Storm Code

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) has been a buzz word in the web design and development market since it’s inception in 1997. Since it’s creation it has been adopted and standardized by all the major web browsers. It’s nothing magical or hard to understand so lets break down exactly what CSS is and how it can save you on time, money, and headaches.

HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) was designed to display information in a structured manner. It wasn’t designed with fancy images and layouts in mind. It also wasn’t designed to be used as an advertisement tool. What most web developers do when designing a purely HTML website would be considered ‘hacking’ the language. They use workarounds and techniques that are not standardized to create dynamic and great looking sites using a language that was not meant for that purpose. It’s akin to using lipstick to leave a message on a mirror for lack of the proper pen and paper. Web Developers took what they were given and used it to the best of their ability. However, the Web Community understood that the lipstick and mirror of HTML could only be used for so long.

CSS was designed to take the strain of styling a page off of HTML in order to let HTML do the job it was intended and developed for, which is organizing the content on the page. A simple example would be the HTML font tag. The font tag was used in order to change the size, color, or font face of text included inside the tag. So it may have looked something like this: <font size=”10px”>This is font size of 10px!</font>. To this day, browsers still support the font tag and many sites that have not made the change to CSS still use it to help style the page. If you wished to use CSS to change the font size of a specific piece of text you would include it in span tags like this: <span id=”myFontSize”>This is font size of 10px!</span> then in your style sheet you would define the myFontSize id as: .myFontSize { font-size: 10px; }.

Now, you might be thinking that the CSS example took more code, and hence more time. In this specific case you would be correct. However, once a style is defined in a style sheet, it can be reused. You could create another span tag <span id=”myFontSize”>This is another font Size example!</span> and that would also be given the font size of 10px that was defined in the style sheet. To better explain what this benefit can actually mean, let’s imagine a 25 page website was created for a company. The comapny President is very fond of the courier font and tells the developer to use it everywhere on the site. If the site was developed in HTML without CSS, a font tag would be used to surround every different piece of text that needed to be in the courier font, and the font name would be hard coded into every page, most likely multiple times. Now lets say the President retires and a new President takes over that prefers Times New Roman. In order to change something as simple as the font used on the site the developer would have to go through each page and change multiple font tags from courier to Times New Roman. That’s a headache and a time waster. If the site had been done in CSS, all relevant text would have been included in span or div tags that referred to a single entry in the style sheet. That means changing the font for the entire site would be as easy as changing Courier to Times New Roman in one place.

CSS not only allows you to easily style a website in a way that separates content and style, but it also allows you to easily re-style the website quickly, without having to dig through any of the actual pages. It also allows you much more control over the style of the website then simple HTML does. CSS is the future of web design. Most companies with a major web presence have already made the transition. Have you?

Some people hear the word Database and cringe at the complexity and cost of setting one up. There would have been cause for such a reaction ten, maybe even five years ago. Now however, in the age of MySQL, having Database support for a website is much less complex and time consuming.

MySQL was first released in 1995 and has since become one of the dominant web based database management systems (DMBS). PHP, Ruby on Rails, and ASP all support MySQL. Wikipedia runs on the MediaWiki software which is written in PHP and uses a MySQL database. MySQL is used for running many of the popular content management systems such as Joomla!, WordPress, and Drupal. For more information on MySQL history and documentation please visit Wikipedia

A database is integral for creating a dynamic website. Having a database supporting your website allows you to have features and functionality like user registration, blogs, statistics, content management, photo galleries, video galleries, searchable content, product tracking, e-commerce, and much more.

These days most web hosting providers (including Storm Code) offer MySQL as a standard feature of your web hosting package. Some providers offer unlimited MySQL databases, while others limit the number or size of the databases.

Creating a database is as simple as clicking a few buttons. The simplicity ends at that point though and the real work begins. Modeling out the Information Architecture of the Database takes both time and knowledge. A database must be normalized to prevent logical or structural problems, and normalization must be taken into account during the modeling phase of the database design. Normalization can be very tricky for an inexperienced designer and can cause severe problems and limitations in the future if not done correctly. For more information on Database Normalization read up at Wikipedia.

At Storm Code we have a team of experienced designers that understand the pitfalls and production delays caused by bad database design and we know how to avoid them. We have experience designing databases in many areas including but not limited to Real Esate and Automotive sales. If you are interested in speaking with one of our Project Managers about your existing database or a new project please refer to our Contact page.

AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. It’s not a new technology, but a new way of using existing technology. When AJAX is properly used it allows normal web applications to function in a way more consistent with desktop applications. It allows the web application to pass or request information from the web server without reloading the entire page. This makes web applications faster and more dynamic.

Two examples of websites that rely heavily on AJAX are Google’s Gmail (www.gmail.com) and Facebook (www.facebook.com). Without AJAX, it wouldn’t be possible for Gmail to update your inbox at the rate it does and Facebook wouldn’t be able to list completions to your friend search before you hit search.

Not only does AJAX allow you to create more dynamic pages, but it saves on load time. Instead of sending a request to the web server and then displaying the page the server returns, AJAX allows you to make small requests from the web server and then use Javascript to display that information on the page without having to reload it.

