₦airaland Forum

Could I be dreaming or in la la land?

After a long time, I spotted a punch online news article in my rss feed reader. I clicked it and wasn't asked to enter a username or password.

Could some sense have finally been slapped into the heads of the executives?

Others, please verify in case I am dreaming. If they have removed their stupid restrictions, could anyone vouch for when they were reversed.

This is a miracle!

Cool note Afam. I noticed 10 things but again, I will wait for others to partake b4 I list them. Stay tuned.

To me:

1) The name doesn't connote what the site is about
2) I find the colors to be quite glaring.

Having said that, I would say it is a nice concept. Good luck!

Well we can't say that biggjoe

Maybe he can't afford the credits to surf regularly or whatever. We can't really say. Let us give him some time.

Having said that, a wise man once told me many years ago that many people don't need help, because they don't appreciate it.

Well, well, well. I haven't originally posted an article in ages, due to responsbilities at work. I am bit free now and so trust me, my busy-body, lack-of-wat-to-do self decided to do some random google, researching for what could be the next explosive thread on this board

I decided to google NTA and found their website: http://www.nta.com.ng/

Let's offer some constructive criticism of the site. In other words, if you were hired to perform an audit of the site, what would you recommend? I will hold my peace till I see at least a few responses.

Oya! Let's hear it!

wow bigjoe. I wonder how long it would have taken if you opened up notepad and came up with the code yourself

Finally, b/w this thread and 2 others, this board is coming alive!!!

paste your code

good points Afam. I have encountered similar issues myself and have applied some of the above in resolving them.

? and = represent the name and value pair respectively. It allows you to pass variables into your back end code.

So for example, let's say you are running a site for the house of assembly and want to get the representatives from say, Lagos state. You would do:

details.php?state=lagos

You can also pass more than one name/value pair by adding a "&" in b/w value pairs. Again, using the previous example, if I wanted to get reps from say, the 1st district, you would do:

details.php?state=lagos&district=1

I hope this makes sense.

However, after reading this last comment I searched for contact address of his chambers and called a GSM line I saw there. Someone picked up the phone and I told the person about this website that has been on since Saturday where people can post news, photos and sign condolence register.

This is great man. If na for some other countries, you would be on CNN and all the other news outlets by now. Consequently, your site would have probably received so many hits that the server would crash. Oh well, small small

i don't think i could have done that if the register was not online.

This is the whole essence of the web - convenience.

Again, it would be nice if the Gani Family had access to this.

For the same reason not all fish get caught in your net when you go fishing

kai! internet good o! From her site, she has or will soon be on CNN. Next thing, she will write a book, make millions and retire with enough money to pass on to her great-grand-children

1) I am not in Nigeria and unlike naija phones, you don't just pick up a phone and call direct

2) based on past experience, chances are that if I filled the email form, it wouldn't go anywhere

3) I don't find fun in doing this. I do it out of love and by the way, I am not paid

4) The guy would have fired himself cos a website doesn't end with you collecting the check. Unless maintenance wasn't part of the deal, he is to check for such problems on a regular basis. Heck, there are sites that I am hosting now that I also developed and for which I got squared ages ago and guess what? I still visit such sites on a regular basis to fix issues. So again, the guy would have fired himself and this is probably a good thing as perhaps the next person in charge would be more qualified.

Folks, web dev is and should be treated like a profession, not something you do for fun or kicks.

(shudders)

Last December or so I was on a project that involved recoding all email templates that used CSS so that they used tables instead. Why? Because of word switching their rendering engine. I remember one particular templates having as many as 7 nested tables

gdi, abeg, no remind me again

good job biggjoe!

I knew that, as with other sites with issues that I bring up here, eventually the news would get to the right person. Yep, such could definitely lead to an ended career as well as (in an ideal country anyways ) cost someone an election.

What even took my busy-body there? I read in one of the online papers that Ondo state had opened up a condolence register for the late Gani. So I thought that naturally, a link to such a register (or even Afam's) would be on their site). Of course, my in-born curiosity took over from there

Case closed. Now off to another site to find faults with

smart:

u r obsessed with sheraton

Good idea! I never thought of it that way.

My approach is to have a long, nice talk with a potential client so as to know what they really want (when you say "dynamic", what do you mean? What is the site for? Will you be updating it regularly? When do you want this done? etc). Time limit varies but as recently as last week, my conversation lasted 1 hour at least. Why? Same reason as the poster's. I want to know exactly what the client wants. This, IMHO also has the added effect of letting the client know that I actually know what I am doing and that I am a professional.

