some more:

Enjoy!

aphoe,

Yours is precisely the attitude we need. As a wise man once told me, black people in General are fond of copying the white man and not coming up with anything original ourselves.

prodgal,

sorry to veer off course but did your yearly adobe users group seminar hold this year? You haven't mentioned anything about it since you advertised it last summer or so.

If so how was it? If not, wetin happen?

Afam,

It has happened many, many times. The last time it happened was with the PHCN website comments I made. So I decided to be pre-emptive and whisk such people away. It seems everytime I post topics such as this, the standard response has been, "my2cents, I have been through your sites and they are no better". In other words, they veer off course and before you know, a post that was meant to educate, turns into a something very derogatory. I don't see where this is a hot/cold/lukewarm issue.

I am just trying to set the tone for the posts. Hopefully by stating this upfront, people know I mean business with this and those guys who are only on here to get their 15 minutes of fame by finding some bone to pick with people will steer clear.

So in conclusion, it is more of a pre-emptive move. Hopefully, posters will adhere.

Thanks,

So, here I am doing what I do first thing in the morning (GMT - 6 hours), reading up on Naija news via its many newspaper sites. I stumble upon a news article about Delta State's newspaper, Daily Pointer, still being in circulation contrary to popular belief. So I decide to google for the newspaper to see if it has a website and find this:

http://www.deltastate.gov.ng/pointer.htm

Fair enough. Lack of layout aside, at least they are keeping the reading public informed. So then I say to myself, "let me see what the Delta State Government Website looks like" and so I then proceed to strip out the "pointer.htm" part so as to get to the index page and find this (you will have to click to see for yourselves):

http://www.deltastate.gov.ng/

Questions - If the home page isn't up and running, how do they expect people to dig further to find information such as the pointer story above? In other words, are people to google for information on the site and hope that it shows up in the results? How can a body (as in pointer.htm) function without its head (index.htm)? Or is this the latest trend in Nigerian web development? What exactly does, "We are currently going through a phase." mean? Will they be going through such a "phase" again in the future?

Make una help me answer these pertinent questions biko. Ok, make I go baff. I will check back for answers in a couple of hours. And please, to those with bad belle, no ad hominem attacks. This is 2008. I am not professing to be the best "webmaster". Let's focus on the issues and not the person

How do you define "great"? What type of website is it?

Details please.

I don't know about too big as again, as I said earlier, you can customize it but it definitely isn't complex - you just click through some steps, as you would say, google adsense, and get the code on the last page. Then you paste the code where you want it to be.

Of course there are other calendars out there many of which might be easier to use than Google's. Oh well, I just thought I should share.

Tunde,

Did her predictive software take into account that certain parts of the country will be experiencing 30 days of no light beginning in about a week? If so, she needs to market that thing quick

Must we be any of the above to belong? Can't we be our own selves? Must we have assets of billions of $$ to belong? Is having billions the only determinant of success? Why can't we be (insert names of your country's rich guys here)? Must we be compared to white men to belong?

Hmm. Very many thought-provoking questions. What, oh what, will the answers be

there there now, his_grace. Not everyone learns as fast as you do. Offer advice different from what the others have above, add upon what has already been said or don't say anything at all. Remember, there was a time someone out there referred to what you did (anything, not just IT) as mugu-like. I bet you wouldn't have liked it if the person told you that to your face, even if it were in an online forum

thecrew,

If you visit http://www.download.com/?tag=hdrgif , and search for an FTP client, I believe you can find one that you can at least try for free for a certain period of time. If you upload stuff rarely, this should suffice. Even if you don't, I am sure you can find a free one, no matter how crude, somewhere out there via google.

Also, if you visited those sites above, then you would have noticed that (I only checked one of the sites) cuteftp allows you to use their trial version. Of course, you want get 100% functionality, but if all you want to do is to send files back and forth, the trial version may be all you need.

I hope this helps.

You can use, like I have, the Google calendar widget. You visit Google's calendar site, and create a calendar. You then visit their widget site, get the calendar widget you want, customize as necessary, reference your Google calendar on the page, get the code that Google provides and bingo! You're in calendar heaven

Check out one I did last year: http://thechurchofchristatriverdalega.org/calendar/

I hope this helps.

To me, in order not to lose people like me, it's all about usability and keeping me engaged through the process, irrespective of steps. I am very impatient. If an application process or whatever goes beyond 2 steps, I get angry. However, if there are some visual cues to let me know how much longer I have to go, I am willing to forgive. Here is an example on a site that is based in Nigeria. Bottomline, from a usability standpoint, it's the best way to go, as long as you inform the user where they are and how much longer they have to go:

Just visit https://www.virginnigeria.com/en/ng/bookflightsandmore/bookflights/index.jsp for an example.

yeah vibes,

I forgot to add there are tons of Joomla! extensions, both free and commercial for you to use to extend your Joomla App should the default installation not work for you.

and smart:
what happens if there are 100 fields? I am expected to scroll to oblivion? From a usability standpoint, that isn't good. Rather, you should see what fields go naturally together and then group them together. To aid in the process, you can then offer a progress bar (step 1 of 5 - user information, for example).

