Web Design w/CMS - drupal

I recently "inherited" an IT company that has a creative wing that does websites. Business is very good, but it seems like our throughput is very low. It's taking 3-6 months per site for just basic sites (no ecommerce, etc). From what I can tell, the process goes like this:
designers design the site using Adobe products
once those mock-ups look good, we outsource the files to be "sliced"
once we get the artifacts back from the "slicers", the web coders plug the information into a Joomla site
the site goes live
My question: is this the correct approach? I don't know enough about CMSs to know if we're using them in the way they're intended to be used. If there is a better process that you know of, or a better CMS that is easier to plug the results of the slicing into, I would love to hear about it.
Thanks for any feedback you might provide.

Ughh. I hate the process you describe. Designers who don't understand much HTML do the design, and then this "slicing" process involves cramming stuff that was never designed to be HTML into HTML.
Unfortunately, at my agency, we've found it difficult to find folks who design from the get-go in HTML/CSS.
But to your question about time, consider this. I'm a sole web developer working for an agency. We spent 4 months rebuilding our own site (a pretty simple site). But 3 of those months were spent going back and forth with the designer making changes.
I didn't start work on the site until one month before launch. From that point all I had was Photoshop files. I recreated the look of those files in Drupal templates and did all the other development (including some medium-complexity javascript) in just one month.
During that month, the design of 40% of the site changed dramatically. If it weren't for that, I would have been done in two weeks.
And I'm just one guy. And I don't consider myself a fast coder AT ALL. Your folks are taking WAY too long.

The web programmers should be able to slice the files, at the end of the day, they are the ones programming it so they should know what they want/need more than anyone else, it will save money and time theoretically.

Wow, 3-6 months for the workflow you described sounds painful. That's a timeline better suited to a site that includes a high level of custom data handling functionality. However, beyond the considerable mismatch between the process you describe and the time it's taking, the scope of this question seems pretty wide for stackoverflow.
I'd start by editing your question to indicate the amount of time typically spent on each of these steps. Just based on what you list I can't possibly imagine that taking 3 months, let alone 6.

Ok, if "Business is very good" and you're spending "3-6 months per site" then the only conclusion is that these are very high design websites with good margins. So you don't sound like you're in the slice and dice $14.95 a month website business.
Given that the sites we build often have a primary stake holder who is subject to corporate design guidelines and marketing criteria followed by product positioning criteria it's not unusual for us to spend 3 months getting the design work done. We can go through 3 design iterations (all of which the clients pay for).
The only difference to your situation is that our designers are 'web designer' and either understand how to build a Photoshop file to be 'sliced' or work in conjunction with the people that will be doing the slicing.
So, the only thing I find odd is that you send out the work to be sliced.

Nothing wrong with the process but the resource arrangement seems not correct. If it's a design company, I would expect you should have your own designers who can slice those images, rather than outsourcing. This will improve your efficiency and speed.
As for the CMS, Joomla is a much complicated CMS which is suitable for larger websites that require extensive CMS features. For normal corporate websites, I would suggest to use WordPress. It's very lightweight, easy to use, easy to skin and easy to setup.

Related

Which is a better platform for starting a small module development business: DotNetNuke or Umbraco?

I am thinking of making some extra revenue on the side by becoming a module developer either for DotNetNuke or Umbraco. I still want to keep my full time job. I wanted to know which market is more promising. I know there are thousands of modules for DNN (just browse snowcovered.com). While DNN is a much bigger market, it seems to be crowded with a lot of competition versus Umbraco which is smaller but it looks like it lacks modules in certain categories. However I don't know if Umbraco is widely used or whether its customers are looking for development work.
I want to approach this by either developing commercial modules or doing custom development work. I am looking at this from revenue potential. Not from technical side (easier to develop for, MVC or not,.. etc)
Any ideas?
If you are a developer for either platform, are you making some good money? Any pitfalls?
Neither, I'd actually suggest Orchard. There are, in fact, pro's and con's to all three, but the best factors for Orchard are:
1) MS supported
2) It's brand new, so there's a LOT of opportunity for modules that haven't already been written
Just my 2c.
I agree with Tony, Orchard has only just come about and realistically the market is currently very small.
We are an Umbraco Gold Partner, so obviously biased towards Umbraco, but what I would say is that currently there are only a few commercial packages for Umbraco and so if you find a niche product, you certainly still have an opportunity to become the first to market and become the market leader for a specific module type. I think in the DNN camp you will find a lot of competition already exists.
Another thought is to write generic base code that can be used across all three and create a commerical package for each platform, then you have the best of all worlds.
Cheers,
Chris
If you want to do custom dev for clients the platform doesn't matter if you do it on the side.
If you want to create a commercial module it's hard to choose DNN as a platform because there is a lot of competition. Not that that's a bad thing but to get your name out there will take some time. I made the choise to do full time Umbraco Dev in 2008 and made a commercial product for Umbraco called CMSImport. It's quite popular so sales is quite allright. I have thought about the idea Chris mentioned to port it to other systems but the downside is that you only sell products if your product is known in the community and it will take a lot of time to get your name out there if you focus on other communities also.
So pick an idea and platform that has a nice userbase (I would not go for Orchard the community is simply not big enough at this moment) and build your product.
Cheers,
Richard
I don't think it really matters which you pick. The hard part is becoming know as a "good X developer" be that Umbraco, DDN, Orchard, Rails, etc.
Its being the name on the peoples lips at the right time that gets the phone ringing. Tech choice can increase your chance (simply with an increased number of sites for example) but it can also increase your competition.
There is plenty to be earned if you can get the work and the best way of doing that is by being recommended, being spotted as being active in the community, producing packages, etc.
We at Offroadcode chose Umbraco about 2 years ago and have had lots of work of it since and have specialised in it. Through engaging with the community we've got to know a lot of our fellow Umbraco developers (including Chris and Richard who have also posted answers) and we've recommended then and had work passed to us on recommendation too. I guess you get back what you put in.
Pete

