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As a junior developer, I mean without great experience, what would you do for a client about an eshop? Start from scratch and handcode an e-shop(simple one)? If yes are there any good tutorials you suggest?
Or buy something ready, lets say VirtueMart templates for joomla or a similar solution for Wordpress?
Even if you described yourself as an expert I still wouldn't recommend that you write an ecommerce application from scratch unless
your client does something very specific that can't be made to fit an existing solution
your client has huge amounts of money and doesn't want you to deliver anything for months (or more)
you can offset either of the above because your business plan is to develop the next Magento and you have the resources to hire a development team and market your solution
Displaying products on the front end is relatively trivial. The rest of the iceberg e.g. security, user management, the back end (admin interface) of your website, tax calculations, shipping, cart functionality, templates, payment gateways etc. would take considerably longer.
Unfortunately, even if you deliver you would still be behind the competition when your client says: "I want feature x that I've seen on website y" and you have to quote for bespoke development instead of installing or enabling a module on a ready-made application. Unless they're prepared to spend a lot of time and money they will soon look for an alternative.
If you're already using Joomla, I'd recommend installing the Joomla + VirtueMart bundle here:
http://virtuemart.net/downloads
If you're using WordPress take a look at ShopperPress or Get Shopped.
There are many more out there (Magento, osCommerce, Zen etc.)!
The most important thing to do is to match your client's requirements with the features of the application you feel comfortable using.
I would definitely not hand code or encourage this.
It is not sustainable for the client unless him and you are going to work together for the next millennium. What happens is that in a year or two they want new functionality, and if you are available, you need to have done a very very good job of structuring and commenting your own code to remember it yourself (as a new developer you learn new things every day, and solutions I did a year ago, I would restructure today).
The even more likely scenario is that another developer, system designer or graphic designer comes along, and it will be pointless, enormously time consuming and costly for the client to have person number two dig through your code.
Your time is better spent learning solid cms-systems and improving those, rather than reinventing the wheel. There are too many sites out there that are made as one-offs, and therefore often unmanageable in the long run.
I understand that programmers wants to progam, and the temptation to start with a blank editor page, but it is not good for the client, and it is not good for you reputation down the road.
Use your skills to make unique and custom made plugins, functions etc for your client. Do not waste your time building frameworks that others have already - and most likely - done better.
..and make sure you pick a cms your customer can handle. Do not give him joomla or drupal, if he is of the sort that can barely figure out how to publish a post in wordpress.
You might take this opportunity to learn about recent Web technologies and tools, in particular non-PHP based things like Opa language or Ocsigen library or perhaps Kaya; these tools probably have some useful infrastructure for your needs.
You might also checkout ShopAlternaMart for WordPress
I'm happy with opencart, an open source e-Commerce (see my site here, if you like). There are of course many others.
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I've spent a few hours already studying some CMS solutions for one of my customers' new business...In the end, I've taken in consideration these two: DotNetNuke and Composite C1.
I know all of these have a lot of features, a lot of capabilities etc.
What I would like to know:
is overhere any .NET guy who have worked with both of these? (if yes, can you please share your opinion - PRO and CONS?)
if for some reason I do need to add some new ASP.NET code (for some custom things), which of these two is better for this?
You should definitely go with Composite C1. I have been using DotNetNuke for many years and been very frustrated due to its limitations.
Below I have summed op what I think is best/worst for both CMS products (note: it's been two years since i set up a DNN site, so I do not know if there has been any improvement):
PROS for DNN
List item
VERY simple administration interface.
It is possible to edit pages directly by simply clicking on content when you are signed in.
Huge user/developer base - many extension modules available. Many of them for no charge.
CONS for DNN
The simplicity in DNN is basically the root for all cons;
Hard to extend - you have to develop packages for DNN with your specialized code or generate user controls in .NET (.ascx) files.
Difficult to skin
A lot of overhead related to webforms AJAX files (100+ kb without compression)
No build-in nice urls (but easy to find extensions enabling nice urls)
Relies on SQL-database ( = additional costs)
PROS for C1
Easy installation and setup.
Can run on file system only (and easily be upgraded to SQL support).
Build-in package manager with easy to install extensions.
Support for MVC, XSLT, Webforms and the best: Razor syntax!
Specialized code can be developed easily due to great API.
Great templating support. Can be made very simple and very advanced depending on your skills.
Nice URLs in the 3.0 releases.
Easy to set up multi-site support.
Supports Windows Azure out of box.
CONS for C1
Based on XML for data storage (can cause problems if server shuts down unexpectedly etc. - I have not experienced this)
THe many features in the backend can be a little overwhelming.
Backend takes quite a while to load because it is build like a webapp.
Not as large user base as DNN
Bottomline; Composite C1 is far better than DotNetNuke. Specially if you want to add custom code/functionality.
If you want even more functionality and a more mature CMS than Composite C1 you should take a look a Umbraco. It is open-source just as C1 and of course developed by great Danes ;)
I have quite some years of experience with DotNetNuke.
