₦airaland Forum

Wait a minute. How did scammers manage to create their own page in the bank's webspace. Did the bank's website ftp details leak or what? Totally unbelievable and terrifying!!!

Why do Nigerians always behave like they did not go to school? I don't see the point in all the very stupid questions peeps have been asking about this project. Instead of rambling, why not look at the website discussed and read what is said there, instead of asking unnecessary questions.

This project I believe is going to be an engineering feat and I believe the developers have done their homework well. Also recent advances in technology make this project a piece of cake. Look at the burj al arab, built in dubai in the middle of the ocean. Why has it not fallen for over 15 years despite the strong waves existent in the arabian gulf,

Anyways I think this project only goes to prove that lagos has finally hit a jackpot in terms of leadership and we shouldn't take the present administrator for granted. He is a rare gem. Go to Oyo State and see how the people are complaining bitterly about their Akala.

Funke Akindele would be special guest at Dreams Come True with jazzy B at Nustreams Conference Center Ibadan on Sunday April 19 2009, starting at 3pm. The program is a live tv recording that airs on Mnet and NTA network. last guest was cobhams.

You can view their site at http://www.dreamscometruewithjazzyb.com

Wow, music in Nigeria and africa is about to get another facelift! Has anyone noticed the trend that this guy releases an album every 4/5 years? Each time he releases an album, the songs manage to stay in the airwaves and people never seem to get tired of them till the next one comes out.

Lagbaja is fast becoming a phenomenon and a legend. I guess we can only wait to see what he's got for us this time around

@noah69, i am totally in sync with your thoughts. But i believe there is a potential issue we are all not addressing here.
Yes its been proven and accepted here that it is not right to supply demos to clients at proposal stage. It is clearly undignifying to the profession.
But my point now is that if you are faced with a big client and you are confident that you have good chances of getting the job, but this client is requesting a demo at proposal stage, what do you do? Do you simply walk away and say you don't do demos or try to convince them that a simple sketch will do or etc, What do you guys think??

@lawyer, i tried to register a name that included the word media and was told i needed some sort of professional certificate to do that. Anyways, can you handle the registration and what is your role going to be in the process.

@ smartsoft, the issue you brought up is quite interesting. I must confess, I have experienced this ripoff about twice. On the first occasion, I supplied the demo through a link on my website. I got to find out recently that whoever finally developed the site had copied some of my graphics and ideas and implemented it. They even went as far as copying some graphics on my other sites since they had access to my site and portfolio.

The second occurrence was with this big IT firm selling support services to gsm networks. We went in for a presentation, got a brief, and was told to supply our proposal with a demo. We thought we had a fair chance so we decided to supply the proposal and the demo. After a few weeks of non response and unreturned emails, we checked up on their url (they had previously registered) only to find out our graphics and ideas had been copied, including an an advanced form of their logo we did for them.

I guess we all learn every day. I normally don't supply demos, but when you are faced with one of the big shots requesting a demo, what do you do?

Someone once gave me an analogy that if you gave your car to a mechanic, would you tell him to fix your car first and see if you like his work before you decide to use him? I think as web designers, we should be able to give our profession some dignity and not just take anything that is thrown at our faces. - something i'm still trying to come to terms with.

does anyone know what the url to the cac online registration tool is? cheers

Interesting. Personal attack, I quite don't know much about that. Grammatical issues, you probably want to re-analyse the semantics of the statement. I guess i'm beginnng to understand what 'brilliant' sense of humor you've got.

Anyways of recent, Lagos has been making some big waves you know. I think the new governor has got some content. I wouldn't want you to have the mindset that everything that comes out of Nigeria is mediocre. I strongly believe that this rail project would revolutionize the Nigerian transport sector. Some states are already copying the Lagos BRT buses model.

O ga o!! everyone seems to be out to make a few bucks!!

Anyways my brother, its possible to get your site indexed in google in 24hrs! but 48 is a bit more realistic if you follow the steps below:

1. Make sure that what you are searching for such as the name of the company is in your title tag and in the body of your site.
2. Google spiders need a channel to get to your site through so it would be a good idea to put links on sites that get frequent google visits such as blogs and news sites. Just a few sensible comments might do.
3. Tag your site on social bookmarking sites such as delicious and blink.
4. As other people have pointed out, submit a sitemap to google using google webmaster tools and ping it. The google webmaster tools interface is pretty self explanatory.
5. Repeat steps 2 and 3 till you get results.
6. You dont need to submit your site to google.