Projects made with a CMS -> Money problems

i want to discuss about a problem: i've lately had discussions with some customers to which i've asked money for projects written in Drupal: when they know that i use a CMS they immediately say that they want to pay less "because I use a CMS".
I develope since 15 years and i've made many many projects without using a CMS and by using my libraries; i'm lately using a CMS but this does not mean that i don't write code ...
Which could be the best response to give to a similar question?
Ciao
c.
Explain it to them very simply.
If you have to install and configure any Content Management System, that takes you more time and therefore costs a bit more than a static website. You need be as transparent as possible when you detail the costs, so tell them how much time will be spend designing the theme, how much time will be spend configuring Drupal for their website and so on.
It would be interesting to ask them why they think it should be cheaper, as you will then understand what misconception they have about CMS. You can then explain things better to them so that they understand what using a CMS actually means.
I would say that they are paying for your expertise and experience, regardless of the tools you use. If they want it cheaper, they can ask someone else. The CMS helps to add stability, security and expandability to what they would get if they had a custom solution.
Plus, if it was all custom code it would be extremely difficult to hire someone else to take over if, God forbid, you were hit by a bus. The CMS gives THEM more options.
I would agree that you should explain where the money is going, in general terms, but you shouldn't have to justify every detail. Otherwise how do you itemize "dealing with stupid customers who need their password reset for the millionth time" or "explaining the difference between a 100x100 thumbnail JPG and a 3600x2700 BMP". It could also open the door to a lot of haggling that will just waste your time and frustrate you.
I had a client who asked me over and over again the same kind of question.
If your client doesn't perceive the value you're adding to an Open Source application then give them the source code and point them to the documentation. Tell them to build it themselves.

Drupal vs FatWire - Any thoughts?

a company I am working for is considering the usage of a CMS, apparently two of the suggested CMSs are Drupal and FatWire.
FatWire is proprietary and quite expensive, therefore it seems that there is a not so big community build around the product. Functionality seems to be extensive, even though a few design choices seem counter-intuitive and long-winded.
Drupal instead is open source and has an big community backing the product. There are plenty of books around and usage seems more intuitive.
Functionality wise I am unsure on how they compare. The main features that the company's team seem to like are team workflow features and revision control (present in FatWire, even though the implementation seems quite limited).
Hopefully some of you guys have been faced with these two products before, and might have a few suggestions up their sleeve.
Help would be much appreciated!
They are very different products -- apples and oranges really -- so it would depend on your organization and your needs.
For one example, all of the features listed at FatWire's website can be easily and quickly built into a Drupal installation .... if you already have someone who knows Drupal. If you don't have that expertise in house, and don't have enough spare time and resources to get someone trained, then FatWire could save you a lot of time and aggravation.
In a broad sense, Drupal is probably the more powerful of the two over the long run. But, it's a modular system and there's no real centralized brain controlling everything. It takes a little while before your team can get to the point where they know the right module to solve a certain problem, or the most effective way to build certain pages.
Depending on what the website it worth to your company, and the amount of customization you expect, you might find it easier to get a paid product that meets your needs right out of the box.

