Once you have completed the formation of the site’s content should not rush to reupload it to the public, you should first check how your site looks like from a user perspective, that is to test the site. However, such checks should be carried out not only during the initial creation of the site, but after making all (or at least significant) changes in the content of the site. And for such testing is necessary to have adequate funds.
Before you lay out the site on a public server, it is advisable to test it on a local server. It’s enough to expand on his computer a bunch of Apache + PHP + MySQL. Generally speaking, this band is so standard that it had accepted cuts, which added another name for the operating system: for Windows - it WAMP, for Linux - LAMP (or GLAMP, if they want to clarify - "GNU / Linux", and not just "Linux").
A set of LAMP is included in most distributions of Linux, so if you work with this operating system, you can easily install it on your computer. For Windows, there are pre-prepared packets containing all the components for deploying a local server and the installation program. One such package called XAMPP, please visit ApacheFriends.org. By the way, there are not only build on Windows, but also under Linux, Mac OS X and Solaris. The program is freely distributed under the license GNU General Public License and is free, easy to use web-server capable of serving dynamic pages. To date, XAMPP is one of the best builds a web server using this build, you can quickly deploy to your computer quick and full web server.
Descriptions of procedures to install, configure and work with the XAMPP package you will find the following two articles:
"Setting up a server on XAMPP Windows",
"Installing and configuring a virtual server (WAMP - Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP) as an example XAMPP".
If you are deploying a full-fledged local server for some reason causes you trouble, you can use this excellent tool, as Denver. Denver (the name comes from abbr. D.n.w.r - gentlemanly set of Web-Developer) is a set of programs and modeling environment designed to create and debug sites (web-based applications, other dynamic content web pages) on your PC (without having to connect to the Internet.) The package runs under Windows and includes:
Immediately after the installation is available fully functional Web server Apache, running on the local computer that can handle an unlimited number of sites that are very effective for developing and debugging PHP scripts without uploading files to a remote server. The third version of the package supports a removable flash drive, which is very convenient. I, for example, an 8-gigabyte flash drive and put Denver and local versions of the two sites, so that I can run the package on any computer I have with local administrator rights.
Denver can download the developer’s site. At the same site you will find a brief description and installation guide. Rather detailed description of the installation and working with Denver and you’ll find the following link.
In addition XAMPP and Denver, there are other similar products. Description of two of these kits to start a local server can be found at the following locations (both work only under Windows):
- "AppServ". If you are working with only one site, then AppServ is quite suitable for work, not only to test the site, but also to publish it online.
- "VertrigoServ". The big plus of this kit, especially for beginners, is to control the basic parameters of a visual interface. The disadvantage is lack of support for Russian language. In general, VertrigoServ - a good choice for the local server.
Another test to be undertaken to vykadyvaniya site for all to see, is to check the availability of broken links. This check you can also arrange with the local server and tools available on the "Validate links on the site."
Once you have launched the site on a local server, you can see how to display pages in your browser. But this raises another problem, which consists in the fact that you have installed one or two browsers, and users can "enter" the site from different browsers (there are more than 60). At the same time with different browsers may display the same page in different ways. It is therefore advisable to check how the site would look, if not all, at least in the most popular browsers. To learn how you can do and what means of doing so, tells the page "Check the site in different browsers" (but these checks do not have a local server).
I believe that it is seldom a novice webmaster knows all of the requirements specification for HTML and style sheets CSS. Therefore, after the site layout it is desirable to test the extent to which you have completed these requirements. The word "preferably" is used here instead of the word "must" for the reason that
1) browsers do not always follow the standard requirements and
2) are able to display pages that do not meet the standards (the question of what in this case are made of distortion, while leaving behind the scenes).
But even if the browser successfully displays a page that does not meet standards, problems can occur when viewing a page the search engine robot. As reported in some sources, robots, search engines are much more demanding on the question of compliance standards and the pages are not indexed the page when it is executed with deviations from the requirements.
Check the page for standards compliance, you can use these valuable services:
I must say that satisfy all the requirements (or more precisely - to eliminate all deficiencies noted by the validator) is very complicated and there are few sites in the network, satisfying all requirements. Therefore, some authors have expressed doubts that should by all means to achieve 100 percent compliance Web (see, for example, "Do I need HTML-validation.")