Archive for April, 2008
Developing a Beginner’s Guide to Starting a Website
Posted by fr3dr1k | Filed under Web Development
I spoke to a friend earlier today and we got talking about websites and after I showed her this blog she started asking me what she would need to start a website for her dad and that got me thinking. Could I offer a free web development checklist to potential customers as a value-add? So in essence what I can do is create a basic check list and implement that check list as a PHP form or something and allow potential customers to use it.
So what are the basic questions you need to ask yourself before you start developing a website? Would it be possible to develop a web development checklist of to-do things for yourself and tick them off as you go along?
My opinion is that the web development process can be divided into three distinct stages or phases
- Identify the context within which you are developing the website and in so-doing identify a concept for your website. The context within which you develop the website will determine what the nature of your website will be and the nature of your website will determine its complexity. So basically put you need to ask yourself “In what context am I developing this website?” What is the purpose of the website? To identify the context and purpose of the website you might want to write a narrative piece that encapsulates the purpose you have in mind. Write as much as you can, because you will end up using this narrative to derive the website concept, i.e. conceptualise the way it will look. After you have identified the context within which you want to develop the website and you have identified its purpose through the writing of a narrative piece you can start thinking about the website conceptually. Defining the style of the content on your website is quite important because it will reflect the way you want a target audience to interpret the information on your website and will give it it’s feel. If for example you want your website to facilitate discussions between many people then you may want to implement a forum-style website, but on the other hand if you want to create a website where you write a lot of narrative content on a regular basis then a blog might be best suited. A website that advertises a set of products may require a different way of presenting information.
- The second phase of the web development process will be to take the conceptual idea and convert that into a design. The design process might use a graphics package to create the look and feel, and create any images that go with that look and feel. In this process you will also define the colour scheme for example.
- The third phase in the website development process involves the actual programming and development needed to achieve the design defined in point no 2. This phase will involve all the technical aspects and there are a few basic technical aspects you need to consider when developing your website:
- A web hosting package from a web hosting service provider. The hosting package must include enough storage space for the content you want to put onto your website. Web hosts will typically be divided into two groups, Windows-based hosting and Linux/Unix-based hosting. Windows-based hosting is generally more expensive because the web pages are hosted on proprietary server software, i.e. Windows Server 2003, whereas Linux/Unix-based hosting is cheaper because the server software is open source, i.e. ‘free’. Both hosting types offer a different set of technologies that will achieve the same result. The decision to use either Windows-based hosting or Linux/Unix based hosting will be determined by your financial constraints.
- A program or set of programs that allow you to edit the web pages mentioned in 1 above.
- A program or a set of programs that allow you to connect to the server software mentioned above. You will be connecting to that software with an active Internet Connection.
Publicly searching Facebook
Posted by fr3dr1k | Filed under Web Search
As you all know by know Facebook is one of the most popular social networking sites in the world. Just do a search on the number of pages that link to Facebook by typing link:www.facebook.com in Google. My results show that around 194,000 pages link to Facebook. Its difficult to say whether the amount of pages that link to Facebook is a way to gauge the amount of attention it gets, but its interesting nonetheless. Facebook has a pagerank of 9/10 in my Google toolbar, which indicates how importantly Google thinks of Facebook. Another interesting fact is that you can search for people on Facebook by using Google. So for instance if you use my name and type Fredrik Erasmus site:www.facebook.com in Google then you will see 4 results. Now I wonder if those 4 results mean that those 4 people that have me as a friend have not made their profiles private. If for instance you type ASP.NET site:www.facebook.com then I get around 498 results and the majority seem to point to job opportunities. If I alter my search to ASP.NET South Africa site:www.facebook.com then I get 15 results, the majority of which are listed in the Marketplace application of Facebook, which generally means that a job/vacancy is being advertised.
AJAX and Javascript and the like…
Posted by fr3dr1k | Filed under AJAX, Web Technologies
JavaScript has been found out! Its not as simplistic and uncomplicated as some, including me, believed. Its a full featured object-oriented scripting language that runs in your browser, and it spurned the development of Web 2.0 with the emergence of AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML). The emergence of AJAX resulted in the development of better user interfaces for the web, better in the sense that they are more responsive. No longer are there clicks (post backs) or flickers when you click on a link or a button but instead you now have smoother responses. Off course if you turn JavaScript off in your browser, then all the functionality will disappear, but then again I guess not too many people do that.
Context
Posted by fr3dr1k | Filed under Fremus.co.za
The primary context for this website is to provide individuals or organisations web-based solutions. From this context it is possible to conceptualise an exact offering, not just from a solution point-of-view but also from a value-driven point of view. Solutions have to solve the problem they are there to solve but solutions also need to add value.
Concept
Posted by fr3dr1k | Filed under Fremus.co.za
How do you formulate a concept? Where do you start searching for ideas and more importantly where do you get your direction from? Direction is reasonably important when defining a concept or searching for a concept. A concept needs a context within which it can be defined. Companies who specialise in the development of training material, for instance, have to understand or find a context for the training material that they create and from the context they develop a concept and from the concept they develop the training material. The concept will work within the boundaries of that context. So basically any concept needs a context…
What can help you find a context for developing a concept? Developing one or more websites is an example of a context, and the method you use to go about constructing a website could be considered the concept within that context. Creating or developing websites means that you adhere to some strict rules and guidelines, e.g. developing standards-based websites is an example of the rules that you must adhere too, and those guidelines shape your concept. Another guideline that needs to be considered when developing a concept is time and money, something that can be forgotten sometimes.
Why is it important to define the way you get to a concept? I guess you have to learn somehow.
Web development as a context relies on a few important things, but most of all it relies on a clear understanding of what it is you are developing and also how that understanding will be presented (Web design). I sometimes struggle to differentiate between web development and web design. Do people differentiate between the two because design-minded people and system-minded people think? Are those design-minded individuals simply Photoshop jockeys who will ignore web standards as long as their design looks right? Do system-minded people have a superiority complex? I wonder.
Fremus?
Posted by fr3dr1k | Filed under Fremus.co.za
Weird name for a blog huh, well weird at least to me, and maybe to other people as well. It’s basically a combination of the first three letters of my first name, Fredrik and the last three letters of my surname, Erasmus, which when combined gives you Fremus. The idea came as a suggestion from a friend, and to be totally honest, I did not like it too much at first, but I even mentioned it to my mom and she liked it too. Fremus was thus born. Fremus also refers to a lions roar or lions that roar…
I want to make an acknowledgment quickly – I am a lazy Microsoft Windows User, who does not like to struggle much with PC problems, and who generally steers clear of anything that looks too hectically challenging. I like things to be one-click solutions ALL THE TIME. Guess thats a bit dreamy, but thats how I would like things to be. Unfortunately they are not, which is good, because it forces me to actually do some work to make something work. Let me give you an example, a pretty ftp client vs a command line utility such as PSFTP. I have generally, 99% of the time, been using FTP clients such as Core FTP Lite for uploading web content, until today that is. Today I used a program called PuTTy, which allows you to connect to a web server through a shell, which then allows you to use a command line interface to manage files. I found this particularly useful, because I uploaded some content earlier using a FTP client and I placed some files in a wrong folder and wanted to change it and ended up creating a folder with a different name (but I actually wanted to use the original folder name). I couldn’t delete the folder because there was some hidden content in it which then prompted me to do some searching on shells, which lead me to PuTTY. Using PuTTY I could access and delete those hidden files. The point is that FTP clients can sometimes be buggy, and crash for some reason, whereas using a shell there is just no GUI, which means less bugs. Thats my two cents anyway..
