The phantom, could this site have all you intend doing, which implies there is probably no need for yours, unless of course there is something unique about yours that isn't highlighted on this site?

http://www.nigeriantourism.com/

I am not in Nigeria and don't know how the system works. That is up to you to find out from the powers-that-be. One thing is for sure though - this will be a large undertaking and it will probably be best for you, like google (where everything is in beta ), to release functionality in stages.

@my2cents,
who are the people you discussed your Idea with and they thought it wasn't right? Well even if that had happened, don't make the mistake of thinking every Nigerian thinks the same way.

Some narrow-minded people, ranging from govt officials to the average joe on the street to university professors

I know better than to let them discourage me. For all I know, they were taking-style to tell me that they felt threatened by me being there and would probably do things better than they are doing presently. Oh well. In the end, I might not even settle for web dev. There are too many opportunities in Nigeria to settle on just one

thanks for the clarification.

Right now, I am thinking an article of "Flash Abuse on Nigerian websites"

If you don't hear from me in a week, do YIM me as I am a very busy man.

Thanks,

Yep,

Most CMS apps come standard with web host plans these days. Since you, as you said, could lose your job, I recommend you google for a free CMS tutorial of your choice, install it and implement it. Once your job situation improves, you can then look at building a CMS from scratch in the event you discover that what you are using doesn't suit your needs.

Bottomline, use this as a warning that no job is permanent, even for those who may be considered untouchable, and start accumulating knowledge that will enable you get a better job, learn from your experiences and then branch out on your own, even if it isn't in IT.

Good luck with your job situation!

rufaii,

in general in the US, you pay for income you report

So yes, you are supposed to pay for online income. however, no one pays sales tax (or not that I know of anyways) for any transaction made online and the last time I checked the US congress is trying to get a piece of that. They see all that money being made by folks on ebay and say to themselves, "nna, bobos fit make money small from those guys o"

LOL kobo,

u hv an eye for details. I noticed the overall green but not the green in every single photo in the header (Well, except the one where the teacher is standing over his student ) LOL.

good one!

LOL akin,

Lord willing, 2008 will be the year it is fed to the point where it begs me to stop

bigmondo,

passing your URL through the w3c validator (http://validator.w3.org/) I discovered this meta tag:

<META content="MSHTML 6.00.6000.16544" name=GENERATOR>

Off the top of my head, though I don't know anything about MSHTML, the "MS" tells me it has to do with Microsoft in which case the code you have is specific to IE (and perhaps opera which may be stating its user agent as IE as well).

What are you using as your text editor? You might want to *not* use it in favor of more traditional text editors like dreamweaver, homesite or the like.

I have often said that if I land something big in Naija, what I would do is quite simple: go to my local uni and recruit computer science/engineering students to do the job. In the end, you land the job, they do the job, gain experience and get paid. Win-win situation. What could be better? If I stand to make say, N10million from a project that lasts 3 months and spend even N3million on compensating 10 students, don't I still have N7million for myself?

Unfortunately, when I discuss the above with people in Nigeria, they look at me with bewilderment. "Ol boy, if na me, I for do am all by myself" is the typical answer. Herein lies our problem. We want it all (just like with oil money) to ourselves yet we blame politicians for concentrating money in few hands.

we need to stop being the jack of all trades in Nigeria. we need to think division of labor. We need to think delegation. In essence, as has been rightly put, we need to learn outsourcing/partnering/collaboration. If only we can adopt this, we will see better sites, and many more sites cranked out over a period of time.

I am 34 and have been coding since 1999. 2 years ago, in attempt to alleviate my boredom from an accumulation of code over the years, I decided to start developing sites on the side. It was fun at first but now I am bored again - accumulation of code over projects. When I was in Nigeria about a month ago, I did some thinking. My options are:

1) Land a big job (employing others in the process) and live off maintenance fees
2) Develop an online store that, will ensure a steady stream of income with little or no effort on my part
3) Develop a few sites that attract a huge gathering and live off ad revenue.

The common theme with the above is, "with little or no effort". Man don tire. I no longer look forward to going to work. I am tired of always staying up-to-date on the latest language, only to find there are 3 more new ones I have to stay up-to-date on again. Don't get wrong, I am thankful to God for my job and what it has helped me accomplish. I am just not satisfied any more.

