₦airaland Forum

Check it out!

http://www.tourism.gov.ng/

The news items are placed such that it makes the site hard on the eyes, IMHO. Maybe you should display just the paper names and then when the person clicks, they go to another page with the actual news items.

As dual has said, the facebook thingie has to go. Either that or consider changing its dimensions. The way it is now, it is pushing other news items below the fold and i am sure you will agree that the aim of the site isn't to promote your facebook friends but to show people the news.

good luck!

sisqo, be careful now - overdose on paracetamol can cause liver damage

I personally don't think price has anything to do with it. If a paper presents solid information, those who will buy it, will buy it, period!

Bear in mind that physical newspapers are dying worldwide. It's all about the internet. People have short attention spans and so they want info that is short, sharp and to the point. I don't know about Nigeria, but in my locale, generally speaking, people don't have time to turn pages of a physical paper. Majority of news is gotten online. I for one visit 10 Nigerian news sites a day to glean what is on their home page.

For newspapers (physical or online) to succeed in Nigeria IMHO, they need to, among others:
1) Cater to their target audience
2) Have a good ad revenue model
3) Engage the readers (comments, etc)
4) Avoid too much grammar and actually communicate with the reader
5) Ensure that the news topic matches what the article actually talks about (I see this violation a lot on the online papers)
6) Be original and not borrow- borrow from competitors

@clementcro
Your question has been answered in the 7 pages that make up this thread and the facebook closed group page.

In brief:
Our aim is to create a website which is better than the one you are seeing currently. We aren't out to compete with it but to hopefully work with someone who is in charge of it in implementing what we are about to do. Worse case, it receives no attention but we all learn from the process, with respect to how a successful project should be run.

Make sense?

lwkmd!!

With 30m, I would not only sell, but use part of the money to invest in another venture that I could hopefully sell for another 30m in the future.

As we say in my language (loosely translated): God no dey give "bad" animal (like lion) horns.

hint hint?

OP:
1) Partner with google to provide cheap websites? At what expense? You do realize that they are making billions, at your expense right?

lets try and lend a helping hand to one another.

2) that is exactly what I am trying to do with my advice to you

of course i could have said free but imagine what happens when you make something free, no one will ever appreciate it.

Not necessarily. for instance, you can impose conditions on your free work.

good luck!

pc:
LWKMD!! I guess you had a lot of time on your hands today

Questions for OP:
1) How far can 7K take you, with respect to your expenses?

2) Even if you get 1000 jobs as a result, how much time do you spend on these sites?  Divide this time by the money you are making. How much are you making per hour? Is it worth it?

3) Don't you think you would be better off developing websites for free for this price?  I happen to think so myself.

4) Out of the 7K, how much are you paying for annual hosting renewal? In other words, when all is said and done, what is your profit margin?

lol. dhtml is becoming predictable

u better join the jquery bandwagon man. The top dogs use it, so y not u?

ba ba God na ur handworkd, eeyo eeyo eeyo, kpirikpa!

cenme:
exactly. It is all about the Unique Selling Point. If you don't have that, to me, it will just be another facebook and it honestly gets boring after a while.

I have been playing with a jquery solution and it seems it is faster and more intuitive than this one. Of course, all the javascript you mentioned on there could be the culprit. Look to minimize the script, among other things.

timileyin:
Your options for updates are 2-fold. Either:
1) You watch this space on Sundays, or
2) Subscribe to the facebook private group (for this option, you will need to be actively involved in the project at some level)

McAfee Security Scan Plus

As at the time of this post, the site is down again

Tweet unto others as you would want others to tweet unto you. But don't tweet too many times in a row because, someone like me will unfollow you so quickly, you wouldn't know what hit you. . .and if you did know what hit you, you wouldn't know how to describe the feeling

to add to what favo just said, unless you know for a fact that the existing ones don't have what you need, then don't reinvent the wheel.

An example:
I used to go to school with a guy who is a lawyer.  All of a sudden, he decided he wanted to be a coder, started from year 1, though he could have done it for master's.  He got laughed at cos ppl thought he was setting himself up for failure.  

Long story short, he ended up being one of the go-to guys, worldwide for JAVA.  About  a year into his studies, he wanted to do something with PhotoShop but it wasn't quite giving him what he wanted.  What did he do? He ended up coding his own version of PhotoShop, in JAVA.  Now, bear in mind that this was when JAVA was in its infancy and had, maybe, 500 classes.  We had to do simple things like square root manually.

So again, unless it is absolutely necessary, don't reinvent the wheel. Just like cenmegasys says, worse case, you can always build upon an existing one.

@databoy247
The number of peeps are what you saw in that email I sent you guys last week. Their names and contact info are also on the info sheet that is available at the link pasted on the facebook page. As for competition, I wouldn't worry about that. I would just do my thing and hope for the best.

Good luck! I look forward to your entry.

1) Assuming you have a file called poster.css (which should preferably be in a css folder, you would link it in your html file like so:
<link href="/css/poster.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

2) Your poster.css files would then have all your style definitions

Advantages:
1) Separation of content from presentation
2) Code is cleaner
3) Clean code from above make search engine spiders happy, which means you are more likely to rank higher than the competition
4) Smaller html file size which means faster download times, which also ties into #3 above
5) By putting your styles into an external file, it is easier to make global changes

Good luck!

Also include the following, among others:
1) Optimize your META title, keywords and description
2) Ensure your HTML is clean
3) Images should have alt tags
4) Minimize use of flash
5) Don't use splash pages
6) Article submissions, with links to your site.

If I were to be approached for advice on this, I would say: Think original. No more copy copy. No more borrow borrow. Facebook was unique compared to its competition at the time (myspace, etc). Come up with something original.

The truth, they say, is bitter.

My firefox didn't show me this. . .and I just visited the site about 15 mins ago.

Hopefully, I am not a victim

guru01:
call me a sucker for news but, that site is one of the 10 sites I visit daily for Nigerian news. It is thus annoying when such a site is down for preventable reasons. That's all.

Also, based on experience, there are many people on here who are directly or indirectly involved with various peoples who did various websites. By exposing them on this (popular) forum, sometimes the "powers that be" act fast (is this what happened here?) to avoid further embarrassment thereby ensuring a 100% user satisfaction with their sites.

did I answer your question?

Weekly Update:

1) Wireframes were completed and approved by the group

2) DBAs drafted a DB Schema and currently those involved are consolidating their respective schemas

3) Now that it has been agreed upon that a custom CMS will be used, Graphics Designers have been given the green light to come up with their mockups. The "winner" will be chosen by the group. This will ensure fairness. Once winning mockup is chosen (October 10, 2011), front end developers will proceed with slicing the home page and 1 inner page, which the back end developers will then use to "do their thing".

Next update in a week. . .

https://img705.imageshack.us/img705/8317/dailyindependent.png
Why? Take a visit: http://www.dailyindependentnigeria.com/

Naija!

Quick (dumb) question:
How does a kid with blue eyes and a finger over his lips, as seen in your header image, make my dreams come true?