Web Development

Help Me Test a Website, Win $200

January 30, 2008

Alright folks, laundromatic.com is just about ready to launch. It just needs a little testing by some people who haven't been looking at it for several hours each week, which means I'm disqualified. As an incentive, I'll award two prizes:

1. Best list of bugs - Whoever finds the most bugs in the system (either parts of the system that simply don't work, or places in which it works, but works in what is obviously not the right way) gets $100.

2. Best list of suggestions - Whoever submits the best list of suggestions will also win $100.

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Web Development vs. SEO As Business Models

October 4, 2007

As MWI does more and more search engine optimization work I'm starting to see distinct advantages to SEO over web dev.

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MovableType vs WordPress

March 29, 2007

I started my first blog, this one, with MovableType. To be honest it was kind of a pain to learn all the ins and outs of how to customize MT and get it to work the way I wanted, but once I learned, it was easy to set up other blogs on the same platform. Although techie people, as I consider myself to be in at least some sense, are supposed to be open to trying new technologies, I was loathe to try any other blogging platform. I thought MT was the most powerful, flexible, and user-friendly. Until I tried WordPress.

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Partnership vs. Pay

December 12, 2006

My firm has been propositioned more times than I can count to "partner" with a client. That is, share in the risk, and share in the reward. At first, I was more than happy to engage in these partnerships, but over time I have become less and less enthusiastic and more and more selective. Why? Because out of the 10 or so partnerships I have entered into I have ended up spending a significant amount of money and have never made a dime.

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I want a million dollar website. I have $1,500.

I began working in this industry at the end of 1999, and this is one of the slightly more interesting requests for proposal I have received during the past seven years. I don't mean to post this to make fun of the guy, who I believe is serious (although I'm not 100% sure), but I hope it serves as a lesson to others who are in the dark when it comes to the costs involved with web development.

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Linux vs Windows and Virtual Hosting

November 22, 2006

This is not a post about how Linux is better than Windows for developing websites or vice versa. It is a post about how one of the most commonly used arguments against developing on a Windows based web server with IIS and a language like ASP or .NET is no longer valid. That is, that it's too expensive because of licensing or having to buy software.

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How to Add digg and del.icio.us Buttons / Links to Movable Type Blog

July 10, 2006

Do you know what digg and del.icio.us are? If not, you're like I was a few months ago, and you might be confused by the links/buttons on this site that say "digg it!" or "add to del.icio.us."

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Outsourcing to India

July 1, 2006

I tried outsourcing to some Bulgarians once and it was a nightmare. The last straw was when, during a critical phase of a project, the team informed me they would be out of touch for the next three days due to a party they would be attending. Since then I've never tried outsourcing to other countries, despite the lure of cheap labor. I'm not sure it works out well for smaller companies with highly customized work requiring lots of decisions to be made by the people doing the work. Offshore developers seem to do better when they have explicit instructions of what to do, and the kind of work MWI does doesn't lend itself to that model.

But aside from that, this recent email I received is one more reason why I haven't tried outsourcing again...

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What is Web 2.0?

May 26, 2006

By popular demand, I give you a new post.

If you're hip to all things web, then you either know what people mean by "Web 2.0" or you think you do, or you've at least heard the term. If your business isn't principally on the web you may not even have heard the term, but you might within the next few months.

If you want the authoritative explanation of what Web 2.0 is, read O'Reilly's explanation of Web 2.0. If you want my take, continue reading.

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The Hidden Costs of Open Source

April 3, 2006

I am not against open-source. I am not a Microsoft evangelist. I am in favor of using logic and rational thought when approaching business challenges that require a technological solution. This post is in response to the quasi-religious fervor I've observed for many years related to the open source movement and some of the misinformation built up around it. It is not an argument against open-source, it is a request for those in favor of open-source to use better reasoning to support their case.

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How to Build a Better Website

March 14, 2006

If you visit this website www.betterwebsite.com and think "Hmm, sounds interesting" as you put put your right hand to your chin, look up and left, and slowly nod your head while considering the content of said website seriously, then you do not have what it takes to gain any measure of sucess online. That is, unless you're going to run a scam operation that preys on the ignorant.

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Effective Ecommerce Shopping Cart Software

March 3, 2006

Imagine this. You have a small retail business. You want to sell online. You find a website that claims to help you set up an online store. You create an account. You put in your bank information and a merchant account is automatically set up so that as you sell product it deposits in your account. You put in your domain name username/password and your domain is automatically configured to point to your ecommerce site. You can choose from pre-designed templates and change fonts, colors, etc. You can upload your logo. Or you can use HTML/design elements of your own. You create categories and then products and add products to those categories. You can set up cross sell items, discount codes, affiliate programs, integrate with UPS, FedEx, and USPS, and generate all sort of reports. And maybe some other stuff.

How hard do you think it would be to find such a service out there? Well, I haven't seen it yet.

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Does Cold Fusion Have a Future?

February 13, 2006

If you aren't aware that ColdFusion has a problematic future, then here's another nail in the coffin in the form of an article entitled ColdFusion Job Opportunities Going Inert

I have nothing against ColdFusion. It might be the greatest thing ever. However, it just hasn't caught on, and nothing I've seen in the past six years tells me that we're going to see a turnaround. If anything, CF seems to be losing momentum.

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Choosing a Web Development Firm - Price vs. Quality

January 24, 2006

When choosing a web development firm to work with, it is helpful to understand that there are different types of web development firms, and one or the other may be a better fit for you. While there are several categories we could talk about, for the purposes of this post I've divided all firms into two categories; those who compete on price and those who compete on quality.

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Real-time Inventory Lookup Should be Standard Ecommerce Functionality

December 24, 2005

Yes, I'm a procrastinator. I tend to do whatever seems important at the moment, which means that some things don't get done until they become what is important at the moment. That's why my web development firm uses a project management system and why I use a PDA. If I didn't plan ahead, then many of the things that are important but not urgent wouldn't get touched until it was too late to do them.

Unfortunately for me, Christmas shopping doesn't seem to make it to my "important right now" list until around the 23rd.

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