Good article my man!

so I am looking at UBE's website: http://www.ubec.gov.ng/ and it says the following:

THIS SITE HAS BEEN REMOVED FOR NON-PAYMENT. TO PAY OR PURCHASE THIS SITE

Chei! Na wa o!! How many millions were thrown down the drain for that one?

Off the top of my head:
1) Submit Bursary Application
2) Check Bursary Application Status
3) Weather Forecast
4) Ability to Personalize
5) Login area
6) Check SSCE results
7) Apply for/Check First School Leaving Certificate results
8 ) Check Secondary School Placement
9) Check state university placement
10) Profile section that lists everything including school of user
11) Poll section
12) Forum
13) FAQ
14) Contact us
15) Message from Commissioner and Perm sec
16) Stats on number of students (divided into primary/sec/uni) in the state
17) Announcements (Check your results, etc)
18) List of schools of each level, complete with names of principal employees (principal, vp, etc)
19) Internationalization (limited to your local language and maybe french for francophone countries)
20) Some kind of yardstick section which measures, say, contracts awarded vs completion


Based on what you are developing in, these sections could be scoped into portlets. One thing is for sure though, this won't be a walk in the park. To be done properly, it will take a long time and a lot of work. Depending on time constraints, you might want to look at dividing the project into phases. So for example, phase 1 could be a basic website (contact, about us, schools, etc) with functionality added over time. Knowing how you guys operate over there, I wouldn't be surprised one person will probably be doing everything from start to finish in 2 weeks

I hope this helps.

bakenda,

of course generators (or even inverters) could be purchased but why? If there are 100 schools in a state, does that mean 100 generators? Who runs it? Who maintains it? etc. Besides with diesel at N120/litre (as at December 2007), wouldn't the cost of running those gens far outweigh the benefits of a computer?

Computers are good. There is even one site I saw selling $100 laptops. however, i think the students would be better served in this regard by liaising with a cyber cafe/business center and qualifying for bulk rates. It would be cheaper to hire (as opposed to it being government run) a private individual's cafe. The owner would be guaranteed a customer base and the government would not have to spend money on buying a million computers. A win-win situation in my books. Students could then be allowed to go to such cafes. Better yet, private individuals could be encouraged to set up shop in schools.

In my opinion, given our resources, we shouldn't even have to think of a gen, except for emergency situations in the first place, but that's a story for another day.

As always, my 2 cents.

Otuonye,

With all due respect, could you clarify the statement below?

The workshop fee is FREE! However, interested participants are required to register with Three Thousand Naira [N3000] only.

I am busy scratching my head here: workshop fee is free but interested participants are required to register with N3000? What's free there?

Thanks,

I will take a stab at these. You probably want to do a google search or wiki search for verification purposes (Note to the "holier than thou" crowd - please note that I said "You probably want to do a google search or wiki search for verification purposes" which implies I in no way am claiming to be an expert on the subject):

1) Impression: Number of times an ad of a particular size shows. So if you have 3 ads on a page, all of which are 728x90 and I visit your page, that will be 3 impressions for that ad size. On the other hand, if you have 3 different ad sizes on a page and visit the same page, that would be 1 ad impression each for each ad size.

2) clickthru rate: The number of clicks for a particular ad size. Again, if you have 100 impressions for a particular ad size but only 3 people clicked on the ad, the clickthru rate = 3/100 = .03%

3) Hits: This probably could be equated to "Visits" in that it refers to the number of times a page has been visited. So what is the difference b/w a visit and a unique visit? Read #4 below.

4) Let's say I offer to pay you $10 for every visit (1 visit = 1 entry. 10 visits, even by the same person = 10 visits) to your house and A, B and C take advantage of this. A comes in and leaves 10 times, B does same twice and C none at all. Visits to your house = 10 + 2 + 0 = 12. However, unique visits, as in the number of visits by a unique individual = 2.

You might appreciate what the above means for a company, in terms of money they are willing to spend on advertising. Just because I see an ad on your site doesn't mean I will click on it so as to see what I might buy, hence the clickthru rate. If you see Dakore's Amstel advert does that mean you are going to buy Amstel? Probably not. Also, which would you prefer as a business owner: showing the same ad 100 times to the same person (aka visits) or the same ad 1 time each to 100 people (aka unique visits)? Which scenario do you think has a better chance of raking in more revenue per "visit"?

I hope this helps.

no ya wa. nothing spoil.

