Rich and Clever

Rich and Clever recently launched the redesign (and complete overhaul) of Schnetz Landscape, a Southern California landscaping company dedicated to creating dazzling environments out of each project. The site puts a new emphasis on their impressive portfolio, displaying several large images from selected jobs, and includes extensive information of the company, their philosophy and process.

We were provided with a hand crafted design and had the job of making it and the site’s content web-ready. As always the code is lean, flexible and very SEO friendly, but with Schnetz Landscape we went a step further to improve the site’s performance with clean URL’s.

If you’ve ever read a blog or shopped online you’ve probably encountered a URL like this:

www.domain.com?option=store&product=3001&view=cm

Everything after the “?” are variables (the “option” variable has a value of “store”, etc) which dynamic pages use to display the correct content. This is great because it allows information to be kept in databases, which makes it much easier to change and display without making a page from scratch for every product or post. But it also comes with problems.

Variables is a URL can give hackers clues to how the site is programmed, therefore making it less secure. URL’s should be easy to read and remember. These are not. Also, search engines don’t follow links with variables, meaning that content is never available for search results. Bad news all around.

The solution is a technique called mod_rewrite. I won’t go into the details, since these articles are for people who manage websites, not build them. But the simplest explanation is that mod_rewrite allows you to take a confusing URL like this:

http://schnetzlandscape.com/page.php?page=portfolio&portfolio=California+Casual&img=3

And turn it into this:

http://schnetzlandscape.com/portfolio/California+Casual/3/

Nice, huh? So when you ask about your new website, be sure to let us know you want clean URLs.

In the new quote form we wrote last week, we decided to add a paragraph about web standards, and attempt to mention briefly that we adhere to the strictest web standards in all cases, including design and accessibility standards.

Standards are basically rules laid how for best practices when creating and designing a website. This includes the types of code you use, how you use them, and how your create your design for the web. So this begs the question: As a website owner, why should you care?

1. Standards save you money

   Sites built with standards have shorter development cycles, so that means less time before your new site is up or your existing site is redesigned. You see, back in the old days of the internet, no means existed for making a site look pretty. Graphics were very rare, as the only people using the internet were researchers and scholars passing around information. But when people realized the internet was a new industry for sales and marketing, designers came on the scene, twisting sites into something better looking with tools that weren’t made for it.

   And for the most part it worked. But as always happens when you use the wrong tool for the job, the end result is fragile, difficult to maintain, and takes forever to improve. Standards change all that. We use the right tools for the right job, keeping content and design separate, which makes sites leaner, clean, and easier to create in the first place. They’re also much easier to maintain, and that saves you money on support costs.

2. Standards make you money

   Standards promote accessibility, which means making a site that anyone can use. Someone on a Mac, or on a cellphone, or who has a handicap. The site will look good in the future just like it does now, and it’ll look as good on less popular browsers as it does on Internet Explorer or Firefox.

   Standards also promote SEO: Search Engine Optimization. When a site’s code is clean and well-built, search engines have an easy time of getting to the meat of your site, and helping others find it as well.

What, were you expecting more? Cause I can ramble about XHTML and how cool CSS is if you like? No? Ok. So, standards save money, and standards help make money. They cut down development costs, and help everyone find and use your website. Sounds good, eh?