Award Winning Web Site Designs
Unlike most web site design companies, our online experience goes back over 35 years to 1981 (at only 300 baud).
Long before the World Wide Web became popular, BBSing (calling a local Bulletin Board System on a PC) was the
way people went online. Our web design team includes people who started dial-up online systems over 32 years ago, including the World's First BBS (Bulletin Board System) linked by satellite dish.
We used primitive design tools, but were on the bleeding edge of the online revolution. Yes, we can honestly say "Been there, done that".
We paid over $200 for 1200 baud modems and again when 2400 baud modems came out in 1984.
Our 9600 baud modems had major compatibility problems, but seemed really fast.
Who could ever forget paying over $1,000.00 for a U.S. Robotics Dual Standard 14,400 baud modem considered mandatory to run a First Class Dial-up BBS?
As new and faster modems speeds kept coming out, upgrades continued. Believe it or not, we made THE first ever documented 33.6K baud modem connection EVER in South Carolina!
ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) cost a fortune, but it was a 128K "High-Speed" web connection, long before cable modems or DSL was an option.
We registered our first internet domain in 1994 - almost 20 years ago. Our web experience goes back to when NCSA Mosaic was the world's most popular browser. Obviously, this was before Netscape 1.0 was released in December 1994 and well before Microsoft Internet Explorer 1.0 debuted in August 1995. Surprisingly, many of the Top 10 Mistakes in Web Design from way back in 1996 still apply today.
3 years later, very little had actually changed and most of it remains quite relevant today.
With broadband access much more commonplace, checking a page's download speed remains as important as it once was, but for a different reason. Long ago, the concern was people still using a dial-up connection. Today, it's the mobile revolution - literally billions of people surfing the web with their (mostly) smart cell phones. As a general rule, most web sites online today are NOT mobile ready. The sites we have built over the years that meet the current standards are the exception to that rule!
In general, web browsers are considered quite "forgiving" when it comes to some errors in the HTML (HyperText Markup Language) code.
When MOST browsers find errors on a web page, they usually ignore them and try to compensate the best they can. Search engines, however, do NOT ignore them! Because they want the best results for the majority of their users, most search engines give a demerit for every error and/or warning found on a page. The more errors and warnings found on a page, the lower it gets ranked against other pages with similar content.
The current trend, however, is for new web browsers to become more compliant with HTML standards established by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). For example, Netscape version 6 did attempt to do this faithfully.
While it was "buggy" when first released, most people didn't realize it had problems because so many pages on the web contain numerous HTML code errors. Entire blocks of badly formed (invalid) code often just disappeared.
Here's where to learn Why validating HTML is very important!
Frankly, with all of the available HTML checkers available, most of them free, there is generally no reason at all to have ANY errors on your web pages.
Unfortunately, the fact is most web sites are filled with them and also have major accessibility problems.
For someone's personal or hobby web site, that is understandable. For a company web site designed by someone who considers themselves a professional however, there is no excuse. The same goes with uncorrected spelling errors.
These are simply unacceptable when the company's reputation is on the line for all to see.
We have even heard about designers who want to charge extra to correct their own spelling errors!
For five years, Bob Chapman of Award Winning Web Site Designs was a judge for the annual WebAward Competition, produced by the Web Marketing Association.
In this premier event, web sites compete head-to-head with competitors in their industry and against an overall standard of excellence.
This annual event, sponsored by PR Web among others, has been going on since 1996.
It was indeed an honor to be chosen one of the judges on this distinguished panel of international internet experts. The judging in these competitions is always VERY difficult!
It's an honor to be seen with internet pioneers like Ted Nelsen,
who originally conceived and coined the phrase "Hypertext"
and Tim Berners-Lee, original author of HTML, programmer of the world's first web server
and current Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), on this List of World's Top Webmasters! (Order it?)
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