As a web designer your job isn't over once you've got the site together. Updates, changes, corrections, new content, all these things mean spending more time on the site. Finding a single typo and correcting it isn't all that big a deal, but what if that typo is in the navigation scheme and shows up on every single page?

If you think ahead, you can make your life a lot easier.

I use TextPad, rather than WordPad (which comes with Windows). TextPad is shareware, and available for download from ZD Net. It's very similar to WordPad, but has some excellent features that make editing webpages easier. For one thing, it can have more than one file open at the same time, and can do global search and replace in multiple files simultaneously.

But even if you're using WordPad (or BBEdit on the Mac), there are some tricks that come in handy.

One is to keep a file of bits and pieces of html code that you're going to use often. If you have a graphic navigational scheme with an image map, you can write the code for it once, then cut and paste it into each new page as you create them. This also works well with text based navigation.

Another way to make your life easier to pick a naming convention for your files and then stick with it. If you start off calling your pictures Image1, image03, mypic, or pic01, pretty soon you'll forget what each one is of. Choose a name for your graphics that is short but descriptive. If you're trying out different versions of the same graphic, or different graphics for the same purpose (like a selection of buttons), give them a number as well so you don't loose track.

This is also important for html files. Don't name some of your files with mixed-case (Home.html) and some with only lower (home.html). The case doesn't matter, but since you have to match it EXACTLY in file references, sticking to one pattern makes mistakes a lot less likely.

Keeping your files organized is important. Look on the class disc and you'll see that I have all the html files in a folder named 'Pages' and all the graphics in another named 'Images'. This means that when I need to find a particular file I know where to look for it. You can create directories and folders on your server just as easily as on your local hard drive.

If you know that you're going to have a number of pages that are very similar, for example in an art gallery type site you'll have numerous pages that display a single graphic in a certain way, you can create a template for that type of page. Once you've written the code, save it with a descriptive name such as 'art-template.html'. Then every time you need to add a new piece to the gallery, you can just open up that template, put in the correct image reference, then save it with a new name, like 'watercolor001.html'.