₦airaland Forum

exactly. don't let anyone intimidate you when it comes to wether or not to use a template. Of course, I personally would prefer that you do something unique, especially for high-paying customers or get a template and not use it as-is but rather, customizing it to fit your needs but that doesn't mean you shouldn't use a template if you must.

Just remember this, the keyboard you used to type your post is based on a template. Your very body is a template for crying out loud. So, no worries

someone should have done some feasibility studies to first find out if any other papers our there did what they did. For choosing to ignore the most basic of business rules, they deserve to be where they are today.

Now it will take some time for people like me to regain their trust. Too bad, so sad.

deb: take a look at the screen shot below, from the about us page, as viewed in FireFox and you tell me if the guy who did it could be deemed lazy. Or, does the guy have a broken arrow going in one ear and coming out the other? 

A model which, if they had paid competent people, would not have been implemented in the first place. A simple google of even Nigerian online papers, their closest competition, would have made them realize that the model was doomed to fail from the get-go.

There is no excuse for what they did. If they really wanted to maximize profit and were not getting returns from regular ads, they should do what again, their competition is doing: pepper their site with google ads. After a year of not getting any ads on my news site, I did just that and now, my google ad revenue is up from $5 a month 2 years ago, to $12 a month a year ago, to currently $20 a month.

Again, a simple feasibility study by competent people (granted it would have cost more money but hey, you shouldn't look at the price but the opportunity to stand out amongst the competition) would have pointed that out long time ago.

Charging for mobile content, I sort of understand. Charging for regular web content? No way!

If true, it's about time. The last time I visited, after 3 or so months, which was around the time Nkem Owoh was kidnapped, you still had only the 1 paragraph of teaser text with the invitation to "subscribe to read more". I therefore put them again on indefinite suspension.

I will give them another shout out today. If based on the articles I want to read, they still tease, another indefinite suspension!

pie: welcome back. wey you been dey hide?

man-know-man, scratch my back I scratch yours

Typical naija!

Vaguely recalling the old site, I prefer that to this.  The site probably looks the way it is cause, as stated above, it was made for free:

1) Why the horizontal scroll?
2) Contact page: Anyone note the large green space due to the lack of content in the white area?
3) What in the world is "DA brand" and "beautiful naija (I assume the site is meant not for us but "outsiders""?
4) Why are the headers so large (both in dimension and size)?
5) What do I stand to gain from registering on the site?
6) The pages take forever to load (and I use a pretty quick connection)

The only 2 things I like are:
1) The ajax search
2) the white bars that slide over the nav items when I hover over them

My verdict:
Pay a professional (usually based on merit not nepotism), to do a better job.  We earn billions in oil revenue.  There is nothing wrong in spending say, N10m for a top quality website.  At the end of the day, the site should be about convincing otherwise, those who think that Nigeria is all about 419.

The rebranding exercise via this website is a total waste of time. If I were an "outsider", I would say to myself, "if these guys can't even get their website straight, why should I trust them?

remo:
cold don catch you finish? You don score yet?

So as many of you may know, I visit certain trusted (based on the fact that they are constant in news for a very long time and their layouts are such that I can tolerate) online paper websites for my daily news.  Daily independent is one of them.  Yesterday, I did my thing and noticed that the "webmasters" didn't bother to do a simple sanity (regression) test on the live URL box after updating the news, resulting in the site being down due to a parser error.  Usually when this happens, I give them a 2nd and depending on how good they have been over the years, a third try.  After that, "see you later (that is how i stopped visiting punch's website, after 3 years as they are forcing subscriptions on certain news items)".

