web notes - a blog

As a career path, the web has one great advantage over all others - it’s publicly accessible. You can demonstrate your skills and allow everyone to view them, at any time.

If you’re going to do this, be ready to push your skills to the limit. Refine the code, over and over. Use validators like those at http://w3c.org, and tools like http://websiteoptimization.com to check your work. Test with different browsers.

If you’re using commercial, open source products, go to those sites and view some sites built with them. See what other people are doing. View their code to learn more. Join the forum, to both get help and contribute.

Be honest, if you’re an engineer, state that, and if you’re a designer say so. Most people aren’t experts in every skill required to deliver a great site.

Invest in a domain name and use it. Keep it professional. You can always create a subdomain or buy another domain to put fun stuff up.

If you are a recruiter or HR person and you receive a resume for a web position that doesn’t include sample URLs, ask for them and have your web team review them. You will have a chance to evaluate a candidate’s work before you ever speak to them. Check the copyright dates to ensure you’re looking at recent work.

… but to build a robust site in a timely manner which is cost-effective to maintain requires a fairly high level of skill, and careful management.

• The best sites are built by teams.
• The best sites usually have powerful applications behind them.
• The best sites adhere to standards and coding practices.
• The best sites have complex architectures that allow them to be managed efficiently.
• The best sites meet the objectives of the customer and the results can be measured.
• The best sites are delivered on time and under budget, successful for all parties.
• The best sites mature and change, gracefully.
• The best sites are monitored for reliability and security.

Alot! Most of it is time, and time is money. It can be very difficult to account for the costs, since they are not tangible objects.

First, you need a name - so you’ll have to spend the time to choose one and then register it.

Then, you need a server, for the site and for email (it may be the same server), a server is the computer that delivers the site. You can put one in your office, choose a hosting company, or let a company that builds your site handle the hosting. Each has its own costs and benefits. They are offered in decreasing levels of skill requirement, but increasing cost. This is a recurring cost, it will affect the reliability of the site and the cost of maintenance. It also affects the level of control you have over your site and system. You also need an Internet connection - and a high-speed connection to support a busy server may be very expensive.

The site has three main components, design, content, and logic. They can be provided by different organizations. If one company has many sites with designs you like - get an estimate from them for a design. Whether you purchase just a visual image or the HTML/CSS code must be specified. Content is often best managed by an application - either a blog or content management system (CMS). That can be done in house, with some training, or outsourced. The logic may be the blog or CMS. Don’t build one - buy it, or use an open source solution. Visit some sites and run through the demos, see if the person who will manage the content likes the applications as well. Integrating the application and the design should be done by a company with experience with that product. This applies to ecommerce solutions as well.

Be prepared to clearly state what you are trying to do. Try to stay focussed on that objective throughout the project, changes can be very expensive, for all parties. If you don’t have a clear objective, it may be better to wait until you do.

Search Engine Optimization

If you are planning to rely on search engines to deliver the bulk of your site visitors, you should first learn about how search engines help people find web resources. You may want to reevaluate your strategy.

As far as I know, there is no absolute, sure fire way to gain high ranking in search engines without purchasing a sponsored link. My recommendation is to focus on building a good site that meets your business objectives.

Resources:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/

If you are an optimist, with a sense of humor, you can purchase a Site Flag …

http://site-flags.wirehopper.com/

:)

A web site is a technical service.

It isn’t a product.

It requires some technical skill.

It can be simple or complex, big or small, busy or idle, pretty or bland, functional or frivolous.

It can be a technical or artistic success and a business failure, or a business success but a technical/artistic disaster.

So - before you start working on a site, ask yourself these questions:

• What am I trying to do with this site?
• Who am I trying reach?
• What do I want to tell these people or allow them to do?
• How can I measure the success of my site?
• How much money do I have?
• How am I going to maintain the site?
• How much do I want to spend maintaining the site?
• How long will this site last?
• How much do I want to spend on hosting?
• Can I host it in my office?
• Do I want to hire a person to run my site or outsource it?
• Will I use email?
• Who will help me when I have problems?
• Are there security issues I should be aware of?
• Do I need to process credit cards?
• Are there laws that must be observed?
• Can I send out newsletters?

There are alot of questions. Get answers from several people. Decide which ones you like best. Listen, and ask more questions.

Good luck.