websitedesign

get yourself a website

How is the internet changing?

The overall trend is of reducing cost. The key areas are the widespread availability of cheap broadband access and the proliferation of Service Providers offering low cost hosting for websites which use scripting and databases. At the same time there has been an exponential growth of high quality open source software with active communities of developers and self-help user groups

GIMP

It's hard to make a truly objective comparison between something you have persuaded yourself is worth £643.90 (£1,212.60 for full version) and something you can get for nothing. Well GIMP will do pretty much anything you might need in terms of image manipulation but Photoshop will do a few more things. See:
Google search for comparisons

Photoshop

GIMP

McAfee worse than any virus

letter to McAfee after they unilaterally renewed

Hi

I spoke to someone over the phone about your 'automatic' renewal system. I explained that I thought your practice was sailing very close to the wind, if not actually illegal. I realise that everyone (including me) has agreed to your end user license however the options for buying the software without the automatic renewal were not clear.

high profile drupal user

There's obviously quite a bit of extra work been done to individualise the site but this is basically the same open source content management system (drupal), database engine (MySQL or progresql), scripting language (php), web server (apache) and operating system (linux) as used by the website you are now reading!

see http://www.whitehouse.gov/

flash or not

Sometimes it's a good idea to put some movement on your web site and flash animations are the way to go. However some websites are painfully slow to load and you have to ask yourself if they do more for the web designer's sense of achievement than the business objectives of the client!

here are a couple of examples quickly put together:

proper programming in flash

here's an example of the kinds of things you can do with Action Script 3. I have used FlashDevelop and PaperVision3D which are both open source. (Here's another example too)

plan your website

your email

If you already have a site hosted by someone you like you will have to give me your logins and passwords for ftp and for control panel. However DO NOT part with this imformation until you have a signed non-disclosure agreement, or at the very least met me face to face

If you don't have a site already think of some possible website names.


Target visitors (think about specific present customers):
-age range
.
-business, single, couple, family..
.
-income or price range (i.e. cost conscious, prepared to spend etc)
.
-expectations (i.e. service, comfort, techno, tradition, style, formal, sense of humour..)
.

Possible content of interest to people browsing site for posting on forums. (i.e. recipes, howtofix computer problems, nice walks from Howarth, things to do in Keighley, free ring tones..)

Differentiating search words (i.e. geographical, sectorial, brand, product, function..) try to put yourself in the position of one of your target visitors.

Draw as full a tree diagram as you can. Highlight the places that the visitor should be able to get to directly from the menu on every page

You need to enter an email

Catalogues, Web Stores and Databases on electronic media

I.

Summary

There are many reasons why you may want to put information on CD: to reduce environmental damage, to save costs, to offer large volumes of data or to use the speed and power of electronic searches.

These same benefits also apply to putting your catalogue on the internet, and many of the points made in this paper apply equally well to that alternative. However there are many instances where the large data capacity and portability of a CD or DVD make it the logical choice.

webERP table prefixing script

here is a listing of the php script to copy a directory structure and prefix all the tables (you need to register to see it):

I have used webERP on my own site www.eldwick.org.uk, more as an example of what can be done with online databases than for real. However I decided that I might as well put my money where my mouth is and start using it for my own accounts. Also I wanted to suggest it for routine accounts for an organisation I do some work for www.wwoof.org but both locations are on shared hosts and both have limited MySQL db allocations.

tips for making a useful website

In addition to providing good content it is essential also to think through, and explicitly define:

  • profiles of people that might be trying to find the website through a search engine, what they might be looking for and what search words they are likely to enter.
  • The objectives of the website with respect to the outside world. This will guide the styling and graphic design work as well as the effort in optimizing search engine rating.
Syndicate content