What is your company's stance regarding (technological) 'innovation'? [closed]

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.NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, WPF, Silverlight, ASP.NET MVC - there's really a lot of new Microsoft technology released / on the horizon to try out these days.
(The examples I gave is all Microsoft technology but this can apply to any language or platform). I am curious how this is handled in the company you work for. A few examples:
Do you have a CTO that determines what technology the company uses?
Are development teams free to choose what technology they use? For example: framework version, classic ASP.NET vs ASP.NET MVC, ADO.NET Entity Framework vs Linq2Sql or NHibernate? Or a mix of these?
What new technologies does the company you work for try out and why?
Does your company have dedicated resources (time) to try out WPF or whatever technology, just for research, or do you try things out in your spare time and try to introduce them to your company?
These are just examples to make my question clearer. To summarize, I'd like to know what this process looks likes, who is responsible, who makes the decisions. Does your company jump on the bandwagon, or is it reluctant to try new technologies? And are you comfortable with this situation?
At the company I work for, we still use .NET 2.0 (although we are now slowly switching to .NET 3.5), haven't seriously looked into ASP.NET MVC, haven't tried out WPF at all, etcetera. And, some find it pretty hard to convince people to do. Is it fair to expect otherwise?
At my company, we have an architecture group that determines which technologies are used. People are welcome to read up on alternative technologies and make suggestions, but at the end of the day, it's the architecture group that makes the decisions.
While this may seem restrictive, it does ensure that all of the development groups are using the same or similar technologies, and moving from one group to the next is fairly easy. As well, by having one group do all the research, you ensure that you don't waste time by having multiple groups duplicate the research effort.
Since I work in such a small company and am I typically either the only developer, or the lead developer in a very small group, I can usually convince my boss to use whatever I think would be the best for a given project/situation.
We stick to what we know for our major and key projects within the company.
For any new "mini" projects that come along, we take the hit on the learning curve to try and build them in the latest technologies if at all possible.
This enables us to get up to speed on these things to then comfortably and safely use these technologies in our major projects as we see fit.
Where I work there is an architect team which looks at technologies from a high level and makes recommendations to various actual teams. A subset of the architect team actually takes the technologies and experiments on them and out of the produces
Internal 1 hour overview sessions
Week long boot camps
Whitepapers/Posters
The more important the technology is the more of that list is produced. All of that just feeds to teams, which combined with customer requirements for technology actually make the decision for what that team should use.
I have a mix answer to this question. Where I work, lower level technical managers are usually the ones that chose a certain technology and sometimes even the developers have the freedom to try something new. For example, I really wanted to learn about JavaScript's Prototype while working on a web site. I made the case to my boss, he was reluctant first because nobody else knew it or had used it before, but gave me the go ahead. It was great for me to be able to learn Prototype and take advantage of it's many built in functionality. Other bigger projects come down from higher management and we don't really have much of a choice. Right now, my company is adopting SAP, so everything is moving into that direction. I don't necessarily want to become an SAP expert, but if I want to stay here, I'll need to at least learn how to work with it.
Every company has its own pace for innovation, and it's dependent first on the comfort level of the managers, and second on whether anybody actually does the work to research and propose using new things. When the managers start getting uncomfortable, innovation slows or stops until they get comfortable again. Some innovations they will never be comfortable with.
Keeping this in mind, I'm not sure how to answer your question about whether or not it's fair to expect more innovation than is happening. Certainly it's reasonable for you to want more; equally, once you've hit your organization's speed limit on innovation, it's not likely to change and, if it does change, it will probably take a long, long time.
I've been given rather large amounts of freedom to change things by various managers in my past, and I took advantage of it. I also ran into the limits on a regular basis, and finally dealt with my frustration by starting my own company. (This may be considered a somewhat drastic measure; certainly by doing do you reduce the time you have to research and develop the very things for which you started your company.)
These days I'm developing rather significant applications in Haskell, and I'm pleased as punch. After a year, I'm starting to get the hang of it, and I certainly have several more years ahead of me just learning what I can do with the tools I have now.
I suppose the summary of my response is: if you want to innovate more than those around you, you need to change your peer group.
I think any company that tries new technology for the sake of it, as its bleeding edge and 'innovative' is crazy. To have a formal 'lets play with new technology to try it out department' is just nuts.... unless they're in the business of providing technology consulting to other businesses.
For everyone else technology is there to help the business get things done. Not to help developers line their CV's with cool sounding TLA's.
The company I'm working at the moment is quite large and has a CTO that chooses 'strategic platforms'. But I've have to say, if you can pick a technology, they're probably using it. They're too big to beat everyone down with the corporate stick, but they try. If the technology will work in the project and bring it in on time, then it gets used.
We need solid and proven platforms for our stuff. And, we don't need anything fancy. Therefore we might go for .NET after 5-10 years or so, hope it's ready by then. On the other hand, Java is already mature enough, so we're using it alongside with C++ and some Jython scripting. These decisions are pretty much autonomous (we're a small shop).
I don't mean to mock bleeding edge developers, but whether you need solidity or newest features obviously depends on what you're working on. Many scientists are still happily using Fortran 77.

