In a perfect world, every web project would be built on powerful technologies that are easy to deploy, easy to use, and easy to maintain. In the real world, however, you will never find a technology that offers all that, and it is critical to decide which development tool to use before starting a project. Choosing the right tool will cut down on development time and ensure the final product’s scalability (ability to handle an increasing amount of work in a graceful manner).

Content management systems (CMSs) and model-view-controller (MVC) frameworks are two types of tools that are used by SmarttNet to build web applications and websites. I will review three examples of these tools by looking at the following areas:

• The back-end user interface (UI) for average users (for example, the type of person who uses online banking).
• The development and maintenance of web projects.

MANAGING WEB CONTENT

CMSs are software systems are used to create and manage web content without any knowledge of web programming or markup languages.

WORDPRESS

WordPress is an open source blog tool and publishing platform that allows users to edit website content without knowing how to write HTML code.

Back-end UI:The UI is simple to use.
Development: The front-end template development of WordPress is quite straightforward and customizable. However, not all the plug-ins, which offer additional functionalities, are well-designed and usable. It takes the same amount of time to develop a new plug-in as it does to develop a similar web application without using any premade frameworks.
Maintenance: It’s very easy to maintain and upgrade the back-end core as long as the plug-ins don’t break.

DRUPAL

Drupal is an open-source CMS that allows users to publish, manage, and organize a wide variety of content on a website. SmarttNet uses Drupal to develop medium to large client websites when the project requires customized back-end system, database-driven functionalities.

Back-end UI: The UI can be complicated depending on what modules are used.
Development: Drupal offers a really good set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that allows developers to quickly create database-driven applications. However, Drupal’s front-end elements are not as customizable, especially when the web designer wants to do something fancier than use the default Drupal-generated HTML code.
Maintenance: If the site is built with complicated modules, it is difficult for average users to maintain and upgrade the system. However, if only simple modules are used, it is quite straightforward for them to perform those maintenance tasks.

SEPARATING BUSINESS LOGIC AND THE UI

MVC frameworks are based on the philosophy of separating business logic (functional algorithms that handle the information exchange between a database and a user interface) from user interface considerations; this allows developers to change each part without affecting the other.

YII

Yii is a PHP framework for creating web applications, and it provides a great set of tools for developing features and functionalities quickly.

Back-end UI: Since the framework only provides basic functionalities, the whole back-end UI and workflow can be defined by the development team and clients. As a result, the user usually knows how to navigate the system well because the workflow has been defined by them.
Development: It takes time for developers to get familiar with the system classes and to use them well. Once they know the core system, Yii is the most customizable and powerful tool to develop web applications and websites.
Maintenance: The maintenance tasks for systems and websites developed under this platform are almost impossible for average users to maintain and upgrade. It requires a great deal of development experience and familiarity to carry out these tasks.

CHOOSING WISELY

As you can see, tool has its strengths and weaknesses. When choosing a technology to develop a web project, it’s not enough to just consider the features it provides—the developer must also consider the technical skill level of the users and the future maintenance of the web application or website.

Most clients enter into a development project unaware of what a wireframe is or why they are used. A wireframe is the schematic of a website. It’s created before any design or functionality is applied. It blends information architecture with navigational elements, content, and other interface essentials.

Wireframes are usually produced by one person: either the information architect (who defines the structure, organization, and navigation of a website) or the designer. This is fine for small projects, but for websites that require detailed functionality, a more collaborative approach is best. In this case, many chefs can make the broth that much nicer.

Working Together

The development team can meet with the client to discuss exactly what will go on each page of the website. Everyone’s voice is heard because the client gets to work in tandem with the development team to plan out the user experience for the site. Programmers can also express any concerns for over-imaginative design concepts while suggesting realistic alternatives.

As a group, they can draw ideas on a whiteboard or on paper. The most important part is to record all thoughts and decisions so the wireframes can be digitally crafted into a pretty PDF or—even better—an interactive template. This brings the skeletal structure of the site to life and can be submitted to the client before design decisions are set in stone.

Wireframe Deliverable

So how is the final wireframe document created? EightShapes is a powerful system for creating wireframes and is more effective than other software solution. It uses Adobe InDesign to generate an interactive PDF or Flash file placed in a HTML page. Designs can be quickly assembled from a library of pre-existing assets. Styles can be added to buttons and text with one click. The final result is an attractive wireframe that reflects the decisions made during the collaboration session. This can be distributed to other members of the development team for embedding with additional deliverables or code annotation by programmers, thus continuing a more efficient collaboration process.

