₦airaland Forum

I didn't do it but saw it advertised on some site. I figure shilling would like to be aware of it. . .

Sure, it has few issues here and there but it's clean, functionalstraight to the point: www.

Update:

I went ahead and implemented jomSocial for the dating section of the site and Ajax Chat for the group chat section of the site.

Maaaan! for $149, jomSocial is more than worth it. . .and to think I probably haven't even used up to 50% of its features. After customization, you would think I did it myself, from the ground up, he he. I strongly recommend it to anyone who has been thinking about it.

Consider this thread closed. To all those who contributed and to all those who simply viewed this thread, a big thank you

This might be old news for some, but all the same: http://www.alaba-intl.com/

I am seeing more and more news from premium times o! Looks like they are soon becoming the online news site to visit, he he.

1) Whereas this board has been pretty boring since 1st January, 2012 (interpretation: no google adwords revenue to NL stakeholders)

2) Whereas I have observed that OP hasn't been around too much ever since posting

3) Whereas I have also observed that in just a few days, this thread now has 5 pages of posts and is pretty much the only active thread on this board

I have come to the conclusion that this post was deliberately created for the purpose of generating page hits and traffic (interpretation: google adwords revenue to NL stakeholders). As a result, I will no longer actively participate on this thread as there is nothing to learn or gain from here other than the typical "naija" behavior of "i sabi pass my neighbor"

Note:
I am a pure capitalist and believe in the free market system. Having said that, I abhor what I have concluded to be a ploy. Can I prove it with evidence? Nope. . .Am I entitled to my own opinion? Yep

zebudaya,

It appears you are hearing me but not listening. If you were doing the latter in addition to the former, you would have understood that I am actually directly talking to the message/OP and not the messenger.

If you have noticed, I have purposely not picked any fights with anyone on here. This is because I firmly believe in the battle of ideas, as opposed to the "naija way" of "he/she who shouts loudest is in the right" - Caution!

In other news:
I am surprised about unotechmedia. Their sites/clientele are superb. I hope everything is alright with them. I would hate to see them disappear from the naija web dev scene. They are definitely trailblazers.

You folks love to celebrate and defend mediocrity. Shilling is right. Most African sites are ugly.

1) Shilling *may* be right based on personal experience and not facts.  If it is factual, may we see the evidence please
2) Most African sites are ugly?  Is this like Shilling's case of emotional arguments or factual argument?  If the latter, again, evidence please.

No one is celebrating or defending mediocrity here.  At least I am not.  We need to move past talking points that aren't based on facts.  Just because you haven't had the opportunity to see a good site doesn't mean they exist.  Also, when you say most, that assumes you have seen at least 51% of the Nigerian websites out there. . .and I doubt this is the case.  Again, if you have done your research well, present it to the forum and I will be the first one to take back all I have said here on this thread.

Already bored. Let's see what you've got.

If i had a Canadian dollar for each time I heard the bolded portion, I would have moved back permanently to Nigeria 10 years ago.

In response to your request:
You will never see what I've got (and if you do, it won't be from me), due to your attitude. Continue to think about things the way you do. To each, their own.

LOL girl, it aint that serious. It's a simple question, who says you have to gain anything?

Oh, it is that serious.  You don't know who could be reading this thread, perhaps seeking to employ a Nigerian web developer.  You don't know which business person may be thinking of opening up an outsourcing center in Nigeria who might be reading this thread.  You don't know which patriotic Nigerian abroad might be reconsidering their desire after reading your initial post.  So yes, "sista", it is that serious.

I will agree with you on one thing though, proving you wrong such that you never show face on here again (at least under the OP username) wouldn't gain us a thing. 

I know I may be ignorant but I hope Nigerian based web designers out there can prove me wrong.

1) Hopefully, the few who have posted so far have proved you wrong

2) As I mentioned in my first response, thanks for acknowledging that you may be ignorant. . .which isn't exactly a bad thing.  Ignorance, IMHO, is better than stupidity - with the latter, the person doesn't know and isn't willing to know

3) Just as you can whip up bad sites in Nigeria, I could do same for sites in the US/BC (and I am sure you could too). Again, I don't gain a thing by so doing.  If you insist though, I shall surely unleash.  After all, I did same to that guy from SA and we haven't heard from him since 

In conclusion, your post comes off as one of those "bash Africa" posts - never finding anything good about Africa, based on brain-washing, and nothing wrong with their own backyard. You say you are a "sista". Post like one

^^^Yep, we can merely suggest. . .and I suggest a minimum of 300K (negotiable)

I have a job at hand, the client want to build a website where he can sell recharge cards online, so i thought it going to be an easy one

Never assume any job will be easy.

now my client said he does not want to store Recharge cards on the server that he want a solution like the ATM mobile recharge

Sounds like you should have had an agreement for the initial solution or, agree to the new one but sign another MoU of sorts. I say this based on the above quote. At any rate, I am not familiar with atm mobile recharge and so unfortunately, I won't be able to be of any help to you on this. Sorry about that. Hopefully, others will be available.

I think the world of web dev has moved beyond number of pages. Just give the client what they want. If it comes up to 1 page, so be it. If it comes up to 100 pages (hopefully all dynamic, but I digress), so be it. Just make sure you are charging accordingly.

A post similar to this was posted here by some guy in SA about 5 or so years ago. I urged ppl to that post then and I am urging you all to ignore this post now. It is not based on facts but emotions. I personally could use proof by contradiction to prove OP wrong and tarnish his credibility forever but I won't. I wouldn't gain anything for doing that.

I know I may be ignorant but I hope Nigerian based web designers out there can prove me wrong. Can anyone post the url of a Nigerian based website that is impressive? Thanks in advance for educating me.