Runtime Page Optimizer for ASP.net - Any comments? [closed]

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RPO 1.0 (Runtime Page Optimizer) is a recently (today?) released component for ASP and Sharepoint that compresses, combines and minifies (I can’t believe that is a real word) Javascript, CSS and other things.
What is interesting is that it was developed for ActionThis.com a NZ shop that saw at TechEd last year. They built a site that quickly needed to be trimmed down due to the deployment scale and this seems to be the result of some of that effort.
Anyone have any comments? Is it worthwhile evaluating this?
http://www.getrpo.com/Product/HowItWorks
Update
I downloaded this yesterday and gave it a whirl on our site. The site is large, complex and uses a lot of javascript, css, ajax, jquery etc as well as URL rewriters and so on. The installation was too easy to be true and I had to bang my head against it a few times to get it to work. The trick... entries in the correct place in the web.config and a close read through the AdvancedSetup.txt to flip settings manually. The site renders mostly correctly but there are a few issues which are probably due to the naming off css classed - it will require some close attention and a lot of testing to make sure that it fits, but so far it looks good and well worth the cost.
Second Update We are busy trying to get RPO hooked up. There are a couple of problems with character encoding and possibly with the composition of some of our scripts. I have to point out that the response and support from the vendor has been very positive and proactive
Third Update I went ahead and went ahead with the process of getting RPO integrated into the site that I was involved in. Although there were some hiccups, the RPO people were very helpful and put a lot of effort into improving the product and making it fit in our environment. It is definitely a no-brainer to use RPO - the cost for features means that it is simple to just go ahead and implement it. Job done. Move on to next task
I decided to answer this question again after evalutating it a little.
The image combining is really amazing
The CSS and Javascript is nicely minified
All files are cached on the server meaning that the server isn't cained every time it makes a request
The caching is performed at a browser level, meaning it will still work if you use an old (unsupported) browser because you'll just recieve the page un-compressed
You can see the difference youself Optimized vs Unoptimized
The price is as follows...
$499 until the end of september is a steal
$199 for an annual renewal is a steal
I love how RPO is plug and play.
It will take time to create a module like theirs and depending on work load can be worth the $750/year versus the development time it takes to re-create it.
I'm very excited about RPO and reviewing it's effect on my sites.
Something I used quite recently was page optimization module from I found on Darksider's blog. It it not nearly as intense as what RPO sets out to achieve, but a nice start block to building your own optimization module if that's what you're after.
Clarification on the RPO price. Launch price until end of September 2008 is $499 - and this discount is by voucher (email service#getrpo.com to get a voucher). This includes software assurrance for 12 months, after which you can choose to renew for $199 or not - the software still works.
The RPO automates 8 of Steve Souders/Yahoo's principles for High Performance Web Sites - the important thing for us was making a developer friendly tool - you can keep your resources in the format and structure that makes sense for development and the optimization happens at runtime.
I don't want to spam this forum with sales stuff, so just email me if you have any questions - ed.robinson#aptimize.net. Thanks for looking at the RPO.
Ed Robinson, Chief Executive Officer, Aptimize Ltd
I've been a user of the RPO since beta and have it deployed in anger on two of my sites:
http://www.syringe.net.nz (My blog) and
http://www.medrecruit.com (A company in which I have an interest)
I've done a longish winded blog post on the whole why not just turn on caching question here:
http://www.syringe.net.nz/2008/10/21/RuntimePageOptimizerWhyNotJustEnableCachingInIIS.aspx
The short summary version- Caching is a nice to have for people who aren't really geared up to turn it on in IIS (it's still not super easy in IIS6)... the real power is in combining resources as it's latency * request count that really kills your performance.
minifying and gzipping commonly called scripts and style sheets is totally worthwhile - the file size reduction speaks for itself. That's something that you can do through your webserver, without the help of another product.
However, merging scripts and styles and serving them together is an interesting idea from a general 'the fewer requests the better' standpoint.
It looks like interesting technology - I'd try it out. It almost certainly couldn't hurt.
Just had a little look, a lot of the things they offer you should be able to do yourself with a little palnning and foresight (combine all javascript files, combine all css, minify, enable GZip...
$750 a year seems a little steep, and theres no options.
(edit)
After speaking with the marketing bods, it's $499 until end of september, and renewing the liscence will be $199. That persuades me a lot more!
I'm going to give it a whirl and then see how much it improves our DEV server.
I personally have been using a product called PageBlaster by Snapsis that does caching, minification. It is primarily used in DotNetNuke applications, but if I recall correctly it can be used with any ASP.NET application, and the price is right.....

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