I think that is better than one long form, where applicable of course.

I also noticed your nav section is an image map. any reason?

What's the best?
First off, I assume you mean open-source cms. It depends. From my readings, drupal is. However, from experience, it all depends on who will be using the system. If a non-tech person, from my experience (and I haven't used every CMS out there), it's joomla. For a techie, drupal is better as it is more flexible and offers better customization than say, joomla. Joomla I believe did win an award last year though. So in a nutshell, it depends. Do some googling for "the best open source cms" for example.

How does one actually use one?
You install the product and use it. I don't know how to answer this any further. Joomla has a tutorial of how to use joomla 1.0 on its website, which I believe is joomla.org . Other than that, again, google is your friend here.

CMS/Actual design?
Again, it depends. If you aren't dealing with a site that has a lot of content, right off the bat, no need to use a CMS. If you have content then: If that content will be changing frequently and those changes are most likely going to be made long after you have done the site and by a non-techie, then you will need a CMS here. Otherwise, even if you are dealing with non-techies but content doesn't change or rarely changes, a regular site is the way to go.

I hope these help

nduaj, u sef

When I saw this, I thought you had another site up for review. I was about to come contact you with respect to how you manage to reel them in


1) Nice job on the updates

2) Footer links still not working

3) You still need to work on image optimization in general. For example, sheerwall product photo is 138K

4) Why is there a huge gap on the right of all secondary pages?

5) On home page, the 3 sections at bottom, "our people, products" etc aren't lining up along the green headers. Also, I thought I had told you that the bottom doesn't line up either as one has 3 lines and the other has 4. I think they should be consistent.

6) 3 logos at top right, what are those? Sure I know they are "home", "webmail" and "site map" but how many others (as in lay men) would know that? Different images mean different things to different people, especially in different countries. I would probably add on to that by offering textual references. Also, they aren't linked yet.

I hope these help.

I have done something similar with a real estate site I did last year, complete with image upload. It might not be the best approach but I would say:

Based on experience, i would go with the first approach. I don't know much about DBs but I would imagine that updates are expensive operations. Besides, instead of continuously updating, y not just insert once, especially, if you anticipate a heavy user population?

The part of your first approach that gives me goose bumps is the session variables part. I would just pass the field vars as hidden form fields, unless you want a situation where if the person leaves the site and returns, the values are still saved. In ASP (back in 2001 when I touched it last, so it might have changed since then) and JSP I know session vars are "expensive" and would imagine the same with PHP. Since you are using POST (I assume) for the form action, the form field values are stored and can be passed via hidden fields.

Now, where we might differ is this:
What I did was, after collecting the form fields, I inserted the values in the database, then provided a link, with the property's unique id, to the image upload page (/imageUpload.php?prop_id=Bleep, for example. So I basically had 2 steps - one for collecting data and two for uploading the image(s)). All the upload did was create a directory with the property's unique id as its name and insert the image(s) in that directory. That way, technically, I am not even storing links to the images in the DB. The links are in the code and in the code, I just hardcode the image path up until where I need to dynamically add the name of the directory (which again, is the unique id of the property).

I hope this makes sense and I hope this helps. Bottomline: again, based on experience, go with approach 1.

I hereby make this solemn pledge to tju:
If ever wiki goes public, I will buy 10,000. Based on the number of times you have quoted the wiki, tju, I figure ad revenue will be up tenfold

Seriously though, anything of value was said in the first few posts of page 1. All we have been doing since then is help pump up Nairaland's google adsense revenue. By the way, I don't know what adsense is. Is it possible for you to post wiki link to its definition?

I never asked you to agree with me, I was POINTING OUT your logical fallacies and your pseudo-scientific opinions about software engineering.

Uhmmm, with respect to these posts, I think you need to check the rock in your eye before checking the speck in mine

You can be the bigger man if that's what rocks your boat.

Rocking my boat? Nope. Getting my bunches in a wad? Definitely

Are you even half way done with the site yet?

1) a lot of broken images

2) a lot of broken links

3) On home page, the 3 sections at the bottom: for consistency, I would probably make the number of lines in all 3 sections, the same. The "more"s aren't lined up as it is. Also, in general, line up the 3 images as well

4) On sec pages, there is a large gap in FF b/w nav section and content to the right

5) I don't think the "vision, values, mission" should appear on every sec page. Perhaps the "about" page but that's about it.

