If you’re starting from scratch or are undertaking an Unfailed Redesign, your Web shop needs all the following to be considered au courant:
- A homepage with valid HTML and a site with mostly-valid HTML (no goddamned tables). Really, you have to use HTML 4.01 Strict now
- Custom 404 pages
- An hCard, probably on the About or Contact pages, which you also need
- A customized search-results page (I haven’t bothered)
- A blog with RSS that most or everybody in the shop writes for
- An update or What’s New page with RSS
- Original research or code contributions
- A Flickr account that is regularly updated
- A trail of comments on other people’s sites and on Flickr, always linking back to the same page (I use
joeclark.org/weblogsnine times out of ten) - Your own tag; it has to be easy to type and remember and must be unique
- UserIDs on AccessifyForum, A List Apart, a few other sites
And ultimately:
- One or more articles at A List Apart
- Your own podcast (with transcripts)
- Your own book
- A trail of speaking engagements at all the right conferences
- Your own conference