Hope this helps,

Lets get this straight.
Someone is trying to build something, and he creates an impression / idea of what it's going to look like when its completed. Your point is the impression looks to good to be fake!!!

If you truly think you're slow, then - no offence - I guess its you who has the problem. A thousand people can't be wrong!! and I think you are already infecting the people around with 'slow' syndrome.

Anyways back to the whole point of the thread,

@hanen, i'm with you 100%. I mean anyone who can't see that the image used is a 3d comp should be taken back to the 20th century.

Also, I read someone saying he was sure the Americans would put the real picture of the rails if it were them. How on earth can you put a real picture of something that doesn't exist??. Another said the site was shown to an American and blah blah blah. What on earth is it with us and Americans? Can we not think straight without having some stereotypical ideas about how things work abroad. That is not to say that the Americans don't do what they do extremely well.

And for those crying out for real imagery, I thought you would be smart enough to notice that the greens(the plants, trees etc.) are all live imagery if you compare the contrast between them and the building. I think it's very professionally and tastefully done.

By the way anyone who is keen on seeing a comparison between 3d comps and real imagery can visit http://www.thehavenhomes.com and http://www.thehavenhomes.com/windsor.htm - a residential development in magodo area of Lagos.
the home page has got the real imagery and the windsor page has got the 3d visualizations.

you know what u are right and i'm wrong!

[quote author=yawa-ti-de link=topic=155243.msg2613763#msg2613763 date=1217955857]@dante,

Unless u sign in under differing names, I didn't know I was debating that issue with you.[/quote]I don't quite know where u're coming from. Anyways i'm not one of u jobless (no offence) peeps that sleep and wake up on nairaland.

Anyways going to the matter of the day, your arguments towards table-less designs are valid, but you make it sound like designing with tables is a sin.

You probably want to ask about the load times for tables, but you and I know that tables only "seem" to load longer because none of the stuff in a table will be displayed until all the contents of that table are downloaded. This results in tables displaying all at once. In CSS, individual materials load and display one after the other!

Accessibility - How many visually impaired people use the internet

Maintenance - well i've got dreamweaver!

In conclusion, CSS is better, but I don't believe tables are bad!

@Gamine, I think the palms site is pretty promising, but u guys seem to have missed the plot with the home page.

Even though the home page looks a bit friendly and has cool colours, the arrangement seems a bit out of place. It might be quite late now to make major changes, but it pays to always make a sketch on paper before designing on the computer. Nice choice of colours though.

A way out would be to have two distinct columns. The left column (wider) can contain the usual info, then the row to the right can house the news and the tower flash animation. I think you should give the 'shopping experience' picture - to steal into yawatide's lingo - a clearly defined border.

@yawa, that debate on tables/css will continue.

i'm on yahoo

Web 2.0 can easily be termed "Next generation creativity". Its more of a trend, a style, a fashion. Also, web 2.0 is gradually becoming the promise of performing normal desktop activities such as accessing, creating, saving and sharing information on the internet.

@ digitalglo, I see a very big virtue you possess. Right in the midst of the hostilities and aggression, you still found a space for learning. Anyways, regarding your sites, i'lld talk about ivtel, then you can apply it to the other.

First, looking through your home page, I can see that you have not chosen any 'keywords' to 'optimize'. What I mean is there is no phrase, which is very predominant in your copy(text). In essence, you need to choose a phrase which you expect your customers would type into google and develop your text around that phrase so that it comes up often. A good phrase would be 'Web Hosting Nigeria'. Once you have a high 'keyword denisity' then you are a step in the right path.
Type 'web hosting nigeria' into google to see who you are competing with.

Secondly, there is an algorithm called the google pagerank algorithm which google uses to rank pages with similar content. Let me explain this.
If you optimize your site properly and another company optimises theirs equally well, how would google know which site to display first? This is where pagerank comes in. Its very deep, so you might need to research on your own, but in a nutshell, your pagerank is a numerical figure on a scale of 1 to 10. The higher your figure is, the higher your site is placed. How do you know what your pagerank figure is?
You need to download the google toolbar and install the pagerank button. Your pagerank shows as a green bar on the google toolbar. Now if this pagerank is so important, then how do you increase your pagerank? Answer: Link building. This is also deep so you would have to research this on your own as well.

