These pages outline Tantramar Interactive Inc.’s approach to publishing sustainable, easy-to-use, content-focused websites. Drawn from knowledge and experience reaching back to the early days of the web (late 1993!) — but always staying fresh.
Website owners’ manual
- Requests for Proposals (RFPs) — the Unhappy Meal of purchasing
- The budget guessing-game
- My website layout is good enough on phones! (Does Google agree?)
- Sending efficient updates to your web developer
- About domain names & renewals
- How long should you buy your domain for?
- Passwords 101
- Clearing your browser cache
- Search engine optimization (SEO) and page rank
- Putting the CMS (content-management system) in context
- WordPress basics
- Caveat Administrator
- Social media content ownership
- Social media account ownership
- Link shorteners
- Do you want to blend in or stand out?
Content and style guide
More design-related than the Website Owners’ Manual pieces above. Warning: some of this is deeply nerdy and more than a bit obsessive. Little of it is original. It’s here mostly because getting details right — no matter how small — is vital.
- Typography — the clothes you dress your message in
- PDFs make your website harder to use
- FAQs are a blight on your website
- Opening off-site links in new windows doesn’t keep visitors on-site
- The frustrations of carousels
- “Make sure it’s above the fold”
- Stay DRY (“Don’t Repeat Yourself”)
- Forms
- Addresses (physical and web)
- Don’t conflate a user’s language choice, nationality, & current location
- Date formats
- Forms
- Full justification
- Hyphenation
- Your site can use “Click here” links or it can be easy to use — pick one
- Ordinals
- Quotation/foot/inch marks & apostrophes
- Single-space between sentences
- Times & prices
- Underlining text