₦airaland Forum

The Ebook is now free (sorry for the double-posting, uspry1)

Send me an email at yawatide at yahoo dot com to find out how to get your FREE copy.

Thanks

Could it be (just wondering) because you are searching for TOFEL as opposed to TOEFL?

Google "toefl ibadan" and pick from the tons of results you find.

@gamine
If you had said so all along, I wouldn't have wasted any Carbon dioxide on this. Nice "case study" but considering you didn't do it, I wonder how the people who did the site will benefit from what I wrote (especially if they have already launched) if they don't read NL posts.

@hanen

Yes, in this case my crying over spilt milk is justified. We need to note the proper use of the term. So it isn't "all this". Remember, there are younger ones coming in after us.

Folks, this isn't personal in any way. It's strictly business

I have done this elsewhere but just in case:

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/B/boilerplate.html

Text or graphics elements designed to be used over and over. For example, you could create a boilerplate for a fax message that contains all the standard fax information that doesn't change, such as your name, address, and phone number. Then whenever you want to create a new fax, you need only insert the boilerplate rather than retyping the information.

A boilerplate is similar to a template, but whereas a template holds layout and style information, a boilerplate contains actual text or graphics. Many applications, however, combine the two concepts.

Folks (and Gamine, this is for the general populace and not you alone), I keep tell you, there is a difference and we need to use the terms in their proper context

@omnipotens,

Here is another pet peeve of mine, "web design". When it boils down to it, the "designer" actually developed the site either separately or in addition to designing. A designer is the one who comes up with the photoshop'd (for instance) version that gets sliced and diced into a web page form. You can say, "I designed and developed this site" but please don't say "I designed this site" cos in my opinion, it diminishes what has actually been done on the site.

@all
Let's refrain from "This is Nigeria so this is how it is said" comments. There is a right way to do things and there is a wrong way. Let's not keep perpetuating the wrong, even in the face of evidence that proves otherwise just because, "I dey naija" or "See me thinking you are in Nigeria o!" which implies that you are saying since I was not until recently, I must not know what is on ground and as a result, I should get with the program, cos I personally will not call a black kettle a white kettle, just be "feel among".

e heeeeeh Gamine, now we are talking

A few observations though, if I may (perhaps you aren't done yet but I just felt I needed to point these out):

1) On feedback page, upon clicking submit, i get this:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_LNUMBER in /home/transcor/public_html/contactus/sendform.php on line 31

2) On feedback page, there is "feedback" as header but the orange rounded image above it says, "contact us"

3) The orange rounded image isn't consistent in length on all pages. On "investor relations" it spans the whole space, on "contact us", it doesn't

4) Clicking "subscribe" button leads to "page not found"

5) The scrolling news section on home page seems a little blank. Either fill it up with news or reduce the height

6) It doesn't make sense to me that that rounded orange image is enclosed in a container with a left and right gray border. Let it loose, so to speak.

7) I think your rating system doesn't make sense as it is. You should just have 1 - 5 and explain that "1 meaning least and 5 meaning most". When I saw those pluses and minuses, I was confused.

8 ) Since it appears that you are using a CMS, I won't talk about the "printer friendly version" which, if you coded to web standards, should be taken care of in your code as opposed to having separate pages for each version as maintenance will be a pain.

9) All "contact us" pages I have ever been on have never been as long as the one you have. I would have a form on there and depending on option from a dropdown, programatically determine what address the email should go to. The way it is, it's way too long.

I hope you are yet to turn this in because if you have, then all I am saying is of no use. I personally prefer to offer pre-launch critiques to post-launch ones.

@quadrillo
Out of curiosity, r u aware that aratext isn't up and running?

Your old man? Ewwwh! Just kidding. I am not looking right now but will keep him on my reserve list

Well, to me, it doesn't matter if it's a 1-pager or a 1000-pager, you should do things right all the time. What you are saying in other words is, "well, since this is just the first round of wimbledon, I will play the way I like and cruise to the next round." You have to be at the top of your game always.