Finally, before all these things can work, your site must be indexed on google. At present, it seems your site isn't indexed on google as a search for ivtel web solutions brings no entries from your site. Therefore read on 'how to get your site indexed on google quickly'.

I have purposely used a lot of technical jargon and keywords here, so that you can type them all into google and learn more about them. Hope this helps and hope it takes this thread on a constructive and mature direction. Cheers.

1. @ the man who believes the computer represents 666, does he keep all his money at home or at the bank. If he uses the bank then he'd better tell
them not to check his account balance using the computer.

2. I've never seen a company who's got too much customers. When companies attain a high client base, what they do is to expand, not reject the customers.

3. Its good to mail brochures to prospective clients but why would someone want to keep all their eggs in one basket? With search engines, businesses reach their target markets cause a user would not click on a link if he/she is not interested in it, so the conversion ratio is high. In conventional marketing, you target people who you think / hope would need your services and thats got a very low conversion ratio!

4. If I go online cause others are doing so, there is a probability that I might stumble on something that interests me and then I become someone's customer!

5. You said yahoo and google became global brands by servicing their customers. My argument is this. First they tried to get the customers before servicing them. If you dont have customers, then you are going to service empty air!

Afam:
I respect your views on SEO but in my opinion not all websites need SEO.

Where do you search to find google on the net? What of yahoo or cnn?

Unless you are dealing on digital products having the world search for and locate your website will do you more harm than good, trust me.

@ Afam. seems this discussion on seo would continue.

In my opinion, I think every commercial company that has an online presence would definitely need SEO. Lets take utal building for example. They do curtain walls, roofing and stuff. Lets assume I'm building a multipurpose hall and need roofing products, the first place i'll think of going to, in this information age, is my search engine. Going to google and typing 'roofing products nigeria' gives me some results which don't include utal building. Thats thousands of potiential clients lost!

You might be wondering why, despite your site containing the keywords 'roofing', 'products' and 'nigeria'. Well thats where seo comes in.

In SEO, you literally go into customer's minds, and think of what they might be trying to find. You then optimise your site for those keywords.

cnn, google and yahoo are global brands that everyone knows of already and do not need any search enginge marketing. Nevertheless, if you type 'news' or 'news america' into google, cnn still comes up!

@ Afam, I'm very sorry if I appeared offensive. SEO is a topic i am very passionate about and I guess that might have prompted my comments. By the way, I really condem hypocricy, unhealthy rivalry and competition and if u've ever had any of these ideas from my posts, then i'm sorry. I guess we can go back to the focus of this thread now.

review of http://www.utalbuilding.com

Hi, Afam. Well, i've decided to reply to your comments even though my natural instincts are telling me to get off not only your thread but nairaland! Now for the benefit of those reading this thread, I will clarify some facts and 'not let sleeping dogs lie.'

First, in my comments, I jumped to a guess that people like you never learn. Well I think that guess was right! as exemplified by your ignorant and - (in your own words) - 'usual stupid' assumption on SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION.

Afam:
I will not waste my time responding to your position on SEO as it is obvious you are one of those that spend their time chasing google around rather than focusing on your clients. Only you won't understand, submitting websites to google or search engines is a waste of time, I don't expect you to understand this because for you to you must understand the basics of crawlers.

If I may ask, what do you mean by 'focusing on your clients'? Its a fact that google owns a 60% quota of the search engine market and it would be 'stupid' for anyone not to take them seriously. Of what use is a 'stupidly' designed site that doesn't show up in google search results? Anyways, let me educate everyone a bit. One of the major tasks of any web design outfit is to help their clients achieve their goals of reaching their target audiences and on the long run make more sales. Now how can a website help raise a company's profit margin if no one finds it? or you thought the billboard in your village would do it?

Anyways to cut the long story short, seo is a major force to be reckoned with in the web development world and anyone serious about their clients must be serious about seo and trust me, thats the definition of client focused design! I would not go into details of seo as I'm sure you all can find that out yourself.