Today the site is back up and as i was doing my thing, I noticed something rather odd - horizontal scroll.  Again, I am not a coding saint (granted again, I would have done some sanity testing before launch) but there are things which are inexcusable.  Anyways, my eye caught the "half ad" to the right and that is the "raison d'etre" of this post:

If I were an advertiser (I assume they at least visit sites their ads are featured on and take the kind of notes I am setting forth here. If not, God help us all), I would be foaming at the mouth right now, considering I most likely spent a ton of bucks to feature my ad on the site.  How do potential customers get to potentially see my ad?  Even if it is a google ad that they own, how do they again, get potential clicks, if people can't even see the ad or half of it, at that?  Please see attached image.

To whom it may concern:
Fix the problem ASAP.  I have no personal interest in the site but want to see us, as web developers, grow as an industry.  If and when that web conference holds, again, rather than focus on building the next facebook clone, the basics of our trade need to be focused on first.  It seems in an attempt to be the next larry page, sergey brin, bill gates and zuckerberg combined, we forget the little, inexcusable stuff.

Okay, I am off my soap box now 

hmm, this reliance on dreamweaver thing, na wa wa o! 

Here is the logic of how I would go about it.  If you take the time to code it by hand, I guarantee you will get it done in half the time it will take you to learn the hoops via dreamweaver:

1) Create a login form

2) Have at least 3 tables:
a) table A contains user information (primary key, name, date of birth, etc)
b) table B contains a primary key, key from table A (as secondary key) and access level ID (another secondary key)
c) table C contains access level ID (as primary key) and access level description

3) when you process input from #1 above (I do this in what I call a "processor" page), you test the input against what was entered.  Assuming everything checks out (via mysql SELECT statement), one of the columns you would select results from would be access level ID from #2b above.  Of course, you would also perform front end validation and back end validation, to further, hopefully, sanitize your input.

Assuming 2 levels (administrator and employee):

4) You can use the php header() function to redirect user A to one page and user B to another.  Having said that:

5) It doesn't make sense to redirect people to different pages.  What if you have 1 million users? Are you going to create 1 million pages?   what if you need to make an update as simple as changing font color on say, 500 of those pages?  You see where I am going?  Maintenance for one would be a nightmare.  What I would do? I am glad you asked:

6) You have what I like to call a "landing page", a page with all options for user A and user B.  Then depending on access level, you turn "on" or "off" certain features.  I think this is more efficient.

Make sense?  Either way, learn hand-coding (In your case code via dreamweaver's code view ONLY).  Trust me, you will be the better person for it.

good luck!

To all:
This post is similar to: https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-358650.0.html

sent.

Sorry for the delay - it's been one crazy weekend. spread the word about the book and I hope you find it hopeful and useful.

good luck!

I got the proposal I have been using for the past 3 or so years by googling for "sample website design proposal".

try that if you still don't have what you need.

good luck!

he he, on all other threads except this one

I too have the right to defend myself in public but I will chose not to

By the way, I don't think anyone is blaming anyone but some "thing (I will let you fill in the blanks here)". The work-flow process has broken for well-meaning forumites as a result of this "thing", thus leaving some frustrated.

Again, I will choose not to defend myself in public on this one and consequently, will be the bigger person and take the high road. It serves no purpose.

ROFLMAO! LWKMD!!

hmm, i remember this SE being advertised either here or on the programmers section last week. which one come be a few days ago?

hmm, i believe there is a board for dating

The first meeting will more likely than not be financed by attendees which is why I stated in my first response that rather than focus on building the next facebook clone, more important issues like who finances the event (self sponsorship or corporate sponsorship), purpose of the event, etc be ironed out during the first meeting.

IMHO, the minute you start to focus on building whatever app, it will boil down to "do you know who i am?" and become political as everyone will be jockeying to outdo the other.

Get to know each other first for crying out loud, before proceeding

@Yawa-ti-de:  You need to learn to be more helpful.

I thought I was    Do I take just what you have to say or do others, and in particular, the poster, share the same view?    I don't think it is for you to say, with all due respect.  You can't speak on behalf of the original poster.  If his views reflect yours, I will duly retract.  Till then, I will take nothing back.  Sorry.

He asked a question.  Answer it or leave the thread alone!

