Medium: At Large?

The good old dictionary (Webster’s, to be precise), refers to a medium as “a means of effecting or conveying something,” or “a channel or system of communication, information, or entertainment,” and notes that the plural of medium, when used in such a fashion, is media. This should give you an idea of what I mean when I use this word.

A website is a medium through which a message might be conveyed. And all websites convey a message of some sort, whether their keepers know it or not. I believe the web would benefit from more people who understood this. I try to make that adamantly clear on this site. I believe it’s good to consider the message you’d most like to convey with your site, in order to do it coherently - but that’s for another section.

Here, I would like to focus on the sites - the medium itself. I’ll be posting links to my favorite programs and tutorials for giving birth to little, static websites. I’ll also be sharing my thoughts on how such websites “work” (or don’t) nowadays, why, and how one might best make use of them to, again, convey a message.

As an amateur, I don’t expect you to take me ultra-seriously, but you might find something I write compelling or fascinating. You won’t find too many of the coding snippets, though - those belong elsewhere. Medium is a rather subtle concept - it includes the site’s code, yes, but when I use the term, I refer to the site’s overall ambiance and user experience. There are some coding snippets, though - particularly those intrinsic to how my sites work, that I wanted to share.

• Turning Templates into Templates explains how I tend to chop up the premade linkware templates that I often heavily modify for use. More importantly, it talks a bit about fun ways to annotate your code, which is just neat.
• File Structure: Badgers is a short look at how and (more importantly) why I choose to organize my site's files, both HTML and others, into folders. I try to explain the benefits of doing this, which I don't see a lot.
• Metaphors on the Web are amazing and really ought be used more often. But what is a metaphor in the context of a website? Why were they popular in the past? Some thoughts on bringing them back.
• Website Calling Card sounds like an odd concept, but can be very useful. You know how pasting a link on social media for some sites generates a splashy preview? Would you like that to happen with yours? Set it up here…
• Sitewide Static Areas was one of the trickier things I figured out. Often, we have areas of our sites that remain the same from page to page - but how do you update the area on all pages at once? A solution: separate that section into a JavaScript file? Seems to work.
• My Favorite Programs are a sad topic, really, considering I'm a MacOS user. Perhaps you are too, though? Or at least, perhaps you won't bully me for barely knowing what a Linux is, dearie? Or maybe, just maybe - you'll find Ulysses XL useful, too?
• Small Web Resources lists some useful sites to gather materials for your own journey into webcrafting, as well as links to places where you can connect with other creators of small sites (and large ones, too) who seek something behind social media.
• Site Mascots is about the dog (Lulu) in the sidebar. Would you like to know more about her, and website mascots in general? I've written this short guide, featuring trivia about Lulu and tips for choosing your own mascot.