You have a site that you really like. The only problem: it was built 10+ years ago. Does that mean it’s time to bite the bullet and have it redone?
Not necessarily. Like anything (computers, cars, people) “old” doesn’t necessarily equal “ready for the junk pile”! Like an old faded pair of jeans, sometimes websites can look and feel more comfortable with age.
People often judge a website by the way it looks. The way a site looks has nothing to do with when or how it was built. As a Web Designer and Web Developer, the first place I look is the HTML structure – the building blocks of the site. What I often find is that a visually appealing older site will be built using an outdated structure.
Things change. When it comes to residential construction, building codes evolve to reflect the available technologies, materials, needs, lifestyles and safety concerns of the time. The same thing holds true for Web Development; standards for building websites need to adjust and grow over time to keep pace with the ever-changing Web.
The good news is that while Web Standards have continued to evolve since they were first introduced in the 1990’s, they continue to be very forgiving when it comes to outdated HTML. As a result, older sites generally look ok in most Web browsers. That being said, there are 2 website building methods that were very popular in the late 1990’s and early to mid 2000’s, that will cause problems for you.
Frames & Tables
The 2 things that I look for when looking at a site’s HTML:
- Is the site based on frames?
- Is the site based on tables?
Without getting technical, if the answer to question 1 or 2 is “yes”, your site’s HTML is outdated. In this case, “outdated” means the structure of your site may be partially or completely inaccessible to certain devices, including some Web browsers, search engine robots, and screen readers for the visually impaired.
If you’re not sure how to tell if your site is based on frames or tables, contact us and we’ll check for you – on the house!
Frames have been removed from the most recent HTML5 Web Standard, and while tables can still be used effectively to display tabular data (like a spreadsheet), their use as a website building block is discouraged due to accessibility issues (tables are not search-friendly).
If your site is tables-based or frames-based, it can be rebuilt using modern methods without the need to change the look and feel of your site. And it won’t break the bank. In other words, you can keep the look and feel of your faded jeans and have a new, high-performance website.
If you would like a quick assessment of your site’s HTML markup, or would just like to chat with a Developer about the options available to you, contact us at 705-927-2308 or send an email to .