[thelist] What markup allowed in db?

[Nate Koechley]

Hi again, here's some more info.

I'm creating a large Help website for a client. Will have extensive
content that gets variously re-purposed depending on the query and/or
the context.

It is a goal to adhere to Web Standards and use semantic markup to
it's greatest ability. All presentation will later be applied with CSS
[layered on top of the solid semantic foundation].

I'd like to only include markup that: 

   [] isn't implied by the content type. 
      - For example, it's easy to populate a TABLE with data from the
CMS -- I don't need the content in the db to already have it's TABLE
html.

   [] is semantically part of the content.
	- For example, if I have a multi-paragraph body of text, and
some words in the content are Emphasized by the content author, then
it makes sense to embed that EM tag in the content itself, instead of
programmatically trying to add it later.

On the other hand, even some semantic markup probably shouldn't be
there, because the database metadata is more sound. For example, while
each piece of content may have a title/Header (Hn tag), it doesn't
make sense to put Hn tags around the title field in the db because the
hierarchy of headers is unknown to the piece of content, and probably
SHOULD be programmatically applied afterwards.

I hope that helps clarify my question. To sum it up again, I'm looking
for advice on how to support Semantic Markup (aka Web Standards),
while making my content the most portable and longest-lasting.

TIA,
Nate




Nate Koechley wrote:

> I'm looking for some best-practice suggestions for which HTML tags
to 
> allow with the content stored in a database?

Maybe it would help if you explained why you feel there are *any*
restrictions necessary... :-)

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Hassan Schroeder ----------------------------- hassan at webtuitive.com
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