Key Site Architecture Considerations

Virtually every site or web application should consider the following:

  • Multilingual capable - even if the content is not immediately available in other languages. Retrofitting translation into a site is extremely costly.
  • Common components - any code that will execute in more than one place should be shared through includes or other mechanisms.
  • Hierarchical templates - this provides a more consistent interface and more efficient code. Templates must be general enough to support this.
  • Appropriate user assistance - help, at both the field and page level
  • List of browsers supported - you can’t support every browser. Identify those you will.
  • Graceful error handling - don’t just issue a print or echo and die
  • Security - close the windows and doors into your application. Ensure error handling prevents disclosure of code and database elements
  • Configuration - database access constants should be sourced from a single point, as should all other configuration directives. This ensures all elements of the application, including backend/offline scripts. Otherwise, the constants can’t be changed without risking the integrity of the system.
  • Server configuration - prevent access to areas the site visitor should not see at the server level.
  • Multi-mode deployment - only put the code required on the server. Set up the distribution/installation process accordingly.
  • Use mod_security.
  • Let the web server be the only reader of script files. This makes it more difficult for hackers to get to the web code.
  • Use robots.txt and meta tags to keep things out of search engines unless necessary.
  • Change off port 22 for SSH, or close it entirely from public access
  • Enforce these practices across the entire team, and audit for them during development

Speed - Fast Pages, Rapid Engineering, High Quality

These will be the defining characteristics of successful web companies. To be sustainable, the fourth element is quality.

To achieve these results, you need a well-educated, experienced team of engineers, applying innovative ideas, with an artist with an excellent technical understanding. If the site must draw traffic through search engines, SEO is also extremely important.

Clients must be able to describe the objectives of the site if they expect a company to build it, then they must trust the technical staff.

There are many powerful tools available that cost little to nothing. They are of no value if you don’t know how to use them. The cost of building a sophisticated site is not in the software itself, but in its application and integration.

Assisting the visually impaired with colors

Another application of robots.design™ is to allow people who have difficulty differentiating between colors to select those colors that are easiest for them to see. Their selections can then be saved and applied at run time - perhaps through javascript.

Thumbnail

To better show how the image relates to the skin, a thumbnail option was added to robots-design™. By default, no thumbnail will be saved, but if the user elects to include it, it will be presented on the blog skin.

ImageMagick Thumbnail Command

convert input_file.jpg --thumbnail 100 output_file.jpg

100 refers to the width.

Color Palette

robots.design™ now has a color palette, which allows you to choose the colors for the skin.