HTML, the language used for structuring and presenting content on the Web, has evolved since its inception. Its current version, HTML5, offers new elements that reflect typical usage on modern websites. Recently, two somewhat contradictory announcements about HTML5 were published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG), who have both been involved in its development.

HTML5 as a Movement

First, W3C proudly announced the creation of an HTML5 logo. W3C’s statement takes a marketing-oriented approach; it considers this new standard a “movement” and is using logos, stickers, and even t-shirts to promote it!

Developers have been aware of HTML5 for years, but this announcement redefined W3C’s position on the use of HTML5. Before this statement, it was not considered a fully completed technology that was ready for use. Now W3C is clearly advising developers to take advantage of all its features. (By the way, some developers would be surprised to see CSS3 described as a new feature, considering that it is a different technology, regardless of the version of HTML standards.)

It was certainly the best time to proclaim this position: just a few weeks later, Firefox 4, Google Chrome 10, and Internet Explorer 9, all of which seem very proud of including more HTML5 features, were launched. (For an example, check out Firefox’s Web O’(pen) Wonder.)

HTML as a “Living Standard”

A few days after this announcement, the WHATWG announced on its blog that the time had come to stop talking about HTML numbered versions because this specification is now a “living standard”. Instead of calling this technology merely a draft because new features continue to be added, the WHATWG will maintain a document that defines the technology as it evolves.

The idea is interesting, but as the majority of websites are currently written in HTML 4, talking about numbered versions is a way to differentiate websites based on which technology they use. Furthermore, we can’t really consider Web standards to be a living process until all users update their Web browsers to the latest version. And even though Microsoft is working to make Internet Explorer 6 disappear, it will take some time before all users are able to enjoy the new Web features made possible by this new technology.

And if there won’t be any more numbered versions, what shall we do with our new HTML5 t-shirts?

Content is getting to be a popular term these days, and it encompasses a lot of things. Content is practically everything that we find and interact with on the web. Text? Content. Graphics? Content. Video and audio? You guessed it, content too.  A tweet, a Facebook post? User-generated, but content nonetheless.  Content is everywhere and it’s what people are searching for, but as developers and managers of websites, we tend to forget that what we’re building and managing is a content-delivery platform.

Good Content is Great for Businesses and Helpful to Users – Everybody Wins

Content is a pretty big deal. Especially to a growing group of content strategists, a dedicated and impassioned group of web professionals, who advocate for thoughtful planning and skilled execution of online content. What’s the result of web content that’s well-thought out and expertly executed? A website that serves your business goals as well as your visitors needs.  So if you want a more effective website, you want to start with more effective content.

Getting to the Bottom of Good Content

Effective content starts with a content strategy, and if you can’t bring a content strategist in to help you out, you can get on the path to good content just by thinking like one. Think strategically about content. Obsess, get philosophical and daydream about really amazing content and study the good stuff you come across – note why it’s good and what purpose it’s serving for the user and for the company. Alternately, pause to ask why a given piece of content is bad before you click away from it.  Think about content in the context of social media – what gets shared the most? What’s drumming up the most conversation? Understand the trappings of good content and work towards creating and curating it for your audiences.

Content is a Can of Worms. Open it up Early in the Project – Not the Day Before Launch

A kick-off meeting is a good place to ask, “what about content?” Well, what about it? Get the answers (or at least start the discussions) to who’s going to create it, what it’s going to be, when and where it’ll appear. Asking these questions will open up the floodgates to more and (I’m warning you now) it’ll get messy. But that’s okay, because content is complicated…all the more reason to have the content ironed out sooner than later. When we have a better idea of the content we want to feature on the site, we can plan for, design around and create user experiences to support it. As users who mine the web for content that’s useful and delightful to us, we know all too well the value of really great content. It’s the stuff that helps us do what we went to a site to do (stuff like: make a decision on what to buy, learn more about the company, get an address etc.) and it’s the stuff that makes us want to share with our friends. It’s time that we, the people responsible for our companies’ websites, took this to heart.

Image credit: smemon87 /cc

Our company uses quite a bit of custom built web applications on our Smartt.com website. When we decided to migrate Smartt.com (a Wordpress website) to Drupal, we immediately ran into problems applying the Drupal theme to those custom built applications.

I hope this solution that we discovered can help you if you are also struggling with the same problem.