I don't have any materials but off the top of my head, I would google for "sample website proposal" and would add:

1) Timeline: Given a possible large student population, with solid testing, at least 2 months
2) Resources (coders): At least 2 (preferably 4: Designer, developer, tester and DB guy)
3) Pay: Up to you
4) What you will do: Develop a user-friendly, SEO-friendly, lightweight site accessible to registered members
5) Why you are doing this: To make the application process more efficient, thus saving money in the long-run.
6) Give some sort of statistical comparison b/w how much it costs and how long it takes now vs. the site's stats.
7) Based on #3 above, Site must have login authentication
8 ) DB shouldn't be that hard to design. Probable fields: Full Name, DOB, State, LGA, Sex, Photo (path only), Address
9) Ensure that student brings Certificate of origin and a driver's license for verification on day of collection

If others have anything else to add, please feel free to do so (hey, e b like say by d time wey we post finish, we for don code d site (on paper) for d guy. This could be our own case study ))

nna,

u must to pay for me for the idea wey i give u now. Remember, any idea wey I give u wey go work, na 10 "pee-cent" I dey charge o!

homework for you wiseone,

come up with a site from scratch and i personally guarantee you that though you may get 40 views, you will get at least 10 comments.

smart, nice one!

In Nigeria, where the average web guy does everything from DB design to HTML, I no sabi as you go take call am. Perhaps web designer/developer? I don't see anything wrong with that.

my understanding of your post was that only those in your state (regardless of state of origin) would use it. Either way, it still shouldn't be a problem. Why? You could always add a field in your DB (say, "Indigene" with "Y" or "N" as a field) that indicates whether or not the student is an indigene.

Does this answer your question?

leo,

Based on your original post, it would apply to the state. Of course I would imagine that you would make the program flexible and scalable enough so that in the event another state wanted something similar, it would just be a matter of changing the name of the state. For that matter, you could even build in internationalization so that if Kano state wanted it, text would appear in Hausa or if Anambra state wanted it, text would appear in ibo, etc etc (you get the picture)

I hope this helps.

bakenda,

as laudible as your project sounds, I must ask if I may, of what use are the laptops if there is no light to power them? I ask cos in Akwa Ibom State last year, the governor furnished all schools with computers yet they are all sitting there gathering dust. Why? No light to run them.

how about a web app that would enable *those have the ability* to check their results (be it primary, secondary or state university/polytechnics/CoEs)?

how about a web app that would allow state university/polytechnics/CoEs to apply for and possibly receive, their bursaries?

how about for starters a website for your state's ministry of education (from which contracts for perhaps coding the websites of all other ministries could flow)?

or abi, am i over-reaching?

astron,

I was referring to this part of your post:

I will be designing a website for the journal before is out. I am targeting first week of February. If you have any suggestion please do post it here.

As for articles, I am not too good at coming up with topics so if perhaps you give a list here I will see what I can do

dhtml,

unfortunately I am not in Nigeria and so probably couldn't give you an objective answer. Personally, I used hostmonster for all my clients, irrespective of location.

Now, based on communication and posts, I would recommend Just Web Services (http://www.justwebservices.com/wd.php). This company is owned by our very own Afam. I know a few people who are hosting with him and my "undercover" research has shown that they are happy. The main reason? For one, he doesn't believe in reselling and is very quick to answer your questions/concerns in the event you have any.

So check him out and let us know how it goes so others can also benefit: http://www.justwebservices.com/wd.php

Something tells me that there is a quick, one-time, fix to this issue. What's better? It can be done either client- or server-side. Regardless of technique you use, they both involve parsing out the year from the date and displaying that date

Client-side: via javascript, etc
Server-side: via php, jsp, etc

Client-side is preferred as the year would be read off the client's browser and hence, is more accurate. Of course, one would have to take into consideration the fact that some (mentally deranged) people turn off javascript. But in this day and age of AJAX apps, who really can afford to do that?

Server-side is still good but is based on the server's internal clock. If the servers are in the same location then no yawa, nothing spoil. But if the server is in Japan and the site is being viewed by someone in Brazil, ya wa go bust b that.

Another alternative would be to add the copyright section of our sites in a server-side include. That way, assuming say, a 1000+ page site, all one need do is manually change the year in one place. Of course with this approach, you might as well adhere to what astron has said above

If you don't have the copyright section in a server-side include or worse still, don't use includes at all, guess what your new year resolution should be?

