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Fast Web Design For The Skint Webmaster
by: T. O' Donnell
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 work ..." etc. This was expensive, about £500 for a month's run.

Got a few replies. Lesson number one: advertise where 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 know and loathe.

This set me thinking: how could I give these people all they could ever want, but not spend a lot of time and money? Lately, I realised 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 wish I'd found this software a couple of years ago. It's freeware. The default set-up allows people without web design skills to update the site. It has a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) option. This adds HTMLArea code to text input form fields. Each HTML code input box becomes a mini HTML editor.

If you can use Microsoft Word, you can add formatted HTML code to the site.

To get it running you need to know 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 are:

1. The admin interface is confusing. It's all there, just finding and using it is the problem!

2. You need to search around template sites to find ones suited to your site purpose. I wanted simple, clean, business ones. Most of those available seem to have a fat graphic which covers half the screen. There are more restrained ones out there.

These are minor gripes, compared to the relief of finding what is essentially 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 Shopping Cart http://www.oscommerce.com

Again, this is a full-featured, freeware software. You can add lots of freeware 'plug-ins' to it, to get a professional shopping cart.

Therein lies the danger. Some of these plug-ins require altering or overwriting the default cart files. When 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 overwrite them) or that require minor alterations to existing files.

What I do is download all the versions of the plug-in type I need e.g. a WYSIWYG 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! Hyperlink from one to the other. I've tried integrations of other softwares, like PhpBB and PhpNuke. Fine, when it works, but when you upgrade one or the other, arrgh!

*Keep databases separate*. If one goes skew-whiff, then at least the other will still work. Same goes for adding chat rooms and the like. If they're all running off the one database, and that database becomes corrupted ...

It may offend your sense of tidiness for your visitors to have to sign up twice at your site, but you'll thank me for this sage advice later. Remember KISS is the basic rule of computing (Keep It Simple, Stupid!).

About the author:
T. O' Donnell ( http://www.tigertom.com) is an ecommerce consultant and curmudgeon living in London, UK. His latest project is an ebook on conservatories, available at http://www.ttconservatories.co.uk.T. O' Donnell freeware may be downloaded at http://www.ttfreeware.co.uk.


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 Internet Chat Rooms: Are We Missign the Point?
 by: Jesse S. Somer

In my short life, after years of talking too much, I’ve come to realize that if one is always speaking, one never listens. If you never listen to others, well, you’re limiting your access to a lot of knowledge and information. Recently, after much deliberation I thought I’d check out what the world of Chat Rooms is like. People talk to each other by text, voice, and web cam. This is a really big phenomenon; I wanted to see what all the fuss is about.

I expect there are many chat rooms where people with similar interests get to know each other, and share their perspectives on various aspects of life. These are great, much cheaper than telephones, and multiple, random people can chat to one another simultaneously.

But I speak the truth, and my preconceived ideas about mindless gossip from jaded humans were sadly affirmed as I arbitrarily checked chat rooms that supposedly discussed important subjects. It seems some people are just very bored, and want to be cool and swear on-line, insulting others, and giving this area of information technology a bad name. I think a lot of people are using the rooms solely for personal conversation that contextually no one else can understand.

I went to a chat room about religion, and then to one about tattoos and it seemed like the same people were talking. Most of the conversation didn’t even touch the supposed subject matter. It was definitely a disenchanting experience but hopefully with more research I hope to come across some serious rooms where the true intent of the creators has come to fruition.

I guess it’s good that bored people in our technological society have others to talk to. It means depressed adolescents may feel more connected to others and not so alone in the world, maybe even having a positive effect on a possibly suicidal youth. But, I do feel this nonsensical chitchat is a sign of our next generation’s apathetic view of present reality in our postmodern culture. When reading the text from a supposedly religious discussion, and hearing graphic use of derogatory terminology, I really have to wonder about the present spiritual beliefs of my culture.

I’m a true believer of the concept that technology is here to further the consciousness of humanity. Computers and the Internet can help bring all of us in the world together, thus evolving our society to the next level. After looking at chat rooms, I feel there is a need to integrate more wisdom and compassion into our ‘new world’ generation. Having the technology is great, but it is only one half of the equation. To make the Internet work properly, I think we need to instill the same faith we have in science, into a faith that encompasses the actual creators of the information and communication tools-humanity itself. We seem to realize that we can invent many great things, but it looks like we’re missing out on the great truth: that we ourselves are part of, and made of something great in itself: Life. (Existence!)


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