I did.  In case, you missed it, I will post it again:

My advice? See if you can buy (preferably) or google for an ebook on software development.  Something generic then based on your locale, see if you can solicit from your peers what language is hot so that you can concentrate on that.  Then take it one day at a time, give yourself an assignment to put into practice what you have learned and then go get a job for the experience before venturing into self employment.

By the way, call me jobless and hopeless but I find post #4 very shady

Have a good and stress-free weekend 

and what do posts like this end up achieving. Is this another "do you know who I am?" type post where someone will say, "I am a banker" which basically boils down to wearing a coat and tie in hot weather counting other people's money? Perhaps the topic of the thread is a bit misguided?

IMHO, body of post is spot on and that should be worthy of discussion from contributors.

My advice? See if you can buy (preferably) or google for an ebook on software development. Something generic then based on your locale, see if you can solicit from your peers what language is hot so that you can concentrate on that. Then take it one day at a time, give yourself an assignment to put into practice what you have learned and then go get a job for the experience before venturing into self employment.

good luck!

whether he tells anyone the price or not, very few will take it on regardless. Phone call will only end up wasting the caller's credit.

At least poster is honest with respect to how much he can afford. That to me matters most

If I give grade now, you will either be discouraged or encouraged and consequently, either make all the changes or not, depending on what I say. So let's wait till you are done making these changes at the least.

Layout-wise, what I see is a 2-column site, text on left, photo on right. I personally would say ditch the purple background and rather make it a border so that the content area is white and that you should spruce it up with more images and at that, images that are directly related to the page I click on. Having said that, if the customer likes what they see, there is little much else I can say. I decided at the onset of 2009, that beauty is in the eye of the beholder so rather than focus on design/layout, I will look at the stuff I have mentioned above.

good luck!

you can YIM me for a css ebook (yawatide at yahoo dot com)

If you can't stand the heat stay out of the kitchen 

1) "Set myenterpriseng as my home page" - Make that a clickable link
2) Fading photos: remove photo of guy with hairy chest - it is giving me the creeps
3) Make sure you perform proper validation (front and back) on the contact page.  Right now, page is broken
4) photo of babe on contact page - I don't see the relationship. Could babe have a phone to her head?
5) requirements page: add "back to top" at regular intervals and make the requirements intra-links to what's below
6) what is point of text field under "keep me logged in"?
7) Move "keep me logged in" below login field.  Also below that, put the "forgot password" link
8 ) Footer: what is the point of the purple box next to "rules"?
9) remove embedded styles
10) site is simple enough. why didn't you use floated DIVs, as opposed to tables?
11) Footer navigation inconsistent with what's up top.  Move additional links below the nav that matches the top
12) Not all footer nav options are clickable

In Nigeria? IMHO, if the infrastructure (connectivity, power, etc) remains the way it is now (and what's to say, based on experience that it will change much?), we will probably remain where we are today.

Better yet, any hope for vision 20-2020?

Wow! I thought publisher was only for flyers, envelopes, etc.

Hopefully someone can help you. In the future though, maybe you use a ubiquitous IDE like dreamweaver, that is, if you must.

good luck!

the answer is similar to one quiz yawa posted some time back.

The above implies inside trading and in some countries, you, like bernie maddoff, would go to jail for a long time

he he, your grammar is blowing my head off but I will take your word for it

Welcome back!

wow kheme, u still alive. kheme, a member of the old nairaland guard

dual core: heeeeeeeh, now wey my laff don reach london, you no go stop. heeeeeeeeh

anyways, lanbaba, learn html then css then javascript, in that order. Once you are comfortable with those, you can step into php, jsp or whatever backend language you want to learn. You can use dreamweaver but do so strictly in code view and while you are at it, turn off (it can be done though I don't remember how) all help (like auto-complete of tags, etc). Once you have it down pat, then you can turn those back on as a complement, not a supplement.

good luck!