Speaking of which, make I kuku go check my own b4 person go talk, "u sef my2cents, u too sabi give advice, yet u no dey follow wetin u talk" LOL

for one, stay clear of continuous flash. If u must use flash, put a "stop()" at the end of the last frame

Broad,

1) In case you didn't get it, it was a joke. Since the emoticon I used above apparently didn't convey the message, let me try another one: Also, I am not scared of you. By being on this forum, I have nothing to lose. For all I know (and care) the chances of meeting you in real life and/or getting any favors from you in life are pretty darn close to zero.

2) By calling you a ghost, again it is a joke. Again, hopefully another emoticon will help convey the message: Perhaps I should have put it in quotes. Sorry about that. The statement meant that I rarely see you on Nairaland anymore and by commenting on DAAR, I was "afraid (please note the quotes. Don't take it literally and say, "I talk am, my2cents dey scared of me", because I am not) you would come up with your "who says you are holier than thou" comments. Sadly, you just confirmed my concerns.

3) Concerning my site, majority of web users now have 1024 resolution screens. As a result, I now code with them in mind. If you have anything less, too bad. However, to prevent horizontal scroll, I set the width to 980px. I am not a believer in fluid layouts. Why? The risk of horizontal scroll and difficulty in placing images(or other elements) that have fixed widths within the context of fluid widths, to mention but a few.

I am getting calls, both in the Nigeria and the US, so apparently I did something right. As a matter of fact, get ready to point out an error in a site I will be launching on Jan 7. I am already trembling as a matter of fact and just got a prescription for High Blood Pressure just in case (again, a joke )

You say, "I come on here regularly and I reply to any post that I deem fit." yet here: https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-102263.0.html you say, "That's why am not active on this board anymore.". Oga, which ones you no dey (and don't even think about modifying that post )?

What does New Year have to do with anything? Can a leopard get rid of its stripes? By the way, thanks for letting me know you don't hold a grudge with me. I can now sleep with my 32 yellow teeth totally exposed knowing that you don't (again, a joke )

LOL wiseone,

your title reminds me of my first job in the US - cashier.

Being my first job, of course I was out to please my employers. When other (smart) cashiers would take their time, I was busy being so fast, you would think I was competing for the Olympics. As a result, my line was always the longest. One thing that would piss me off though was that just when I was about to close, my line would get even longer, even after placing the "this lane closed" sign in front of my register.

So trust warri boy (dem no dey lose. Highest na draw abi? ), I came up with an answer - I wrote a sign that said, "Don't read this: This lane close". That is when they finally got the message. However, some reported me to the manager saying I was trying to be smart with them and that they found my sign insulting. In the end, I took it down but I made my point as once I put up the original sign, people stopped coming.

Back to your request. Sorry, but you won't get a response from me. It's nothing personal. It's just that I don't comment on blogs cos for the most part, all blogs look the same from a layout perspective. Now, if it is possible for you to customize it (and you probably can't, given the URL), then I will comment. Having said that, if I may, I would probably say you should consider something other than pink for a background color. It wreaks of feminism. Nothing wrong with that but your blog isn't about that abi?

Once again, nothing personal from me. In fact, I will make a deal with you - develop a website and announce it here. I promise to be among the first to respond

astron, I think it is more than slang. I think it is more of a "make i show dem wetin i sabi"/"do you know who i am?" mentality. Please read on:

One of my first courses in the US was English 101. I can remember my first english essay. I say make I show dem. "I am in a high glee penning this letter", "it was a red letter day", "I hope you are hale and hearty", etc. Na im full my paper. I got 50% or so. I approached the teacher. In my mind, I was saying to myself, "does this teacher even know that this is Queen's English? Does she know that in naija, such proverbs, etc would have earned me an A3 minimum?"

The teacher basically told me that hey, the english is good but the point of writing is to connect with your audience, to communicate with them. When you make them always run to the nearest dictionary, you have defeated the purpose.

I can't remember how many times I have had to run to a dictionary upon reading a news article. Why must they say, "roving reporter"? Why must they say, "automatic mass vehicular transporter"? Perhaps we should start up a thread that lists the most ridiculous lines of english found in an article.

na wa for us o!

based on my comments, mine for the most part are copy-and-paste. As for images, u can go to a place like gettyimages.com to get images. As for the form fields, you can use CSS to set the width (or size) or do it directly via the form field tag.

Take the style of the email address field for instance:

style="float:none;margin-left:0px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;width:100%;display:block;"

u hv a width of 100%. Try 50%. Also in general, you might want to move your CSS into an external stylesheet.

I hope these help.