1. Create a page node in Drupal and call it Wrapper Top. Write down the node ID as well as the page URL (let’s assume the node ID here is 3).
2. Create a page node in Drupal and call it Wrapper Bottom. Write down the node ID as well as the page URL (let’s assume the node ID here is 4).
3. Create a file that only includes your Drupal header and some additional markup, and call it page-node-3.tpl.php under your Drupal theme directory.
4. Create another file that contains only the footer section of your Drupal template, and call it page-node-4.tpl.php under your Drupal theme directory. Now if you try to access those two pages, you’ll see one with only the header and one that has no style applied but has all the footer HTML markup.
5. In your web application, read and output the Wrapper Top page in the header section and do the same to read and output the Wrapper Bottom page in the footer section.
6. If your web application has its own title, you can use str_replace or preg_replace to manipulate the Wrapper Top page content before you print the content out.

Image credit: Gábor Hojtsy /cc

Statistics show that 4 out of 5 businesses fail. This means that if you’re going to succeed in business, you need to understand what your customers want by measuring how they respond to your products. It isn’t enough to maintain a blind faith in the value of your products, you need to be quick to act when something isn’t working. The unsettling fact is that many great products simply don’t sell in the marketplace, but if you’re willing to try and fail a few times you’ll eventually stumble upon a winning formula.

The beauty of starting an online e-commerce business is that you can easily change your products and marketing strategy because you aren’t weighed down by the high cost of expensive stock and the maintenance costs of a traditional retail store. Using inexpensive online marketing, social media and analytic tools you can engage your customers, test different marketing approaches and monitor how they respond to your products without spending tens of thousands of dollars on an idea that may not sell.

Let’s take a look at the differences in startup cost and marketing for offline and online businesses with a brief cost analysis of both options.

Costs of An Offline Retail Store:

Much more money up front.

In addition to your monthly lease payment and the obligation to rent a storefront for a minimum of 6 months to a year, you will have to pay to properly renovate your storefront, create a sign and buy equipment, which can run into the thousands of dollars. Let’s go with a moderate figure of $10,000 for renovation, sign creation, lease closing costs and equipment costs.

Cost of you monthly lease.

Here in Vancouver, a streetfront store in one of the cities’ neighbourhoods costs between $50-75 per square foot. The average storefront retail shop is around 1000 square feet so your monthly rentals costs on the lower end of the commercial real estate market ($50/sq. foot) will be $4166 in leasing cost per month.

Cost for reliable sales staff.

For a retail store you’re going to likely need at least 2 staff members working 9:00 am to 7:00 pm each day of the week. Let’s say you pay your sales staff $12/hour, that will be $240 in labour costs each day, $1680 per week and $6720.

Total Cost:

$10,000 initial investment and then $10,886 per month in costs.

Costs of An Online E-Commerce Store:

Cost of web development for your website.

To get a custom e-commerce website created it will start around $6,000. This would include your entire shopping cart platform, a company blog, social media integration, user reviews and ratings, and full e-commerce analytics tracking of visitors and sales.

No cost for sales staff.

Instead of paying over $6,000 dollars a month in sales staff, you can spend that money driving traffic to your website using highly-targeted PPC advertising. If you don’t want to handle the orders and shipping of stock yourself then you can easily hire someone to do this for you at a fraction of the cost of having sales people working in your store 10 hours a day.

Online marketing is more effective.

Compared to traditional marketing, which is difficult to track, there are many advantages of online marketing.The biggest advantages of marketing an online e-commerce website is that you can track your ROI (return on investment) from every marketing dollar you spend.

Monthly web hosting costs.

To host a e-commerce website on high-speed servers it will cost you around $30/month. You will then want to hire someone to do online marketing for your website and provide technical assistance if you ever have problems with your website which will cost around $2,000/month.

Total Cost:

$6,000 initial investment and $2030/month in costs.

Minimizing The Risk

As you can see the startup costs are significantly lower for an E-commerce website (plus you don’t have to get locked into an expensive long-term lease) than a traditional retail storefront. On top of the expenses for both an offline and online business, you will need to spend money marketing and promoting your new business.

For some entrepreneurs, depending on the products they want to sell, either one of these options could be superior. However, the lower costs and better tracking of marketing for an e-commerce website provides a less risky and easier testing ground to fine-tune your new business model. For retail business owners that want to expand their operations across Canada, the United States and globally, an E-commerce website can help them dramatically expand their overall sales.

