UTF-8 (and max-single line) in compression settings all is good.

Your thoughts?
.

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there are various compression methods and depending on them javascript code can also be corrupted
because those programs are not perfect and sometimes they do not fully understand the original code
(if the original code does not end with ; or it is incorrect and non-standard written, etc.)

text editors especially notepad from windows want to insert BOM

my advice is to download notepad ++
64bit version is here Downloads | Notepad++
in installation proc… just next,next,next until is finished.

after installation do this




after that open Firefox
we will add notepad ++
so it calls when you right click in firefox and pick view source on some website

You can do this by changing 2 hidden preferences.

  1. Type about:config into the location bar and press enter
  2. Accept the warning message that appears, you will be taken to a list of preferences
  3. In the filter box type view_source
  4. Double-click on view_source.editor.external to change its value to true
  5. Double-click on view_source.editor.path and set it to C:\Program Files\Notepad++\notepad++.exe (if Notepad++ is stored elsewhere change that to where it is stored)




you can also use it in windows to right click and edit html, css, and much more … (color code is good)

4

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Thanks for guide on how to assign a default text editor in Firefox. The issue I had has even more complex, I kept post simple. My issue started with WordPress AI changing text characters throughout my project. It changed lower case x to a special Unicode X char, single quotes ’ to directional special char, and a few dashes to medium length special char. I copied all WordPress pages text before uninstalling WordPress. Fixed some of the characters, but didn’t catch the single quotes. Compressing HTML caught this.

I’ve used UltraEdit for years, editing C++ files outside of Visual Studio. When I write a Unicode text file in C++, I have add the BOM code at beginning. Never fooled with BOM on any other desktop text file before. But I researched the preference before updating everything to Unicode without BOM, and setting appropriately in compression settings. It’s funny, even after saving compressed style css to Unicode, it remains ANSI Latin I. The uncompressed style_master.css retains UTF-8 charset after updating.

The bottom line- when I pasted WordPress text into a newly created text file, it saved it UTF-8 without me knowing it had special Unicode characters in it. It’s possible ANSI index.html works fine, even declaring HTML to display Unicode. But in the end, I chose to keep everything UTF-8 regardless.

update- I got compressed style css updated to UTF-8.

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there is no need to compress CSS or HTML unless it contains a large amount of text or comments, because you will not save much KB

you will only create extra complexity when you are dealing with all these files because you need to have readable copy for edit and the other for upload / live…

my raw CSS that is formatted in moderate readability is 152KB (in local stor. so no GZIP size)

and same file compressed to high (all in one line) is 143KB (in local stor. so no GZIP size)

= 9KB

so your css does not need it as well as html because you did not save anything more than 5KB

the other thing would be if you have a huge section in your html that contains a lot of texts (book)
then just put that part in one line

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My online code checks return no errors or warnings, but I can’t find why Firefox displays this:
Unrecognized at-rule or error parsing at-rule ‘@-moz-document’.
It may be my Firefox Stylus style to hide Google popup junk?

Rocket Loader was already enabled, I guess it’s now default setting.
Why is Cloudflare 24 hr Percent cached: 57.52%, when rule caches everything?

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I do not see it when I visit your site - be sure you press CTRL + F5 a few times

cloudflare analytics

Even with the Cache Everything option set, CloudFlare will still periodically check back (orgin server) to refresh the cache.

When websites respond to CDN servers with the requested content,
they attach information to the content that will let the servers know how long to store it.
This information is stored in a part of the response called the HTTP header, and it specifies for how many seconds, minutes, or hours content will be cached.
This is known as the Time-To-Live (TTL). When the TTL expires, the cache removes the content.
Some CDNs will also purge files from the cache early if the content is not requested for a while, or if a CDN customer manually purges certain content.

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I’ve been purging the cache after every FTP upload, hoping to force cache to update. Maybe I shouldn’t, and Just let Cloudflare update changes on it’s own?

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and i do the same :smile:
I like to convince myself first that’s all right with the page
moreover, you need to purge everything because of your visitors

and you know it yourself
even though you’ve reviewed files a million times locally and then put them live (or compiled)
you just notice tomorrow that something is wrong, missing or is typo…
weak concentration - especially when you work long on something


p1


p2












l%20(3)



l%20(1)

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a little fun (to make this topic not so serious) :joy:
file
how it really is to be a sysadmin or something like that

drama




Drop Oracle

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a relatively old documentary, but every person should watch and remember it

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:hear_no_evil::see_no_evil::joy:

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a good article (and funny) for all those who think to send mass e-mails :joy:

Capture

OMG - who buys such a thing ?
one letter more (d) on my .cf TLD costs :money_mouth_face:

njhj

I like the fly.

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Google search results pages (SERPs)
How to Show Up on the First Page of Google (Even if You’re a Nobody)