Fast Web Design For The Skint
Webmaster
About two years ago, I had a go at
commercial web site design. I put a
medium-sized ad in a London classified
ad paper. Nothing fancy: "Web designer
seeks work ..." etc. This was expensive,
about £500 for a month's run.
Got a few replies. Lesson number one:
advertise where clients of the calibre
you want will see it. The clients I
got thought £300 was a lot for
a web site. They didn't want to pay
web hosting. They wanted a lot of bang
for their buck. 'Mission creep' was
a term I grew to know and loathe.
This set me thinking: how could I give
these people all they could ever want,
but not spend a lot of time and money?
Lately, I realised how.
So how can you get a full featured
site up in a day? Easy (ish!).
1. Mambo Content Management System
http://www.mambo.com
I wish I'd found this software a couple
of years ago. It's freeware. The default
set-up allows people without web design
skills to update the site. It has a
WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get)
option. This adds HTMLArea code to text
input form fields. Each HTML code input
box becomes a mini HTML editor.
If you can use Microsoft Word, you
can add formatted HTML code to the site.
To get it running you need to know
how to install MySQL databases, or have
PHPMyAdmin as part of your web-hosting
package.
You can add articles, edit them, send
emails to members, and be contacted
by users.
The only criticisms I have of this
software are:
1. The admin interface is confusing.
It's all there, just finding and using
it is the problem!
2. You need to search around template
sites to find ones suited to your site
purpose. I wanted simple, clean, business
ones. Most of those available seem to
have a fat graphic which covers half
the screen. There are more restrained
ones out there.
These are minor gripes, compared to
the relief of finding what is essentially
a web site in a box. It can be installed
in an hour, once you get familiar with
it.
To add ecommerce to your site:
Oscommerce Shopping Cart http://www.oscommerce.com
Again, this is a full-featured, freeware
software. You can add lots of freeware
'plug-ins' to it, to get a professional
shopping cart.
Therein lies the danger. Some of these
plug-ins require altering or overwriting
the default cart files. When you try
to upgrade the cart version later, you
may 'break' it, by overwriting a plug-in,
thus creating errors.
The trick here is to only install plug-ins
that add files (rather than overwrite
them) or that require minor alterations
to existing files.
What I do is download all the versions
of the plug-in type I need e.g. a WYSIWYG
editor. I then choose the one which
has the least files, or which creates
a new directory for its files. If it
requires that important files be overwritten,
or is complex, I chuck it.
Mambo and Oscommerce. Don't try to
integrate them! Hyperlink from one to
the other. I've tried integrations of
other softwares, like PhpBB and PhpNuke.
Fine, when it works, but when you upgrade
one or the other, arrgh!
*Keep databases separate*. If one goes
skew-whiff, then at least the other
will still work. Same goes for adding
chat rooms and the like. If they're
all running off the one database, and
that database becomes corrupted ...
It may offend your sense of tidiness
for your visitors to have to sign up
twice at your site, but you'll thank
me for this sage advice later. Remember
KISS is the basic rule of computing
(Keep It Simple, Stupid!).
About the author:
T. O' Donnell (http://www.tigertom.com)
is an ecommerce consultant and curmudgeon
living in London, UK. His latest project
is an ebook on conservatories, available
at http://www.ttconservatories.co.uk.T.
O' Donnell freeware may be downloaded
at http://www.ttfreeware.co.uk.
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