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Data Recovery InformationFast Web Design For The Broke Webmaster
by:
T. O' Donnell
Just simply about two years ago, I had a go at commercial web site design. I put a medium-sized ad in a London classified ad paper. Nothing fancy: "Web designer seeks activity ..." etc. This was expensive, simply about £500 for a month's run.
Got a few replies. Lesson number one: advertise wherever
clients of the calibre you want will see it. The clients I got thought £300 was a lot for a web site. They didn't want to pay web hosting. They wanted a lot of bang for their buck. 'Mission creep' was a term I grew to cognize and loathe.
This set me thinking: how could I give these folk all they could ever want, but not spend a lot of time and money? Lately, I accomplished how.
So how can you get a full featured site up in a day? Easy (ish!).
1. Mambo Content Management System http://www.mambo.com
I will I'd found this software system a couple of years ago. It's freeware. The default set-up allows folk without web design skills to update the site. It has a Application (What You See Is What You Get) option. This adds HTMLArea code to text input form fields. Each Hypertext mark-up language code input box becomes a mini Hypertext mark-up language editor.
If you can use Microsoft Word, you can add formatted Hypertext mark-up language code to the site.
To get it running you need to cognize how to install MySQL databases, or have PHPMyAdmin as part of your web-hosting package.
You can add articles, edit them, send emails to members, and be contacted by users.
The only criticisms I have of this software system are:
1. The admin interface is confusing. It's all there, simply finding and exploitation it is the problem!
2. You need to search about templet sites to find ones suited to your site purpose. I wanted simple, clean, business ones. Most of those accessible seem to have a fat graphic which covers half the screen. There are much restrained ones out there.
These are minor gripes, compared to the relief of finding what is basically a web site in a box. It can be installed in an hour, once you get familiar with it.
To add ecommerce to your site:
Oscommerce Buying Cart http://www.oscommerce.com
Again, this is a full-featured, software system software. You can add lots of software system 'plug-ins' to it, to get a professional buying cart.
Therein lies the danger. Several of these plug-ins require neutering or overwriting the default cart files. Once
you try to upgrade the cart version later, you may 'break' it, by overwriting a plug-in, thus creating errors.
The trick here is to only install plug-ins that add files (rather than write
them) or that require minor alterations to existing files.
What I do is transfer
all the versions of the plug-in type I need e.g. a Application editor. I then choose the one which has the least files, or which creates a new directory for its files. If it requires that important files be overwritten, or is complex, I chuck it.
Mambo and Oscommerce. Don't try to integrate them! Link
from one to the other. I've tried integrations of another softwares, like PhpBB and PhpNuke. Fine, once
it works, but once
you upgrade one or the other, arrgh!
*Keep databases separate*. If one goes skew-whiff, then at least the another will still work. Same goes for adding chat rooms and the like. If they're all running off the one database, and that information becomes corrupted ...
It may offend your sense of tidiness for your visitors to have to sign up doubly at your site, but you'll give thanks me for this sage proposal
later. Remember KISS is the basic rule of computing (Keep It Simple, Stupid!).
Just simply about the author:
T. O' Donnell ( http://www.tigertom.com) is an ecommerce adviser and oldster living in London, UK. His latest project is an ebook on conservatories, accessible at http://www.ttconservatories.co.uk.T. O' Donnell software system may be downloaded at http://www.ttfreeware.co.uk.
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