Most importantly, for new businesses an e-commerce website allows provides a relatively inexpensive way to test out your products and then easily expand into retail locations and a larger e-commerce system as your customer base increases.

Today Wordpress released its highly anticipated Wordpress 3.0 “Thelonious” update. The new release is a huge step forward in Wordpress’ transition from a blogging platform to a more flexible, full-featured content management (CMS) system.

Wordpress continues to be one of the most popular blogging and CMS platforms with over 10.3 million downloads of the previous version 2.9. This exciting new version maintains Wordpress’ famous lightweight, easy-to-install and simple-to-use user interface.

Some of the key new features:

• A better designed and more easily customizable default theme called TwentyTen
• The integration of WordPress Multi-User so you can run multiple websites from the same administration dashboard.
• Custom background support, easily update your background without modifying any code
• You can now create custom post types for different kinds of content. Previously, the options were limited to writing a new blog post or a static page.
• Easy menu creation and management from the WordPress backend where you can now create multiple menus, categories and custom external/internal links on your navigation menus.
• Custom taxonomies to include more complex tagging and organization of content.
• New developer API to make custom Wordpress themes even more powerful.
• Lighter interface with contextual help available on every screen.

Watch the new WordPress 3.0 video tour to see all the new features:

If you’re thinking of upgrading your current version of Wordpress, you can use the auto-upgrade feature from the Wordpress Dashboard. Fortunately, most themes and plugins will continue to work with Wordpress 3.0 but make sure you backup your database and files before upgrading.

If you want give the new version a try, you can download Wordpress 3.0 at the official website here. The developers have also posted a live download counter where you can see how many people are downloading the new version. At the time of publishing, Wordpress 3.0 had been downloaded 19,702 times (not bad for one day!).

The new emphasis on real-time search results will mean that many sites that consistently ranked near the top of the search results page will take a hit. This will give savvy webmasters who understand the dynamic environment of  real-time social media an excellent opportunity to significantly boost their Google rankings.

Here is a brief rundown of what we know about Google Caffeine and SEO:

Speed Will Matter More

If you’re hosting your business website on a cheap $5.95/month unlimited hosting account, now might be the time to upgrade. The time it takes for pages on your website to load is now an important ranking factor on Google. Studies have repeatedly shown that improving your page loading speed results in increased user retention, more conversions and lower costs in the long run.

To make things easy, Google has provided a new Site Performance diagnostic tool in their Google Webmaster Accounts. In addition to a using fast host, you can improve the loading speed of your pages by:

1. Writing clean HTML and CSS code
2. Minimizing or eliminating unnecessary use  of Javascript
3. Compressing your image files so they load faster
4. Using a CMS program that enables page caching

Fresh Content Is King

With the new Caffeine update fresh, well-written content will be more important than ever. Established businesses with static websites will drop in the search rankings and more engaged businesses with active blogs will take their place. Google has to continually innovate and update their search algorithm to stay ahead of the spammers that try to cheat their way to the top of search results. This update will be one more nail in the coffin of “black hat” SEO spammers and will reward webmasters that provide fresh, meaningful and original content in their specific niche.

To take advantage of real-time search results and give your website a solid boost, here are some ideas:

1. Publish regular content like blog posts, press releases and company news on your website. You should try to add fresh content at least 2-3 times a week.
2. Encourage interaction on your website through comments, social bookmarking and social media links.
3. To take advantage of real-time search, post important new product or service announcements on your blog and on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Backlinks Are Still Paramount

The Google Caffeine update will not make any major changes to Google’s off-page factors, so quality and relevant backlinks will continue to be the most important ranking factor. The only difference is that links and references from social media sites like Facebook and Twitter will be elevated in their importance. To increase backlinks, the focus should be more on spending the necessary time to create engaging and informative content which will have the best potential to spread virally on social networks.

So, in order to take advantage of Google’s new Caffeine update you should have a regularly updated blog, test your page loading speed in Google’s Webmaster Tools to pinpoint page elements that are slowing things down and develop a strong backlink strategy that targets the viral potential of social media networks.

Target your International Market

The first step involved with breaking into the global marketplace is to do your research.  Just as you had to research your local market, you will have to research the markets in EVERY country you wish to do business in.  Start by analyzing the market to make sure it has a place and a need for your product.  Oftentimes you’ll have to do a little additional research to allow for cultural differences.  What works well in one country, may not be applicable in other countries.  Make sure you don’t offend your potential buyers due to an innocent mistake that could have been easily avoided by doing a little research.