Load time isn’t the only thing you save by not having to reload the entire page every time a users wants to interact, it also saves you bandwidth. If your website was created with AJAX in mind the reduction in bandwidth usage compared to the same site without AJAX support would be significant. There are no figures to offer on actual bandwidth saved as every website is different. However, if a web page that is five kilobytes is reloading itself every time a user has to send one kilobyte of information, and the page that is reloaded is the same with the addition of just a success or failure message based on the users input, you would be saving four kilobytes of bandwidth every single time a user enters said information. If you have a thousand users that all use that page a single time using AJAX would save you roughly four megabytes of bandwidth and save your users precious time.

The biggest reason for upgrading from PHP4 to PHP5 is the end of life announcement made. As of December 2007 only critical security fixes will be made to PHP4. No support is being offered for PHP4 after August 2008.

Now is the time to migrate from PHP4 to PHP5. You do not want to wait until the last minute. As of right now you can migrate on your own terms, and take your time. The amount of difficulty in migrating from PHP4 to PHP5 will depend on your current code base. Some features enabled in PHP4 do not come enabled in PHP5 by default. Register Globals is one such feature.

PHP5 has the core functionality to support many of the new web technologies such as AJAX. Upgrading to PHP5 before August 2008 is a must. If you have a website that is still running PHP4, or you are not sure what version of PHP your website is running you need to find out. If you have access to your web server via FTP or a file manager do the following:

Open notepad (or equivalent text editor)

Enter the following code:

<?php

phpinfo();

?>

Save the file as phpinfo.php

Upload the file to your web server and execute it.

Displayed will be detailed information about your PHP build. You will see your current PHP version included with that information. If you are not using PHP5 and you wish to make the transition, please feel free to contact Storm Code and arrange for one of our project managers to take a look at your code base and give you an estimate on cost and time.

Getting the best possible service for your money if very important. However, thinking that the lowest price means the best deal will land you nothing but headaches. One thing you should ask yourself before taking the lowest price service or product is why is it so cheap? Let me use Linux as an example. You can download many different versions of the operating system for free, and you wouldn’t be doing anything illegal! It is offered for free by the various companies that develop the builds. However, when you encounter a problem you have no support system to turn to for answers.

If you plan on paying $10 a month for web hosting, you have to ask yourself, when I have a problem, who is going to help me? Is it going to be someone that is knowledgeable and invested in my company? Or is it more likely going to be someone in a call center over-seas who may or may not be interested in actually helping you. In this business, like most others, you get what you pay for. So while the cheapest product or service may benefit you in the short term, that all goes out the window when you have to spend hours of your time trying to get someone who does not understand your business to help you fix a problem.

Another real world example would be car insurance. If you buy a brand new car do you purchase an insurance policy that only covers the bare minimum, or do you purchase comprehensive insurance so that if something were to happen you have the peace of mind of knowing that you are totally covered. Do you go with a company that’s cheaper, or a company that you know is going to make filing a claim as easy as possible if an accident does happen?

No one wants to be in a position where the company they have been paying is doing everything in their power to get out of helping. That’s why at Storm Code no matter what product or service you purchase from us, you get a Project Manager that you can call or e-mail personally. Someone that knows your business and your name. Someone who wants to help you. Someone invested.

Have you ever been to a website several times over a period of time and not noticed any changes in the content? What did you think about that website and the company or person(s) that it represents? Would you go into work everyday wearing the same clothes? Would you answer the same question in exactly the same way and carry on the same dialog with peers and potential clients regardless of the situation or present state of affairs? If you did, do you think that would make you more or less productive? More or less interesting? More or less likely to secure that client, close that deal, or gain repeat business?

A static website with nothing new gives the user no reason to return, aside from referencing data that they already know exists. It offers no insight into your business or life. In some minds it might even be seen as lazy or boring. Surely if you went into every business meeting with the same attitude and the same canned responses to questions, you would not be successful. Being adaptable and offering new, useful, or interesting information is something we all do on a daily basis. It’s what drives business through our doors.

In a world where more and more business is being conducted on the web, the same strategies that apply to real world business can be applied to the web presence of a business. A dynamic website gives the user, be it a client, employee, or potential sale a reason to keep coming back to visit with each visit being another potential sale.

A dynamic website does not need to be a drain on your time or your resources if it is setup properly. Content can be setup before hand and automatically made visible on a certain date. Features and functionality can be created that add a dynamic look and feel to your website without actually requiring you do any additional work.

As an example let me use a Real Estate Brokerage. Many Brokerages have found that storing their information in a web based database accessible through an easy to use back-end management system increases productivity as well as the availability of information. Instead of endless printouts of listing sheets and folders (virtual or physical) containing pictures of properties, you have a central point at which to enter and maintain the data. Any Agent can access the system and view compiled property information. Why stop with just allowing employees access to the information? What about the clients? By adding a search for properties page to the front-end of the website (the area of the website accessible by clients or potential clients) you create a dynamic website that requires nothing more then business as usual to keep it updated.

The information being made available to the web surfer is just a scaled down version of what is already available to Agents through the back-end system. Now the Brokerage has a dynamic website with properties that are updated at the same instant an Agent enters or updates them in the back-end database. It’s killing two birds with one stone and creating a website that users will want to come back to in the future.

This is just one example of how to take a static website and turn it into an ever changing marketing tool to drive in business.