Page > Maintaining a Website
When Web Site content is updated, it's important to keep the look and feel consistant, this includes the font types, sizes of fonts, borders, margins, colours and many other style attributes. These styles are maintained by a CSS file (Cascading Style Sheet File) which is created when a new web site is built.
Common Problems
Why maintaining a website can cause problems
When time comes to update your site, the designer will refer to the .css file to determine the necessary fonts, colours, etc. The problem with this is that .css files are very rarely well documented which makes it difficult to find the right style to use and often, the designer will add a new style for the particular text they are adding or updating.
Quick Fix Website updates
"I have a friend who does web sites, get them to do it."
A Web Site should be easy to update and take little time, it's the Product or Service on your web site that's on offer, not the look of your site. Although a "Quick Update" is the most common task for a Webmaster, it can become a maintenance nightmare with too many visual styles to navigate around.
As your web site grows, new pages are added, old pages removed, links updated and details edited, the Webmaster has more undocumented styles to choose from, since nobody can remember what each style is used for, new styles are created for another "Quick Update".
.css Hell
Cascading Style Sheets
Problems associated with inconsistant style sheets (.css files)
Incorrect, inconsistant layout, missing or hidden text or images, incorrect navigation and browser incompatability
There are many browsers on the market and different browsers handle .css files differently, even different versions of the same browser have showed inconsistancy in handling the same .css file. Some popular browsers include Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Opera and even Google's Chrome and Opera for the iPhone and many more.
Unless the .css file in your Web Site is consistant and reusable, it is almost guaranteed that maintaining the look and feel accross multiple browsers will be almost impossible.
The Solution
Eliminate complicated web site updating
The Solution
One way to ensure a this is to have a professionally created style
sheet that is well documented and globally applied to all elements on
your web site. This way, when a browser incompatability is discovered, a
CSS knowlegable designer can modify the styles globally, accross the
entire Web Site.
or
Let us worry about the styles, compatability and .css files. Just update
your Site and get on with what you do best.
By the way, that's how we update this site.