Tips for web designers

Here are some uselful links:

• Top 10 books for Web designers
• Top 12 blogging tips
• Web design - setting goals
• Get off your RSS (SitePoint)
• 3 ways to make a good first impression
• Great church web sites - things to do
• Great church web sites - things to avoid

Criteria for a new web host

Our church is looking at web hosting options. One criterion is to let an average person maintain the web. A second key criterion is to be able to "touch the code" if we have a person capable of doing that.

Below is the long list of criteria we're using to compare web hosting solutions and site builder type options:

• Offers a Content Management System (CMS) and templates suitable for our church's use. The CMS should let nearly everyone (with minimal orientation) add, edit, or delete text, add or delete images, create or delete pages, and upload files.Templates must be pure CSS -- no use of tables for layout.
• XHTML templates are preferred, though XML is OK as long as layout and CSS can be directly edited. (I'm resisting having to devote enough time to learn XML coding for very little benefit -- I won't use it at work, for example.)
  
• Ability to directly edit the code as well as use the CMS.
• Must allow addition of alternate text and/or titles to image code (for accessibility).
• Ability to upload files via FTP or via Web.
• Absolutely no ads or forced frames with hosting company info showing.
• Templates must allow inserting of multiple-level CSS fly-out menus -- horizontal or vertical or both. Single-level menus are not good enough, if we're going to improve the navigation, which we intend to do.
• The web hosting company must be an established one.
• 24 x 7 support. Email is OK, though phone is better.
• Hosting firm has good ratings (when I can find them).
• A very high percentage web server uptime.
• Offers hosting on Windows 2003 server (in order to keep our options open).
• The hosting package includes room for our web to grow (pages/disk space)
• Offers at least 30 email addresses, auto-forwarding, POP access, and Spam filtering.
• Hosting solution is $300 or less per year. (E-Zekiel is way out of our price range for the size web we have.)
• Domain name registration/renewal is inexpensive (these should be very low cost these days).

Optional, but desired features:

• Ability to upload and offer podcasts of sermons
• Ability to embed video (YouTube or similar)
• Ability to display RSS feeds on selected pages (like Blogger's new XML template system allows).