Avoid it at all costs. I'm serious.
Edit: Since I'm being asked about my reasons for this bold statement, I'll try to provide them.
The company I worked for had around 300 clients on DNN. Many of them were rather large corporations. I have a lot of epxerience with DNN.
First of all, DNN is riddled with bugs. Bugs that are never fixed. Instead, the guys behind DNN seem to be concerned more about introducing new features than providing stability. I've personally submitted a boatload of bug reports to their tracker. How many were fixed? Virtually zero. In most cases I even took the time to provide a patch! To no avail. When they made the switch to C#, they simply closed most of the open issues because their laziness began to bite them in their ass. "In order to better manage and assess issues for fixing, any issue that has not had any activity logged previous to January 1st, 2011, will be auto-closed. " (See here)
I've been bitten by so many bugs in those years. It was a rather frustrating and unsatisfying experience.
Secondly, new features are usually problematic and faulty. DNNCorp also often decides that these new features are not that important and subsequently abandons them for new features. For instance, their taxonomy module has some serious issues when you set up multiple portals and try to use system-wide vocabularies. To my knowledge this hasn't been fixed yet. Their MetaData / ContentItem / ContentType API had some serious problems for a long time and probably still has. It's not even really used for anything, even tho it could alleviate some of the problems that I describe later down (architecture).
Thirdly, their documentation just sucks.
More importantly, I think DNN's architecture is rather outdated. It carries a lot of old baggage. Their tab / module approach makes it very hard to create structured content and make relationships between content items. As soon as you try to create complex web sites, it falls flat on its nose. Not just from a programmer's perspective, but also from the perspective of a content administrator.
The overall impression is that these people are a) not very good programmers and b) don't know what they are doing.
I have worked with both CMS systemes (and many others) and I would recommend you to use Composite C1.
It is in my experience much easier to learn and much faster to be productive in Composite C1. The UI is much better (prettier and eaiser to understand). They have lots of good resources on their website. In my POV the most powerfull feature of Composite is that you don't have to bother about the datalayer - you just create your datatypes as classes or in the GUI and a 'ORM' just make the whole thing happen. That is if you even need datatypes (changes are you don't if it's a simple website).
They're both free and open source. DotNetNuke have a lot more modules that you can buy from third party developers, but Composite C1 still have a lot of what you need.
It's easier to develop new modules in Composite just because of the whole 'ORM' concept.
Only downside I can think of when I compare these to systems is that extranet functionality (logged in users that are not admins) is built into DotNetNuke. This is a module that you have to buy from Composite or develop yourself.
Composite C1 is the best out there for custom functionality and high flexibility. I've been using it for a few weeks and my site will finally be up and running because of it. Short learning curve (speaking for myself) but still very robust and flexible. Love it because you can use Razor with it.
DotNetNuke is still using WebForms and even though it's got a huge user base, but it is somewhat outdated.
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.
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After investigating a little bit scrum and kanban, I finally read this answer and decided to start using kanban, picking something from scrum (note that I'm working mostly by myself, and I do have read this question and its answers).
Now, my question is: which tool would be best to get started?
whiteboard and postit
agilezen.com
JIRA with greenhopper
a spreadsheet (possibly on Google Docs)
brightgreenprojects.com
Agilo
Target Process
something else (please specify)
Notes about each:
I would lean towards the whiteboard, but there are several drawbacks (e.g. cannot make automatic charts, time measurements, metrics, and sometimes I work from home - where I need it most - and it's not convenient to carry :-)
I don't want to remember another username/password (I promised to myself to signup only to OpenID-enabled services)
My employer has JIRA but my group doesn't use it - I might ask for an account (it shouldn't require another password) and maybe later involve the rest of the group. But I don't know if they are using greenhopper and if it's a big deal installing it.
I generally hate spreadsheets
maybe overkill?
I'd be happy to have a localhost instance, but it could be problematic to give access to the whole group (per network/firewalls) - not a deal-breaker but surely a concern
What I'd like to get from this?
being more productive
tracking how much time I spend in any given task, possibly discussing the issue with my supervisor
tracking what "blocks" me most often
immediately see where I am compared to my schedule
manage in a better way my long todo list (e.g. answering faster to the "what I should do next?" question)
Do you have any suggestion?
Note on the scrumish tag: read the Henrik Kniberg's PDF. He first introduced the definition of scrumish on page 9.
If I may, I think that you are on the wrong path. Anything else than 1. or 4. is overkill and pretty much useless for a non distributed team. So for a team of one person...
Seriously, if you can avoid using a web based application, just do it. First, unless you are already mastering Scrum/Kaban, you need to learn the process, not a tool. Don't let a tool dictate the process. Then most web based tools are just too much click intensive, less easy and fast to update, less transparent/visible than a spreadsheet and a physical board. They are really 2nd category options.