No offense OP but, this isn't an issue of "may be" but an issue of "am". . .and ignorant isn't necessarily a bad thing. At least, it is better than being stupid. Difference? Ignorance means you just don't know but are willing to learn. Stupid means one is incapable of learning.

OP:
Huuuuge 
Thanks for answering my questions

To all those who want to take this up:
I believe OP has helped narrow it down in more detail.  Now, you all have a better insight as to what is needed and how much you will charge. 
Good luck!

I am thinking this is a job for AJAX where on page A, Page B would be asynchronously queried.

1) What kind of organization do you have?
2) Do you have a website that you like that you would like yours modeled after?
3) What do you want on your website?
4) When do you need your website?

The above are just a few of the questions that I would need answered before I could possibly tell you about processes/cost involved.

OP:
1) Even the best neurosurgeon can't do a thing to save your life if he/she can not pin point a problem. So, you come in with a headache, think you need surgery and go meet a neurosurgeon. To reverse roles here, how do you expect the neurosurgeon to know what treatment is best for you if he doesn't probe you with questions ("where exactly does it hurt? What side of your brain is hurting? When does it hurt the most? etc)?

2) Location doesn't matter in the world of technology. I could literally be in Nigeria and work on a website in Atlanta. If you doubt me, ask facebook and YIM.

and what are "other basic things"? Better yet, to avoid back and forth, are there example websites they can point me to, so I can have a better idea of what they want?

I think sometimes it pays to "back up" and ask the pertinent questions. By so doing, you not only come off as a professional but as someone who actually know what they are doing and most importantly, you don't shortchange yourself in the process.

If I were approached to develop a "standard website", the first question I ask is, "could you please define, 'standard'"? It is like those who tell me they need an "interactive website" which 9 times out of 10 means they want a website with a contact page that has a contact form. Of course, if I were to go off my own assumptions, I probably would have assumed they wanted a site complete with blogs, social media icons and a member sign up section to boot.

Folks, always ask the pertinent questions first.

This answer might seem silly but if you read the tea leaves, there is seriousnes to it:

The equilibrium b/w as much as you are willing to charge and as much as the hotel is willing to pay.

Of course, I couldn't possibly give you a quote unless I knew all the features they wanted on the site.

^^^ Thanks for the tip. Will definitely check it out and report back to the group.

^^^ Unfortunately, I am bound to godaddy because I developed the original site on godaddy. The chat and dating scripts are add-ons for which he is willing to pay.

Trust me, I had wanted to change hosts from day 1 but for what I wanted to do, godaddy actually surprised me by supporting all the features I wanted to implement.

I just might settle for jomsocial. Still thinking about it though and am open to ideas within the next 48 hours, after which I will just close eye and go with something

Yeah I read about that.  Problem is, the host I will be using is goDaddy and as if I knew, they have a special section on their site dedicated solely to them:
http://www.skadate.com/hosting.php

Thanks for the recommendation though.

Wow! Is this training subsidized by the govt?

Update:
For the dating script, I think I am going to settle for JomSocial, merely because:
1) It is the cheapest option of all I found, at $150 for the mid-tier version
2) I am familiar with Joomla and this is basically an add-on
3) JomSocial has a module called mod_datingsearch

I am still researching what to use for group chat though I am thinking JomSocial might double for this as well.

Finally, Nigerians have figured out how, like d oyibo, to make fast cash with little or no effort: speaking engagements

So I see this screenshot at Linda Ikeji's blog. What catches my eye is the first topic to be discussed at the event.

What do you guys think? Let's discuss:

[img]http://4.bp..com/-QIh3-VdbQg0/T0yz8fm0-RI/AAAAAAAASI0/yH0qGwBaiII/s1600/bootcamp+2012+flier+audax.jpg[/img]

1) Must be PHP-based
2) Preferably open source though within reason, I don't mind paying for it.

I need these for a project I am working on. I have done my research and seem to like vld personals for dating and some chat scripts on hotscripts.com but would like to hear what you have to say, based on your experiences.

I would have loved to use jomsocial but from researching it, it doesn't seem as if you can group pple into age groups and do stuff like "man seeking woman, 30-40 years old" or stuff similar to that.

I look forward to your responses. Thanks in advance.

If I understand what you mean, then it is like any other anchor tag, as in:
<a href="link to pdf">pdf file name or reference</a>

Note: I like to do 2 additional things with PDFs
1) use target="_blank" as I don't want to take away from the user's experience
2) I like to specify 2 things:
a) that the link they are about to click is a PDF and include the size of the file (good for those who have to pay for their bandwidth)
b) that they might want to download the latest adobe reader (and provide a link to that site)

The more I study these hacking issues, the more I come to the conclusion that it is the fault of the hosts and not the websites, per se. I mean, I haven't been to this particular site but I doubt they were doing anything other than pure html. How would that pose a security threat?

I could be wrong but again, I think it is the fault of the web hosts. If it is, then especially for "mission critical" sites in Nigeria, we need to look at using trustworthy hosts, regardless of cost (within reason of course).

If so, what is the new url. . .which would be the 3rd, in so many years?

nna, remember when I thought that your site had given me a virus? I guess it was either vanguard or UK's Sun newspaper (a site i used to frequent a lot). As a result of that virus, my lappie has been out of commission for at least 3 days a week for the past month. As we speak, it has gone back to the shop though this time, I am demanding that the hard drive be completely replaced.

. . .and yep, I did have the latest AV definitions. In speaking with the guy helping me clean up, he says that hackers have even found a way to go around google such that a mere google search could download a virus without you knowing. He strongly advised that I use yahoo or bing.

A word is enough for the wise.