HTML/CSS Overview and Some Website Maintenance Tools

Last Updated:  12/17/24  17:54

HTML and CSS Programming Languages

HTML and CSS languages are used to create web pages. Below is an overview and some examples.

Some of the KEDIT Macros Used To Maintain a Part of This Website

Part of my website, mainly the "WakeBOE_TOC" section, is written to support my work with the Wake County Board of Elections Staff, both as a Chief Judge and (mainly between elections) as a document reviewer and a provider of suggestions to improve procedures, etc.

There are three key areas associated with maintaining this part of my website:

Color key for the files:
Windows directory data
File created manually
Report created by a macro
  1. The WakeBOE directory is on the server that hosts this website.

    This directory contains the files that produce the web pages for the BOE part of my website. There is an exact image of that directory on my PC. I modify the files on my PC, test them, and then upload them to the website server.

  2. The "WakeBOE_TOC" page lists most of the files in the WakeBOE directory, plus their last-changed dates.

    (I manually create this file, so some typos, etc., can creep in and must be detected, e.g, by using the macros below.)

    "WakeBOE_TOC" does not include all the files in the WakeBOE directory. Those files excluded are things like pictures and diagrams linked to from some of the website's web pages, but the linked files are not themselves named in "WakeBOE_TOC". There are some files, e.g., comments on draft documents, placed in the directory just to make them easy for the BOE Staff to access; however they do not merit more general public access, at least not from the "WakeBOE_TOC" page. There are some files used for testing. Finally there are some support files for Windows and the website; they have no content needing a file entry in "WakeBOE_TOC".

    On the other hand, "WakeBOE_TOC" names some files that are not in the WakeBOE directory. There are very few of these, e.g., Google Photos albums. After the extraneous files (photo albums, test files, etc.) have been filtered out of the WakeBOE directory and "WakeBOE_TOC" file lists, the purpose of the DATESORT_MATCH macro (see below) is to check for mismatches between the two remaining lists.

  3. The "Recent Changes" page summarizes changes to the most recently changed files listed in "WakeBOE_TOC".

    (I manually create this file, so some typos, etc., can creep in and must be detected, e.g., by using the macros below.)

    "Recent Changes" is a file summarizing the changes made to the files at the top of the "Changed Files" list, which is a list of the most recently changed files named in "WakeBOE_TOC". (The "Changed Files" list is generated by the DATESORT macro; see below.) The "Recent Changes" report includes only the "WakeBOE_TOC" files changed after a specific separation date. That date is indicated by a separation line in the "Changed Files"  display. The files above the line are supposed to have a change description in the "Recent Changes" report. It's an error if that description is missing.

The KEDIT for Windows kex macros listed below help keep the above areas consistent.

Flow Overview:  The DATESORT macro is invoked to start the consistency checking among the three areas listed above. DATESORT first calls DATESORT_MATCH to verify that the WakeBOE directory and the "WakeBOE_TOC" file lists are in sync. DATESORT then prepares and checks a date-sorted "Changed Files" list of all the recently changed files, as recorded in "WakeBOE_TOC". Finally DATESORT calls DATESORT_DELTA to compare the list of recently "Changed Files" with the "Recently Changed" report that has descriptions summarizing changes made to each of those files. A "File Change Summary" report consolidates all this information and provides links to the individual reports as well as to other related web pages.

DATESORT creates a "Changed Files" report. The files named in "WakeBOE_TOC" each have a (manually recorded) last-changed date. The macro sorts the files in descending last-changed date order. The resulting "Changed Files" report lists the most recently changed files in the range from now back thru a year (2023) hardcoded in the macro; that year can be overridden by a macro parameter. A separation line is inserted in the list to divide it between the files last changed before or after a specific separation date. The default separation date (11/5/24) is hardcoded in the macro, but can be overridden by a macro parameter.

DATESORT_MATCH creates the "WakeBOE Match Check" report. This macro compares file information from the WakeBOE directory with corresponding file information from the (manually created) "WakeBOE_TOC" file and reports possible inconsistencies. Some filtering is done before the compare; this is to remove from the lists those files that are not of interest for this check.

DATESORT_DELTA creates a "File Change Summary" report. When DATESORT finishes examining "WakeBOE_TOC" and has created a "Changed Files" report, it calls DATESORT_DELTA and passes it that report. DATESORT_DELTA then compares the "Changed Files" file list to the file list from the manually-created "Recent Changes" file and notes possible inconsistencies via a "File Change Summary" report.

By default only file names are used in the DATASORT_MATCH comparison. An optional date parameter (in yy/mm/dd format) can be used to check for change date mismatches as well as file name mismatches. However for various reasons this usually does not work well (showing more mismatches than actually exist), particularly for older dates.

Here's an overview of the flow thru the three macros.

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