This page gives you a view of what is going on “behind the scenes” of this website. This website is powered by WordPress and it uses the Accelerate theme. I chose to use a pre-designed template so that I could focus on building the content of the site. I have been making some edits to it to ensure that it validates and would like to note that the look of the site will continue to change as web standards evolve in the future.
Web Standards
In the footer of every page, you will notice that I have a line of text that says “Complies with World Wide Web Consortium HTML and CSS validation standards.” If you don’t code web pages for a living, you probably don’t know what this means. The World Wide Web Consortium or W3C for short is an organization that sets standards for the web. I strive to make sure that my code meets this standards because when it does it means that my web pages are more likely to be accessible and to work on a variety of screen sizes and devices.
You can learn more about them on the About page of their website.
Besides building a web page that complies with W3C standards, I also believe that it is important to build a web page that is accessible to all users. For me this is more than just providing “alt” tags for all images, it’s about ensuring that anyone who views my website is able to get the same information without barriers to doing so. These are called Section 508 Standards. All government websites are required to be Section 508 compliant. My site is obviously not a government site, but I still feel that it is important that any user would be able to access my site regardless of their disability.
Code
I have built my website using HTML, CSS, and PHP. Each page is made up of several include files that use PHP to insert them into the HTML that is displayed when you view one of my pages. The includes are all made up of HTML. Sometimes I use conditional “if” statements that change the HTML depending on which page you are viewing. I kept the HTML and CSS fairly simple to make sure that they validate. I have been coding since 2000 when I worked as a lab assistant as an undergrad. I do a lot of coding by hand when I build web pages. I typically use either Dreamweaver of BBEdit to edit the pages and I always keep the code and design views open side by side.
Art Portfolio & Photographs
To edit images, I use Photoshop. I typically use it to crop and enhance the images. I started using Photoshop in 1995 when I was in high school. It is also a tool that I use to design layouts for web pages. To create and edit vector graphics, I use Adobe Illustrator. I haven’t been using Illustrator as long as Photoshop, but I find that it is one of the best vector creating and editing types of software that are available. I have an art and photography portfolio where you can go to see other examples of my design work. It is at: http://betzabeth.com
Personal
This is a picture of my family at the Nebraska State Capital in 2015. My son is 2.
My son, Carl, looking over my shoulder at my brother’s wedding. He’s 3 in this one.