And just for you to know Afam, submitting sites to google has nothing to do with seo. Don't even try to educate me on crawlers cause that has nothing to do neither. These things you are talking about deal with getting your site indexed by search engines. SEO deals with things such as keyword research, keyword density, google pagerank algorithm, link building etc. Enough for y'all to feast on.

By the way, this is not to say that there are not some illegal approaches to seo (black hat seo techniques) which is another topic entirely!

Afam:
Now you come with the usual stupid position that I attack people on nairaland even when I have never attacked anyone, however I have always responded to people in kind.

Men! this one was quite funny. Now if its a usual position that u attack people, why not then retrace your steps. It might not be a 'stupid' position afterall. A million people can't be all wrong you know.

And in conclusion, whats happening here is not a competition. It is just an approach to improve standards in web design in Nigeria. We all complain that a lot of companies prefer to give their jobs to overseas agencies. Why would they not, when those guys help the companies achieve their goals better. So what we are saying here is if we can improve our standards, learn from others, not take everything as a competition and not jump to 'stupid' conclusions, then maybe these fellows would start to have faith in us. Thats not to say that there are not a lot of guys doing a good job out there.

well, your site has potentials. I hope the below suggestions would help:

1. Re-export the logo with higher quality settings as I can see some ditherings / artefacts around the logo (something in the range of 20kb - 30kb would load decently)

2. Still on the logo, make goldstreams bolder and leave network as is. I guess thats TW cent or century gothic. Reduce the size a bit, then increase the text spacing for 'experiencing the financial freedom' to span the length of 'goldstreams network'.

3. Make text links at the base of the site for seo purposes, as I can see your links are images.

4. In the flash anim, you need to work on the man's photo. Go back to your design software, adjust your tone curve (or 'curve' however its called) and make an 's' curve. This way your picture has an element of dimension. One part would be dark and the other part bright. At the moment the picture looks dull. Compare it with the lady carrying the ball. After editing the picture, make it bigger in the frame. Use the girl in www.evanspublishers.com as an example.

5. Make all the text aligned ( the first paragraph should align with the bullet points).

6. Put the golden bars in a box and align the box with the first paragraph (golden strams . . .)

7. Make the girl carrying the ball aligned with the bullet points paragraph (paragraph)

8. Make the gtbank logo and flashme, logo smaller and align them to the left. Also align the heading to the left (payment processor . . .)

9. Twitch the text boxes a bit making them smaller. Use CSS if you are familiar.

I bet there's a lot of ideas you can get from the evanspublishers website. I did not have enough time to look through other pages.

Once again good start. Work on the symmetry and you have a nice site.

Afam:
What I have found out is this, only people that are not good in web development will resort to attacking someone about a project as no good web developer will spend time focusing on the person rather than the website.

Well @ Afam, It seems you have been caught in your own web! People like you never learn because they believe they know too much, whereas they are complete empty barrels. Have you ever heard of the terms 'seo and keyword research'. Well let me do you a favour. Type that into google and I guess that should keep you occupied constructively for the next 1 year!

@kenflipper, just wait till the next google pagerank update and your website would be soaring. I bet you've done some proper link building.
@mr cents, don't allow yourself to be fooled.

now regarding utalbuilding, I think you shouldn't base your judgements on 'the client is happy with it . . ' Most of these people we call clients have no idea what good design should be. Moreover, since they don't have anything else to directly compare a completed job with, they have no choice but to tell you 'they are ok with it'.
Similarly, such bases destroys your portfolio. Don't hide behind the fact that you program(I assume). Go out there and get resources on how to create beautiful websites. Its the beauty everyone sees and not the code behind it (I learnt that the hard way). Also regarding the simplistic thing you were going on about, simple doesn't mean bad. Check out this extreemely simple but classy site I stumbled upon sometime ago

http://www.alakija.com

Well, a word is enough for the wise. You can either choose to continue attacking people on nairaland or go onto google and learn how to be an excellent, all round web developer. Good luck my brother.

@ whiteroses, cheers for that babe jare! anyways watch out for a proper wallpaper.

@ tobbie u're damn good men. You definitely can draw. did u use brushes for the flowers in the first pic.