When the client starts asking for price, I will tell them, "let's not focus on pricing now. I would rather focus on how I can help you or if I can even help you at all (this usually draws a laff or 2 )". After I gather all the info I need, I repeat it back to them ("So, you are saying you run an NGO, your website will have pictures of your projects, etc?" to make sure I didn't miss anything. I then give them my price, which accounts for a possible negotiation. Some at this point try to negotiate down at which point I tell them why I charge as much as I do. I also give them the "isn't it worth the peace of mind?" line. Conversion rate for me is, I would say, around 90%. Why this high? I am thinking it is partially because I deal strictly with referrals which means past clients have already done the selling for me.

The above has worked for me but I don't mind trying new things and will definitely try anything at least once. Again, nice idea. Thanks.

IMHO, I think it is http://www.ondostate.gov.ng/ (no remoranger gimmick intended )

In particular, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the thumbnail featuring mimiko and ekwueme.


I need to hire the person who did this ASAP.

What do you all think?

bugs24:
Happy ya ya ya, happy happy ya ya ya

How much you wanna bet that channels paid multi-thousands if not millions for this crap?

Yep, given I have done similar, they are storing the messages in a db for later reporting. Reasons could range from not specifying the correct db name to the name of the db itself to whatever.

Bottomline, this is unacceptable and it is such people who give us bad ones a bad name. Funny thing is, if I were to bring this up in a review here, I would get sacrificed on account of "discouraging" the guy and then i would be challenged with, "can I see your works?" They fail to see that in being tough, I am actually encouraging the guy.

If any one looking for developers via Nairaland is reading this, next time you hire someone, include end-to-end testing as part of your contract.

Just imagine, I have millions to spend on advertising and wanted a quick answer on conditions I need to fulfill before advertising on their website and tv station. They just lost some major dough.

MT send me email at yawatide at yahoo dot com and I will definitely hook you up. As smartsoft can attest, your eyes go open

Afam:

I have informed over 1000 of my (virtual) friends. Should your logs come up with a lot of hits from a certain locale, you know y

It's getting there.

One thing you might want to do for that right column is to make sure it's width lines up with the width of the white box, above the gray horizontal bar, for balance. Speaking ofwhich, I still think there is a color you could use to make it different from the gray to the left.

Nice lightbox, albeit with only one photo

that's what the web is about - instant info. well done.

What would even be cooler is if you could let the deceased's family aware of this site so they can see the register themselves.

Thanks for this and once again, well done.

Cactus:
The issue with respect to user interface isn't the training cos centers are a plenty but the quality of the instructors at such centers. How did the instructors themselves get to teach? Through googling and downloading free ebooks or through experience? Are they teaching as a way to make ends meet or because they actually have a passion for it?

There was a PH-based web dev company site that I found via random googling. They had a page called "seminars" and it had a bunch of pictures of people being "taught". It looked more like a group of people at a wake-keeping: none of the students had a computer (they all had a pen and an exercise book), the instructor stood in front of the class and pointed at a projector (as opposed to getting his hands dirty with the students). The students were charged I think 25K

Those sets of pictures spoke volumes. I kept telling myself, "you can do way better than this". For starters, every student would have a computer. They would type as I type. Maybe someone told someone, as I didn't hesitate to send out the URL, cos shortly thereafter, the pictures were taken down.

I would probably charge 25K for 5 days of intense training. Then if you sign up for the 2nd week, you will be paired with other students and assigned a project to come up with/deliver within that week. You may not be a good designer but you will be a solid architect and code with web standards at the very least.

I am still figuring it out. Will keep you all posted.

poster:
I didn't get the error either which is why I had asked if it was coming from a db (by the way, it isn't mandatory that you pull news from a db, though it is the most efficient way )

To suppress errors, consider try/catch or using the suppress symbol (@ - read up on it)

You take instructions well. I look forward to the final product. Good luck!

yeah, I did read the code and have an idea of what he it will do (it is most likely taking all the images on a page and absolutely positioning them ).  Having said that, I am still super paranoid 

no brother, otherwise I would have responded to your prior post immediately. I don dey grow grey hair. I don pass those levels

wow! I didn't know oyibo attends kwasu http://www.kwasu.edu.ng/portal/images/studentstudying1.jpg

Seriously though, I think we need to step back and ask for the criteria for judging. I still maintain that the original poster put up what he did for advertising purposes but playing Devil's advocate, letz assume it isn't so. Is criteria based on design/layout? If yes, so far, I am not impressed. I know Nigeria has better to offer. If no, and assuming it is functionality, again, I am not impressed. Again, I know Nigeria has better to offer.

Habitat website lost me with all those squares on the home page. I saw that and I immediately closed my tab.

To me criteria should be, at the least:
1) Home page load time
2) Layout/Design
3) Functionality (no broken links, forms work/validate well, etc)
4) A view source shows that the site is following web standards

Others feel free to chime in.