Assess your Website Communication

Before you can successfully break into another market, you need to make sure your communication is clear. As a general rule write as though you’re writing for an eight year-old.  Working in this way ensures that your sentences are simple, easy to read and easy to understand.  Using one specific word to describe something makes it easier for foreigners to understand what you’re talking about.  For example, choose between “bike” and “motorcycle,” but don’t use both interchangeably, this confuses communication.

Check your order forms to make sure they’re adaptable to people in other countries who format their addresses differently.  Forms should be optimized so that anyone from anywhere in the world can fill in the form without it freezing up on them.  If your website makes reference to any specific national holidays, this is something that should be changed- holidays differ from country to country and these cultural details should be kept in mind.

Create Localized Websites

Once your main website is optimized for international business, it’s time to target each region specifically.  The first step for many companies is to translate their website into 5 major languages: Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, French and German.  This is a good step only if your company is large enough and has the resources to support a project of this size.  Otherwise, take it slowly.  Research where your product is likely to take off and start by translating your site into that language.  Be mindful of any cultural differences and make sure you play to those differences on your site.  What’s funny in English may not be funny in Japanese, so make sure your site reflects cultural standards.

Now it’s time to create a second website that is specifically targeting  your new market.  This website should have the same feel as the main website except that it’s targeting a different group of people.  It’s up to you if you want to host your site locally or in the region you’re targeting.  Either way, you’ll submit your site to the foreign directories and submit your articles to a foreign submission service.

Use your main website as a starting point to create the look and feel of your localized site but make sure it still reflects the values in your foreign market.  Continue researching your foreign market and use that information to continue your marketing campaign.

Market Internationally

When your localized website is up and running it’s time to kick up your marketing efforts.  Use the same e-marketing strategies in your foreign market as you would in your local market.  Strategies for effective e-marketing include:

• Article writing campaigns
• Directory submission
• Informative content on your website
• Blogs
• Videos
• Surveys
• Contests
• and Webinars

All of these strategies used in conjunction with your website will allow you to break into an international market using nothing but the Internet.

The problem with this model is that everything must go through the webmaster.  If you need to make a change to your site, no matter how small it is, you have to contact your webmaster and tell them what to do.  Depending on their workload, it could take up to a week or more before the changes are made.   Not only is this inefficient and a waste of time, but it also costs money.  Webmasters aren’t cheap.  They know that most people don’t possess the necessary technical knowledge to maintain their websites themselves so they can charge large amounts of money and companies pay because there’s no other choice.

Take Control of Your Website

But there is a choice.  You don’t have to rely on a webmaster.  In fact, you can increase productivity by eliminating the need for the middleman.  Up until this point your webmaster has been the link between your ideas and your website.  Cutting out the middleman will save you not only time but money as well.

The answer lies in the way you manage the content of your site.  Using a content management system (CMS) completely eliminates the need for a webmaster while enhancing the integrity of your site.

Increase Productivity

A CMS is a website creation application that allows anyone to update the site with little or no technical knowledge.  CMS’s are designed with the user in mind and for that reason they are easy to use, update and maintain.  On the backend, the CMS is designed like a simple word processor.  This simplicity allows anyone to add, edit and remove content with a few clicks.

Instead of writing the content, submitting it to the webmaster and waiting for him to add it to the site, you can upload content instantly yourself.  As soon as a change needs to be made, it can be.   Content management systems are web-based applications so any user can update the site from anywhere that has an internet connection.

Lower Costs

Since content management systems allow you to update your website yourself, you will save money on the maintenance of the site.  There is a one-time fee associated with the set up of your site.  This charge includes the costs of creating the design theme of your site, setting up the navigation tree, configuring the way pages are displayed and formatted and also the customizing the site branding with your own logo.

After the initial set up charges, there are no other fees associated with your website.  Ever.  Because you can update, maintain and edit the site yourself, you no longer need to pay someone else to do it for you.  If you want to add images, you can do it through the CMS; if you want to add music, video or other multimedia, you can also do that through the CMS.

Adding pages is simple as well.  The look at feel of your site is contained within the code of the CMS so any time you add a page the integrity of the site is maintained.  Everything stays the same from page to page, which makes for a consist website, no matter what you decide to add to it in the future.   By simply switching over to a CMS you will add value to your company by increasing productivity and lowering costs for the maintenance of your website.