Aging Safely has updated the look and content of it site for the new year. Included in this is a new skin that is xhtml transitional and css compliant.

Aging Safely's web site uses DotNetNuke as its underlying platform. This is a platform with many great features, but xhtml and CSS compliance is not what DNN is known for.

We were able to achieve this compliance for the majority of our pages by several means:

• Training videos from Lee Skyes and DNN Creative Magazine. Especially the skin technology covered in Issue 25. This video included suggestions on how to:
  1. Make xhtml complient skins that use only CSS and no tables
  2. Content that appears in the HTML file ahead of the menu and other header information that appears at the top of the page. Since search engines typically give more importance to content near the top of the file this help with Search Engine Optimization.
  3. Module titles that are Heading Level 1 elements.
• DNN PageBlaster by John Mitchell of Snapsis. This technology was responsibel for:
  1. Some of the base compliance issues with DotNetNuke and vendor suplied modules.
  2. It is also responsible for the increased speed of Aging Safely’s site over many other DNN-based sites. 
  3. The process of testing for compliance also caught several minor html bugs in the content that had gone undetected.
• Lots of hard work and thought by our Aging Safely's WebMaster to adapt the content and tools to make this happen. However, without the first two this effort would have not have been possible.

Regards,

Dave Snow - Aging Safely WebMaster