So, I'd go for a spreadsheet and a physical board combo. If you need some charts (I'm still wondering what kind of chart/metrics you want to generate and what value they provide), a spreadsheet is the ideal tool (but honestly, you don't need any tool to draw a burndown). If you need to work from home, take the spreadsheet (or use google docs) and post its with you. Let's be objective, the impediments you mentioned are actually not real.
Last thing, if you had chosen the simplest thing that can possibly work, you would already be doing Scrum, Scrumban or whatever. So, instead of looking for a tool, my advice would be to just start doing it.
agilezen.com seems like the ideal solution for you. I have used it in the past solo for myself and it is convenient. I would not let a prejudice against non-OpenID sites get in the way of making a good choice.
pick the tool you already have, and start using it; don't let the absence of the "perfect tool" become an excuse not to start
EDIT: pick the simplest thing that can possibly work. In your case that would be whiteboard and postit notes. These have almost no setup overhead and will provide a constant visual reminder of what you're supposed to be doing.
And I suggest that you get used to making decisions on your own, as you're going to have to be your own Scrum Master ;-)
In the interests of diversity ;-) www.kanbantool.com has just launched too. It's open beta and seems at first glance even more "lightweight" than agilezen.
Target process is good too
We've been using JIRA with Greenhopper for a few months, in an effort to go agile. I use it for both Scrum for development, as well as for my personal kanban. The software is pretty flexible, and I'm going to keep with it. The story/subtask management is really handy, and it's fairly easy to use. One thing I like is that you can add stories/cards quickly, and can customize the data. This allowed me to add definition of done fields, work order numbers, etc.
In short, we're happy with it.
Bright Green have just launched a free version of their tool. It looks good .. the free version is fully functional too: https://signup.brightgreenprojects.com/plan/Free
I've tried out another kanban product for personal use and am absolutely loving this one. Feels lightweight and simple but actually packs in a fair amount of functionality at the same time.
www.kanbanery.com (free for personal use)
A novel tool not mentioned before is getsmartQ (out of beta since Dec 2010)
Key characteristics: very intuitive, supports LWP, customizable forms, and task discussions
Pros
configurable workflow, mark overdue stories, mail notifications (e.g., for upcoming story deadlines), multiple story owners
Stories form completely customizable, per project workflow and story forms, different roles (people only creating stories)
very responsive GUI with partial updates
Apparently good support: I've asked a question and got a good answer within a few hours
Cons
no easy way to declare something as blocked or to distinguish type (feature/bug/..)
no API
no subtasks or story dependencies
In comparison to Agilezen it has a more sophisticated notification system, but apart from that still lacks important features (see cons above).
Note, getsmartQ is under active development and hence missing features mentioned above may have been implemented in the meantime.
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Where I work we've recently put together what we call the Development Standards Committee which is tasked with improving our procedures, processes, methodologies, tools, standards, and whatever we think would help us become a more effective team.
We've got a spreadsheet of items that we've ranked and are going to start tackling from the top down. We've got things such as better source control (currently on SourceSafe), implement a bug tracker (such as Mantis of FogBugz), peer code review, move to .Net 3.5, possibly move to some form of Agile, do more actual team development rather than single developer per project type stuff, and some other things...
What do you think are some key things that can make or break a development team? What should we add to this list?
Some additional information: We have about 12 people on our windows team, and about fifty in development if you include all platforms. We want to improve as much as possible for everyone, but we're our biggest focus is the Windows team. All of us have been here for a couple of years at least, so most of us know each other and work together pretty well.
The number of people on your team is actually really important here. There are basic things that every team should implement (source code control, bug tracking, etc), but there are things that are different base don team size. Code reviews on a very small team, for instance, can be more informal.
Moving to Agile is a good idea, unless you're particular development environment makes it a bad idea. Also, you'll not be able to do this without support from the people who are using your software.
Consider doing things to ensure that communication between the team is easier and with less roadblocks - do all your members know each other pretty well? Can you work with each other? Do you understand each other's idiosyncracies? Learning to work as a team is much more important than any random process improvements you can make.
Require comments when you check in code (it's great if you can tie commits back to your bug tracker)
Maybe Static Code analysis, like what's built into Visual Studio
Continuous Integration like CruiseControl
Development teams really need good people to start with, that work well together, but this isn't really an item to add to the list. It does however affect my first recommendation, be pragmatic. If you're not encouraging your developers to think about how they work and can drive them selves to improve, it's really hard to lay down a development environment that will do it for them.
Mentor and Training: If you can't do XP, then at least hook up your Juniors with Seniors whenever you can. Not only will you share knowledge but you'll share the context around your projects you own.
Some sort of Continous Integration and regular, tested, working "releases" make wonders for quality.
as better source control (currently on SourceSafe)
If this is Visual SourceSafe -- you need to change this immediately. Try cvs, svn or even something paid like Perforce.
There exists something called Rational Unified Process that deals with your problem (and much more).
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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.....