Content Management Systems and Web Standards

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) define a set of standards for publishing content on the Web. The standards relate to the code used for adding structure to web page, how those pages are presented to users, and scripting languages used to add dynamic element to those pages. This short article discusses why web standards are important in relation to Content Management Systems (CMS).

When CMS vendors are constantly repositioning their products to align them with the latest buzz-words and industry fashions, it's easy to be deflected from concentrating on the most basic, but important issues - like ensuring that the resulting web pages will work on the web browsers of visitors to your site.

No web designer or CMS vendor can predict with any certainly the type of browser being used by the potential visitor to a 'public facing' website. So - what strategy can a CMS vendor adopt to cope with the problem of the 'unknown web browser'?

Web Standards are certainly a big part of the answer - as they are fundamental to all attempts to cope with issue of visitor diversity. Use of Web standards in the form of page marked up with valid code and using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for presentation, provides the best chance of consistently serving content to a audience likely to be using a host of different 'user agents'. Those user agents could be anything from a standard web browser to assistive technologies such as a screen reader.

Standard Markup? What's that?

There have been many different versions of HTML and XHTML since the World Wide Web was invented in the early 90s. The 'rules' for using each version are encapsulated in the standards published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). These rules dictate the tags publishers are allowed to use (and in what order), and how those tags should be interpreted by web browsers. For example, text within header tags are interpreted as headings, text within paragraph tags are interpreted as paragraphs.

What are advantages of using a CMS that produces standard markup?

The advantages of using web standards would apply irrespective of the tools used to create and manage a website. However, use of web standards are more important when using a content Management system; as the choices you make in terms of template design, and quality of code generated by the system (if indeed the system generates code) can end up propagating across hundreds, if not thousands of pages.

The main advantages of using Web Standards:

  • Money can be saved and money can be made: the most obvious savings come from the lower bandwidth costs, pages tend to be smaller and they tend to load quicker. What is not so obvious, however, is that faster loading pages can also generate additional traffic and revenue. For example, when Multimap.com redesigned their site using web standards they estimated they would saved 40,000 Gb of bandwidth per year - but they also found that their advertising revenues increased. The quicker loading pages encouraged people to spend more time on the site - and consequently advertising revenues went up. (Real life savings through Web Standards posted 30th July 2004: http://www.clagnut.com/blog/366/)
  • Greatly reduced development time for future re-designs: Separating the structure of content (i.e., headings, lists, images, paragraphs) from the way that content is presented opens up opportunities to create multiple 'views' of that content with little additional effort. A visit to CSS Zen Garden website (http://www.csszengarden.com/) is a must to see this in action; click a link and the page is 'redesigned on the fly'. Content Management Systems have always been sold on the back of the their ability to re-purpose content. Using Web Standards makes this even easier, as 'clean' structured content can more easily be presented to audiences with different presentation needs.
  • Production and maintenance costs are lower: there is no longer a need to produce multiple versions of pages to cope with the quirks of different browsers. The time and effort previously required to create and maintain 'browser sniffing' scripts can now be re-deployed to add value to the site for visitors.
  • Freedom from proprietary technologies: Using Web standards can free organisations from being captives of browsers dependent on proprietary tags and rendering behaviour. For example, IBM's move to Open Source desktop clients has reportedly been held back due to their web based systems where built on top of the non-standard Internet Explorer web browser. (IBM goes silent on Linux desktop effort: http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/01/25/HNibmsilent_1.html). Content Management Systems should not generate web page that will only work on a particular browser or a particular platform.
  • Pages can be tested for errors: using code validators such as the W3C validator (http://validator.w3.org/) pages can be checked for errors in markup. Without working to standards it is not possible to check, as there are no rules to check against. The advantage of a CMS is that content creation can be farmed out to 'de-skilled' users (in theory at least). The disadvantage is that human error is unavoidable. Ideally checking and repair tools should be built into the CMS, as the ability to test and repair pages is essential.
  • Greater search engine visibility: Search engines are able to index web pages more accurately if the content on those pages is well structured. For example, when keywords appear in page headings many search engines give extra weight to those words when indexing the page. A web page where headings are improperly marked up is likely to suffer in the search rankings compared with a page with the same content that is marked up correctly. A CMS can come to the rescue by adding structure when content is being put into the storage system, for example, input forms with fields for headings and other page structures.
  • Content is future-proofed and backward compatible with older browsers. Pages built using web standards will display more consistently across browsers and platforms, including older browsers. Your content will not necessarily look the same in old 'non-standard compliant' browser but the bottom line is that the content will still be available.

Web Standards can help make pages accessibility to disabled people

The de-facto guidelines for measuring the accessibility of a web page are outlined in the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Checkpoint 2.2 is a Priority 2 checkpoint states,

'3.2 Create documents that validate to published formal grammars.' (http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/wai-pageauth.html#tech-identify-grammar)

If you are aiming to ensure that your websites conform to at least AA WCAG - a minimum requirement for example for UK local government sites, and recommended for educational sites - then standard markup is a requirement.

If you spent time making a website accessible, does that mean you will have to compromise on visual design or hold back from incorporating interactive features? Absolutely not, this is one of the biggest myths about accessible web design. Accessible web design is about being flexible in your approach, about offering more choice rather than less choice. For example if you are thinking of adding video to you site - great - go ahead. However think about how you can increase your audience reach by offering the content of that video in alternative ways (e.g., by providing a transcript or close-captions for deaf or hearing-impaired individuals).

Accessibility is where you really cash in if your CMS uses standard markup and CSS for presentation; because not only can you present the same content in many different ways, visitors to your site can decide for themselves how they want to access your content. For example, they can increase the size of the text, change colours and contrast, or substitute their own style sheet to create an entirely new design. 'Designing in flexibility' is key to accessible web design - and it is also the most efficient approach - because you can't possibly anticipate the diverse needs of every visitor to your site.

Accessible sites that use Web Standards can look great

Examples of great looking and accessible website are showcased every month on the Guild of Accessible Web Designers site. The winner for March 'Site of the Month' was the World Wide Fund for Nature online store. Previous winners included Haringey Council and the National Crime Squad website. Many more accessible and 'well designed' sites can be found by visiting sites created by Guild members, e.g., Minz Meyers, Research Kitchen.

Conclusion

A CMS should help rather than hinder attempts to create standards based web pages. It should provide ways of marking up content in a standard compliant way, for example, via WYSWYG tool or by interfacing with other tools, or provide a way to transform existing structured content automatically into structured web pages. Ideally there should be tools to clean up content entered by users - a common problem when content is cut and pasted from Word documents.

Efficiently managing a large website implies the use of a CMS - so make sure the next one you pay good money for gets the basics right - and helps you publish pages that will be available to all of your potential visitors.

Links

This article was published this initially on the 'Rockley Report' - a site aimed at education and training professionals: http://www.rockley.com/TheRockleyReport/

Jim Byrne is the founder of GAWDS and a consultant and developer since 1996.

Contributed by Jim Byrne



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