₦airaland Forum

none is best per se. It alldepends on what you want to accomplish and how.

For instance, in my opinion, if you are looking for something with a low learning curve, something you can set up quick and have a news site in mind, I would suggest joomla.

Here is a nice article on the subject:
http://www.noupe.com/php/choosing-cms-tips.html

Remember: in coding, nothing is absolute. It all depends (on various issues).

he he cactus:

My friends say I am deadly cos I can recall things from 10 years ago, down to the time and day

Yet another career option for you, for wen you finally relocate to nigeria - writing novels. Hey, how about you revamp the pacesetters dynasty?

Is this the same girl whom you said, earlier this year, wanted to learn web dev on her own and whom you said at the time was, "good" at it?

mambe:

r u here to give advice on this post or to promote naijaborn?

speaking for myself, I don't understand your post. Try and break it down for the slow ones like me to understand, e jo

u guys are going off base. It happens all the time. The title of this post doesn't imply in any way that the poster wants to build the next twitter, google, facebook or whatever. We are talking about what is best for what he needs to do now.

Of course, if you want to be innovative, you will not use say joomla, drupal or whatever. It behooves you to be original and start from scratch. It is pretty darn obvious guys. Let's focus on the issue at hand. Bobos wants a solution for something now, not for the next facebook.

inf8inity:
In my neck of the woods, a developer doesn't do design. Sure, he/she might be able to open up photoshop and move things around here and there but that's about it. In other words, they don't come up with anything from scratch as far as design goes. A web developer is one who combines XHTML, CSS, Javascript (including AJAX) and one of the many back end languages (Ruby, php, jsp, etc).

smart:
DV8? Pretty good short form. I love it

On a serious note, I don't think you can just google art director and come up with a definitive answer. It differs based on company and location. For example, based on how I understand it, it means you have a group of people working for you. In other words, you are more of an administrator than an actual worker. Would this be the case?

I know in naija, we are very much into titles. Personally, I don't care if you call me an ass-wiper. As long as you pay me what the free market commands, it is all good.

Copied or original, they are good nonetheless.  I could equally make the same statements about you, kinguche but as I said, I give everyone here benefit of doubt until they prove me otherwise.  For all we know, you could be quadrillo in another form or are purposely trying to tarnish quad's reputation (I am not saying you are but that it is possible.  After all, many of us here don't know our true identities).  If they were bad, I would be the first to pounce on them.   Besides, that isn't the point of this post. 

As for the point, nothing is hidden under the sun.  Time will tell.

Cactus:

Yep, thus downgrading themselves and their prices in the process. I just a conversation with a house guest. I told her what I do for a living and she said, "Oh, you are a designer?". I immediately, out of instinct, damning the consequences, said, "no, I am a developer but I also design when I have to".

Folks, no the difference in terminology and be proud of what you do.

'nuff said.

inf8nity:
Yep, I meant Jomsocial. Thanks for the reminder

Babes no dey suffer anymore. It's all about minimum effort (done professionally of course) and maximum benefit. I tip my heart to all those who do otherwise. More power to you. I am just not one of them, that's all.

na wa o! simple question has turned into wrestle mania

Your web host should have a perl script and tutorial on how to integrate it with your form. Ask them. I have done a site for a client where I wasn't allowed to use my own php script and so I reverted to calling their own perl scripts.

Ask them and I am sure they will help out.

Joomla was not built for the needs I am facing here and trying to bend it will not make it work.

Much better, mon ami de la republique. Try to stay away from the blanket statements. Not everyone in Africa surfs the web under ur own conditions

I will check out naijaborn over the weekend and get back to you.

zstyle, I support what mambe as it is better for you in the long run. To answer your question in the "now", just google for it.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=frontpage+form+mailto&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

Good luck!

mambe, u don come again

I agree with you building your own CMS if you have the time but why would make such a statement as this?

Mainly because those Joomla and co were not made with Africa and our environment as a factor of the production

Please expatiate. I mean open source is open source. If you say it doesn't fit your needs, fine, I accept but to say Africa, are you equating it to the Peugeot car which says it is built for Nigerian roads?

Again, please expatiate

This is getting interesting. I want to give quadri the benefit of doubt based on his many (good) tutorials on here. Alas! I don't want to draw any conclusions and will wait to see how the 2 parties work this thing out.

Those with not that much experience with Joomla! tend to weigh it down with unnecessary plugins, etc. Also, they don't seem to know that you can switch from tables to CSS layout, the former which makes it heavy and slow to load.

I haven't used Drupal so I can't speak for it. I am made to understand that there is a lot of customization when using it, unlike Joomla! The lazy coder in me says go with Joomla! + CB. I have used it on a project and but for some cross-browser compatibility issues, I was up and running, including installing my own layout, in 30 minutes or less. If you have the money or your client does, there is a paid social networking plugin for joomla! though I forget the name. I hear it is more flexible than CB. I didn't have the money to spare and so have never used it

Again, call me lazy but the days of coding straight (D/X)HTML when there are more efficient alternatives, are over. No need reinventing the wheel or trying to compete with Mark Zuckerberg or Zeus. We live in the days of KISS and DRY and as I told a fellow NLer recently, I will stick by these principles until the day I retire.

With a limited budget, I would go the following route, in the order specified below:

1) Good SEO
2) Organic marketing
3) Passing out business cards
4) "Forgetting fliers" when using public transportation
5) "Dropping" fliers at public events
6) Online advertising
7) Radio advertising
8 ) TV advertising

Good luck!

