Specifications

We can then develop a search engine algorithm that ranks matches according to this human-
specified relevance for stories, rather than a complex algorithm that has to interpret English
prose and make decisions based on its limited understanding and governed by fixed rules.
This isn’t to say that you have to store metadata in the database. There’s nothing to stop you
from using the <META> tag in HTML, or even using XML to build your documents. However
it’s worth taking advantage of the database that is already looking after your documents when-
ever you can.
Formatting the Output
Our news site example follows a simple but structured format when displaying a page. Each
page contains a number of stories that are all formatted the same way. First of all, the headline
is displayed in a large type, followed by the photograph underneath on the left and then the
story text on the right. The whole page is contained in a standard page template to preserve the
site branding and consistency throughout.
Figure 26.2 shows the logical page structure that we will be using.
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FIGURE 26.2
Logical page structure.
This kind of layout is extremely popular—how many sites do you visit regularly that have a
menu bar at the left hand side or quick links at the top, with that outside navigation remaining
in place no matter which page you are viewing?
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