In addition to what sbucareer has said, I would like to add that:
1) If possible, you share the URL with us so that we can help you better,
2) You add page names to your title tags and your page headers (as H1s), and
3) You subscribe to google sitemaps (GS). GS will ask that you upload an sitemap in xml form. Not hard. Just visit xml-sitemaps.com and that site can automatically generate such a file for you, for free, based on any URL you provide.

exactly. why? Again, I think we should differentiate b/w templates and boiler plate templates as one of my posts already advocates. Here is an example where I would most likely use a boiler plate template:

A client comes to me and says they want a site up ASAP. I don't have the time to conceptualize the site, yet they are breathing down my neck and for their "harassment", I insist (and they agree) on paying a premium. In other words, if someone is willing to pay me $3,000, what is $200 spent on a quality boiler plate template that I might have to make a few changes to?

1) Nairaland also has the advantage of having a lot of web traffic and a lot of other sites linking to his own. Sorry for not mentioning these 2 as factors

2) yes, such files. So instead of saying say, contact.php, you can say, contact-angybabe.php

Unfortunately I don't larger as I have no need to maintain an SMF site. However, from maintaining CMS sites, I would imagine I would do what I have done there: View the source to know what I want to change, find what backend file it's in, make a back up of the file I want to change, change the file I need to change and experiment till I have gotten it right.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=role++computers+in+stock+broking&btnG=Search
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=role++computers+in+insurance+firms&btnG=Search

Note: You might not find what you need on page 1 and may have to dig deeper to find what you want.

Technically, I don't even think you need google to help you out. It should be obvious what the role of the computer is in both cases, not to mention, it's the same in either case:
1) Streamlines the process by performing the calculations (sometimes, billions of such per second) that humans would have had to

2) Enables humans to conduct transactions from anywhere in the world that would have hitherto been done in a face-to-face manner

3) Offers a better predictive analysis than humans would, thus helping insurance firms lower their cost by offering better predictions, etc

The above are just a few that popped in mind. Based on these you can google for them to find specific examples.

LOL @prodgal

I like your attitude. "Yes, I dey blog. Wetin you go fit do? Wetin you wan do? Wetin?"

what do u mean by "register the site with google"? Be that as it may:

I believe google et al stopped laying emphasis on meta keywords. why? because (and let's face it, you probably did too) people view source, copy and paste from the keywords of others. What you should do is the following, among others:

1) Add those keywords to your actual content
2) Write semantic markup (using H1s for headers instead of simply bolding text, etc)
3) Ensure your files have meaningful names
4) Write code that validates

Perhaps you could share with us the url so we can see how to help further? Also, with the organic SEO approach, you should be aware that it might take months before your website shows.

Thanks,

@all,

Please, let us refrain from the "only God is perfect" type arguments. We all know the obvious. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Having said that, if a majority of the people say a site is bad, then it most likely is. The owner of such a site should just suck it up and either fix the problems or move on.

To the other side of the table: it shdnt b enough to say "your site is bad". Support it with evidence, then offer a solution. If images are overflowing for example, show some code, based on the poster's code, to fix it. Perhaps the poster hasn't even heard of FF? We don't know but it probably is a good idea to say something like, "if you don't use FF already, it might be a good idea to do so". I know, either in posts or in YIM, i have convinced (and converted) a few here of the need to get FF, the web developer toolkit being the main reason.

Thanks,

@abhosts

Noted.

The cost of a website is a combination of the developer, the developer's location, your needs and how soon you want your website, among others. There is no fixed cost or range of costs.

The better a developer, the chances are, the higher the demand. A developer in Lagos with a higher cost of living, won't charge the same as a developer in Taraba state. A 5-page basic informational site will not cost the same as a 5-page facebook-like site. A website you want 2 weeks from now will not cost the same as a website you want as a rush service within 24 hours.

What you need to do is go to sites like www.webmastersofafrica.com, search for a developer in your area, and narrow down your choices based on what you find out.

Good Luck!

and in Nigeria, how much on average do the equivalent positions that you have mentioned earn?