6) Some pages have a header image and others don't - inconsistency

7) On home page, I would probably use another lady's face as the one that is there now looks sort of cartoon-ish (personal opinion)

Layout is good but overall, the job is ways away from being done.

I hope this helps.

No ego bros. I have been wrong many times on this forum and when I am, I always own up to it. After all, no one knows who I am and so I would have nothing to lose if I refused to apologize. Again, I can't sit by and let anyone say what they want to say just because they can. Just telling it like it is. But, your English don dey too big for me

I love to learn but again, not something that is based on emotion. There is nothing "pseudo-scientific" about my "ideas" (ha! another big grammar ) either. There are theories advanced on various ideas everyday, just like you learn stuff in school (which is considered ideal) but never use it cos it doesn't apply in the real world. Just as there is SEI, I bet there are other SE institutions. Come to think of it, last time I checked, there is this certification (the name escapes me so forgive me please) or ranking that companies SE companies strive to attain and I blv only one (maybe more now) company in the whole world, based in India, is at level 1. Does that mean that other companies who aren't at level 1 don't know what they are doing? Again, there is ideal and there is real.

Anyways, as I can see:

1) This is getting nowhere, and
2) We are waaaaay off base with respect to what you posted originally

So I will be the bigger man and agree to disagree.

yes, my browser is the almighty firefox. I view sites with nothing less.

Anyways, just thought I should bring it up. You never know who might want to buy your product and where they are located. My not being able to view your site may have lost you millions. You never know

Au revoir mon ami

I don't have to, because I just did. Explain this please:

Unless I am missing something (note the URL and text, both circled in red), I guess the igbo I smoked this morning with 9ice didn't mess with my brain that much. I think you are the one who needs to verify before posting. It doesn't make sense that the site would show up in one part of the world but not another. Are you sure you are not viewing from your local server?

tju, if na u, u wd say, I have friends agreeing with me. At last count, I believe it's 3 vs 1. But this isn't a "winner takes all" argument. It's all about reasoning and learning. No ya wa, nothing spoil

Again, u give a blanket statement. It appears you didn't read my post in its entirety. Here it is:

At least not in the American context.

Could a software engineer gather and analyze requirements? Sure. But would that make for the most efficient use of his time? Probably not. A software engineer, generally speaking, can not speak the language of business. For that, you need someone who can and that is where a BA comes in.

In theory, anyone can do anything. However, there are times, when you want pple familiar with a certain aspect of something to do the talking as they know what to say and how to say it. For example, based on real life, the client I worked for wanted ajax on a particular page, based on the Business Requirements. I told them it wasn't feasible, given the amount of information on the page. Maybe it was just me. I am not trained to convince pple but to code, so my explanation fell on deaf ears. I had to get the BA involved who went back and explained to them what I meant and they agreed.

To the client, all they could see is this cool name, "ajax" and how they can make money from it. Anything else, and it would be unacceptable. They don't know (and could care less) about what is feasible and what's not.

the site "is under construction" and has a large image of 4 rocks in black and white. is that what we should critique? If not, do let us know.

Ghengis,

I know we hv veered from the point but I can't sit back and read something that is wrong and be quiet. I don't know it all but the little I know, I like to share. If I don't know something, I don't comment on it. Better yet, if I do comment, I use words like, "probably", "mostly", "in my opinion", "generally speaking", etc. I don't present opinion as fact. Experience maybe, but not opinion. For all we know, tju38 probably (note the word ) posted this to generate some buzz for something he is doing or is about to do. It reminds me of a sort of similar post last year where some Nigerian web developer based in South Africa said Nigerian developers are whack. It took some prodding, but he finally admitted that he was trying to generate some buzz for himself.

I will agree with you on this:

its now the application of of engineering methods to the process of developing software!

but not on this:

Business analysis is a SW engineering discipline.

At least not in the American context. It is part of the software development cycle and process but not a discipline. Most of the people I know who are BAs have an advanced degree in Business Administration (not to say that is what you need to become a BA).

cmon,

I didn't say the company offered just syrup. I said I noticed the company said they offered syrup, but not "just syrup". Here is a quote from the home page:

Products

HC 12®
A hemoglobin syrup with vitamin B12 Containing 500g of hemoglobin and 20mg of B12 per teaspoon.

That is what prompted by comment above.

In all, I am happy you took the pointers. I am not perfect myself and no one can ever develop a perfect site, however, we can all strive for one that is accessible to the widest audience and viewable by a wide array of devices by coding sites right the first time.

haba! Tunde you no see am? Man, you are missing out. I have never seen a website so elegantly developed. I mean, it loads in .01 seconds on a 14.4K modem, it is 100% CSS and ajax-ified, not a single table and has one feature which I forgot to mention and I won't tell you so you can go see it for yourself - it is developed with something that Microsoft is launching officially in 2009.

Oh yeah, sorry. The URL - www.ITDOESNOTEXIST.com