Does it feel to you like we are all still starting the New Year?

A lot of people took a few days off after New Year's, finishing out that week. So there are a few folks I have not seen since last year. But now that we are all back, there still seems to be a lot of catching-up going on.

Before things get too far into a comfortable and familiar routine, let's take a moment and think about your Web sites and pages. Are there any edits you need to make to bring them into 2008?

The first place to look is probably at your footer.html page footers. You will need to update the copyright year, from 2007 to 2008. Of course the nice thing about the Templates is that you update this one file, one time, and that change is reflected in every Web page you build that references that included footer.html file (Of course, you don't have to tell your boss that. I like to tell mine "I think I got them all. If you find any old ones please let me know" and then let him spend an hour or so checking!). Your footer.html file lives within your sharedcode folder, remember. Why not make a point of editing that before you leave for the day, today?

Double-check your room assignments, office hours, schedules and calendars. And don't forget your Templates. If you have any boilerplate text saved as a Snippet or a Library item, this would be a good time to update that, too.

Did anyone join or leave your organization, within the last year? It can be frustrating when your Web users expect Dr. Taylor to be in charge of things, having read your site, only to discover that Dr. Taylor now lives and works in Colorado, somewhere, and someone new is doing Dr. Taylor's job. If someone is now occupying a formerly-vacant chair, you should make sure their contact information is available and up to date, too.

How about new names? Anyone get married and take a new sweetie's name? Sure, she's always been good ol' Carol to everyone around the office, but make sure her information is up to date, too, for people who didn't hear about the wedding and may be trying to look her up, online.

Finally, did anyone get promoted within your area? Did someone used to sit in this cubie and answer this telephone, and now has an office with a different phone number?

Again, make sure you make the changes. In the Olden Days, the 1990s, we used to see pages with "This Page Last Updated: 99/99/99" but that kind of thing has rightfully diminished in recent years. There is a user expectation that information found on the Web is current. If it wasn't, it would have been changed. And frequently, the only thing you need to change on a page in order to make it current is the "This Page Last Updated: 99/99/99" so what's the point of that?

Remember, Dreamweaver can update pages in your site that you have not even opened. That can save you some time, while you are ensuring that all of your information is as good as it can be.

From the Dreamweaver Find/Replace dialog box, you can change every instance of "472-0067" to "472-1968" by selecting Opened Documents, from the Find In selection, if you know what pages you will be changing and have them open, or Entire Current Local Site, if you do not know for sure where the phone number might appear. You will be searching in Text. Enter the old phone number in the upper box, the Find: box, and enter the new phone number in the lower box, the Replace: box. Click on Replace All and Dreamweaver will cruise through every file on your site, looking for the old telephone number, and changing it to the new one.

It can be kind of scary, the first couple of times, making changes to pages you haven't opened. But Dreamweaver reports on what pages the changes were made within so you can go back and un-do anything that shouldn't have been updated.

It's a new year. Our Web pages should reflect that. Good luck in the year ahead.