It is funny how NO ONE has actually answered the question, no matter how average or rough guess-timation would be

I would imagine that if you were to copy and paste your exact questions into google, tons of results would show up.

Hv u tried that?

@hanen

Technically, especially when dealing with a small set of pictures, you don't have to make thumbnails. If you are using PHP or any other backend language, you can use their inbuilt functions to scale the main picture accordingly so that all you have is one file to deal with.

@webemarald
Just curious but y would you advise someone to loop through their photos but you don't do it yourself on your portfolio page?


@webemarald/hanen
Lightbox 2 would take care of your respective concerns - the photos have a "next" and "previous" button. Also to avoid user confusion, you can state in your instructions that to exit the slideshow, the user can hit the ESC key as well.

give yourself a project, thatz all. If you are running out of ideas, simply walk down the street in your neighborhood and observe what is going on and I bet something will come to you. What's that? Oh, it's okoro at 111 ijegun road. Okoro how you dey now?

"yeah man, i dey. I hear say meekas don finish school. How coincidental. I just opened this shop 2 weeks ago and I need someone to build me an ecommerce website that will enable to sell to my customers in the US. It must most importantly have a back end so that I can track my inventory and it must also have shopping cart abilities so as to enable my customers pay via paypal and interswitch. The problem b say I wonder if meekas go fit do am or whether I for give am to you as I sabi say you go fit do am"

Suppose you wanted to test a condition like so:
if(bla) then
print A
else
print B
end if

Pretty basic stuff. But how many lines is that? Further more, imagine if you had to do this 100 times. I am sure your head is reeling at that thought right now. So is there a better and efficient way? I would say yes. The solution would be the ternary operator. With this operator, code like so:
<?php
if(bla) {
?>
print A
<?php
} else {
?>
print B
<?php
}
?>

could easily be rewritten as:
<?php echo (bla ? "A" : "B"; ?>

Of course, this is an over-simplified piece of code but hopefully, you get the point. For example, I use this all the time to determine what parts of my navigation menus to highlight on a given page, based on the URI.

Now, isn't that much easier?

Did you find this useful? Letz LEARN something! There are 15 other short and easy lessons I have compiled into an Ebook. You can email me at yawatide at yahoo dot com for details on how to obtain your copy.

Thanks

Yeah OmniPotens,

I am a firm believer in capitalism. Moreover, when I say I am going to do something, I actually do it, as opposed to talking about it

I look forward to receiving your mail and that of others.

The book is out folks. 26 pages, 15 chapters. First Edition

Each chapter is short and easy-to-follow. The longest chapters are 2 pages in length.

Table of Contents
Lesson 1: The Box Model

Lesson 2: CSS Positioning

Lesson 3: Coding to your top 5 priorities

Lesson 4: DIV tags and Setting Heights

Lesson 5: Tables are so 1990s

Lesson 6: Much Ado about DocTypes

Lesson 7: To List or not to List

Lesson 8: A Lesson in Website Optimization

Lesson 9: CSS Resetting

Lesson 10: TRouBLe TRouBLes those who TRouBLe TRouBLe

Lesson 11: Coding to Web Standards

Lesson 12: CSS Rollovers vs. Image Rollovers

Lesson 13: Website Architecture

Lesson 14: Are you in LoVe? HA!

Lesson 15: Testing/Quality Assurance

Appendix

For details on how to get your copy, please send me a mail at yawatide at yahoo dot com. Don't respond here please. Turnaround time is no more than 48 hours. Let's LEARN somethings and make our sites better!

Thanks.

@dual
Then you need to refer to it by it's correct name so as to use it within the correct context - boiler plate template. That's all I am saying: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boilerplate_%28text%29

@gamine
You have finally come around - sign of maturity. Kudos

@dual_core
so when you say:

yeap using templates is considered an amatuer thingy.

Are you implying that when you use code you have written before (which, letz face it, is a template), that that too is an "amateur thingy"?

Please explain.

@gamine

You see am? Kobojunkie pretty much has said the same thing as I.

@ztyle

if u r talking to me, sure. send me an email first though. I like to know more about the people I am chatting with before I actually YIM them.