I think this request is a bit vague. Help the whole Nigerian populace how? Please be more specific.

In essence, you are asking for our Unique Selling Point.

Mine:
The fact that I don't compromise quality (code structure, cross-browser compatibility, page weight/load time, etc). Sure you might pay a little bit more but isn't that extra money worth your peace of mind?

You tell them that sure, you can do it but that it will cost extra. If they agree, you revise your statement of work. If they don't, you walk. Simple.

inf8nity:

I can tell you for a fact that as at the time the site was advertised, it was a joomla! site. At the time the site was advertised, the organization was a coalition of 400 doctors. It didn't even have a "contribute" button. It was basically a 5-page website. Probably done by one of the doctors.

Chances are that as they gained more publicity, some company approached them for a redesign and they went for it. They were probably sold on the fact that the site wasn't "web 2.0" enough. Such shouldn't come as a surprise and happens all the time.

Again, I state for a fact that as at the time the site was advertised, it was a joomla site. Now, you make me wish I had pasted a screenshot of the view source

If I understand what you mean, google for (assuming you are using php), "php rss news feed". I had to do this search recently and found pretty interesting results.

Good luck!

The Nigerian context aside, my first courses in actual programming (as in after pseudo-code classes) were in VB and Pascal. This was even after Java 1 came out, so I dunno what some of you guys are talking about

As it was presented to us at the time, and I happen to agree, if all you have is a hammer, then everything is a nail. Also, you have to know where you came from to know where you are going. So you are taught how to code in english, on paper, then you migrate to languages that came up during programming's history. At the end of the day, it's not abuot the language per se but logic and how you think logically (i.e. reason). If you can think logically, you can pretty much pick up any language (of course, you have to learn the syntax).

A BSc degree doesn't necessarily imply you know how to code either, not to say you shouldn't get one. As I have said on here before, I once worked with a guy with a history degree who was better than I was at the time. A degree will definitely give you a leg up in the competition come interview time, but it doesn't necessarily mean you know how to code or how to interact with people in a work environment.

Try one of the results here:
http://www.google.com.ng/cse?cx=partner-pub-6465801557104924%3Abko28ysgdng&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=software+send+sms&sa=Search

zsulu:

I can't speak for Cactus but for myself when I say it isn't about confidence but stating what is in fact a truth.  Like me, Cactus has probably seen his fair share of wannabees who, rather than learn, choose to insult and turn to ad hominem attacks.  I personally am not here to, "can I see your works?" but to learn and to teach.

Anyways, my info is my NL username (without the dashes in-between) @yahoo.com and just for you, I will be on YIM for the next 30 minutes 

My workplace did the same. Add an "s" to the end of "http" and see if that works for you. It worked for me

The only disadvantage is that each time you go to a new page, you will have to add the "s" and refresh. Of course this begs the question: do you really need to be on facebook at work if you must go through all that stress?

I only go to facebook to accept invites and upload photos so based on my experiences at work, I stopped visiting facebook for leisure.

good luck!

yo, yo.

When cats say stuff like this
It's usually cos they wordless

It does say something definitely
That they suffer from insecurity

Deep down they know what they say aint true
But they hope to market what they do to you

If it aint so, then itz like those who buy a camry cos they can't afford a lex
In other words, they suffer from inferiority complex

Now, which of you wanna challenge my flow
eenie, meenie, miney mo
But sorry home boy, this is it, I got to go

uh uh, ye ye.

poster (and all those with similar requests):
sometimes tis best for you to make an attempt at the problem, encounter problems then post the code you have.  You learn better this way.  when you just flat out ask for help from ground zero, it implies that you haven't done a thing and are looking for a quick way out. Consequently, you will most likely get the type of responses you are getting now.

good luck!

I would imagine:
1) You have a database table with say: title, description, url
2) you query d database, using the keyword "LIKE" or some combination of partial string search
3) you wrap d description with an anchor tag with the href pointing to the url

Maybe I am over-simplifying things but that is how I would do it.

Cactus, your rap skills is yet another thing you can take with u, shd u decide to relocate to Nigeria

What makes this site the best you have seen so far? Even the top right corner says that "this is just a preview".

Sha, I like the aerial photo but that's about it. I clicked every link and again, other than the (cool-looking) background images, I don't see what makes this the best. Then again, I am pretty sure this is a publicity stunt

What site would I deem the best? So far, none. Not even one of mine. Why? The year is far from over. I know you said "so far" but I insist that it is still too early, even for "so far".

Re-introduce this topic around october (less the marketing stunt) and I bet you will get more responses.

I use a BlackBerry 8330 (the exact model name escapes me at the moment and I am too lazy to check ) and it comes up fine.

An idea (for better usability):
Just post links and not links/synopsis. I think this will be better as you can probably present all your news items on one screen without having to scroll. Thus the user will then click on links if they so choose.

Perhaps your thought process for this is, "I will give them a sentence or 2 so that if they don't want to read it, they don't waste their time clicking", especially in a country where you pay for every minute surfed. If that is the case, might I suggest that you shorten the number of words per synopsis and add an ellipses after the number of desired characters?

I would rather you don't include any sentences and force the user to click, then present ads on the proceeding pages. Even if you are presenting RSS feeds, there are ways you can parse the returned "description" tag to shorten the number of words.

Good luck!