BlueLayerMedia - Creative Web Services

Who doesn’t want something cheaper, especially nowadays right? I’ll keep this in the realm of web related programming to make it relevant. To take from one of my previous posts, you have an idea for a website and have decided to hire a coder. We’ll use RentACoder as the base for which you will be selecting a coder after placing your job online.

Before long, and more like minutes you’ll start receiving hundreds of views on your project and several bids. The prices will vary in range just as the locations of the coder will. Initially there are some things to consider. Will your coder speaking English fluently and is that a concern for you? Will your project sacrifice in the way of quality due to low cost? It is hard so say as no two individuals are alike, nor have the same set of skills, knowledge, etc.

What should be more of a concern is when you hire someone to do work for you outside of a web programmer farm such as RAC and the half-dozen similar sites that are out there is the person you are hiring going to outsource your job without your knowledge. The following video, although humorous does partly convey this issue.

More American Workers Outsourcing Own Jobs Overseas

As I said, although the video is humorous, in reality this is what does occur in the world of web programming. BlueLayerMedia has been contracted on numerous occasions to do website work where we are hired as a third party with a warning not to contact the other party. The reasons for the no contact should be obvious. The person(s) who hired us will have to answer to the person that hired them and explain why someone else is doing the job that they were hired for. Secondly, the middle-man is out of his cut.

I’ve done some very basic Googl’ing and discovered several people that we do work for front themselves off as web designers/programmers only to turn around and hire someone else to do the work for them.

If this is a concern for you, when hiring a coder, be sure to check their references as much as possible. Ask for samples of their previous work. Pick a snippet of code and ask them to explain what it does. If you want to take it one step further, show the same snippet of code to someone else and have it verified. Most people who outsource their work, have no knowledge of what PHP (for example) does. Quizzing them on a section that they should have created should yield an immediate and exact response.

Internet Explorer 6 aka IE6 was released to the public on August 27, 2001, making it over eight years old now. The question that needs to be answered is should be still be supported in current web development.

You can guarantee yourself you will get varying answers from nearly everyone you talk to. Let’s go over some pros and cons of supporting it starting with the cons first.

The technology that IE6 supported has long since passed and been replaced with newer and better technology. ‘Tis the way of the world no? It is truly a pain to code/design around. If a client wishes IE6 support there is a good amount of time setting up a site so IE6 renders it right, whereas more recent browsers, including newer versions of Internet Explorer render sites properly.

The pros in having the additional support should be obvious. You won’t have to worry about an issue arising where one or more of your visitors cannot access certain parts of your site or have it appear ‘off’ to them when browsing in IE6.

The next question is, how many people are still using a defunct browser such as IE6? Browser statistics show the use of IE6 is steadily on the decline with only 14.4% of web users still using IE6, compared to 15.9% using IE7, 9.1% using IE and a whopping 47.9% using FireFox. On a side note, for those of you that are still using any of the IE browsers at all and have not tried FireFox out yet, you’re truly missing out. FireFox is fast, lightweight, and extremely customizable.

Let’s talk about that 14.4% for a moment. Who are they and why would they choose to use a outdated browser? Merely speculating, they could be users from a corporation or large entity which simply has not upgraded to a newer version of Internet Explorer or a more mature user who simply has no desire or need to upgrade.

What should be considered is knowing your target audience. If for example, you have a knitting site, odds are you are catering to more of a mature user group and they could fall in to that 14.4% still using IE6 and might be beneficial to still support the browser. On the other hand, if you have a site about the latest and greatest motherboards, odds are your target audience is a younger, tech savvy user with the latest browser and updated systems.

The bottom line is this. Do you pay your coder/designer a bit more to ensure your site renders properly in IE6 due to your target audiences requirements or do you simply forgo it and not worry about the loss of a few users and hopes in some small way, you’re leading them down the path to upgrade?

In the end….the choice is yours.

After many nights of lying awake in bed, going over idea after idea, you’ve finally come up with something that you think will make it big on the world wide web. As you continue to think your idea transforms from a simple static page site to a full-featured dynamic website. Now comes the hard part….where to begin?

You may opt to go with an open source script such as Joomla or WordPress and there are many advantages to doing so. Take WordPress for example. It is widely supported, there are many themes and plug-ins available and most importantly…it’s free! However, after getting it all setup and looking good, you realize that you are bound by what the creators of WordPress and/or plugin authors have created. You wish you could have a nice set of forums integrated, or a full featured shopping cart to use. It’s possible to do, but does require some coding knowledge and doesn’t compare to the other options out there.

Frustrated with being controlled by your open-source solution, you now think about custom coding your website. Now a new set of challenges awaits you…choosing what web programming language you want your site coded in and more importantly, choosing a competent coder.

Everyone wants a site that is visually appealing and draws users in….and keeps them. Let’s briefly go over some of the more popular options to at least get you thinking:

• Flash: The use of flash is pretty rampant on the web now. It does provide for a visually stunning website; however there are downsides that you might want to consider. Not everyone’s browser supports the use of flash, additionally there are many network administrators that lock a user’s ability to install a flash rendering add-on, making your site virtually unusable if it relies solely on flash. Also, search engines are not very fond of flash pages and if your goal is to have high page rankings, you might want to hold off on your site being coded entirely in flash.
• PHP: By far one of the most popular web programming languages in use today and one that is supported by just about every hosting provider out there. It’s highly flexible and customizable and the possibilities are virtually endless, of course depending on your coder’s knowledge and skill. If you are considering using PHP you might want to consider having your site based on a PHP framework which we’ve discussed in this post. Using a framework can provide you with a very lightweight footprint and that translates to a fast site for you and your visitors.
• Ruby on Rails: There have been several articles on the net lately which indicate Ruby on Rails (RoR) is becoming more and more in demand. The downside to RoR is it isn’t as popular as PHP and therefore, trying to be picky when choosing a coder may be difficult. RoR can use a command line interface which makes programming in it quicker than manually typing everything out like in PHP. Additionally you will need to make sure that your host supports RoR.
• Ajax, JQuery, Mootools: The use of javascript/AJAX related code, especially JQuery, has become more in demand in the past few years. With the ability to provide on-the-fly, smooth effects on your website without a noticeable performance hit, if used properly, these can add that little flare to your site that you were trying to achieve.
• CSS: If your web designer isn’t using CSS for your site’s design then there is something wrong. CSS stylesheets tell your website’s HTML what to do and what to look like. For those of you keeping up with the evolution of CSS, you know that everyone wants a table-less design now. No more <TR> tags embedded on webpages. This allows your site’s appearance to be changed with ease if ever the need arises in the future without having to recode some of the HTML. Additionally, a properly coded HTML/CSS page is great for SEO visibility.

There are other web programming languages out there that we have simply not gone in to in order keep this posting readable.

Finally, we’d like to leave you with a few tips when choosing and working with a coder:

• Check their previous work and see if they design/code in a format that is acceptable to you. Be wary of a coder who has no prior experience in a particular language but says they can still work with it.
• Do they have verifiable work experience or is their portfolio page filled with images but no links?
• Communication is key. We both know things change along the way when designing/coding. Try to provide as much information up front and as soon as things change, let your coder know.
• Be open to suggestions from your coder/designer. You know what looks good to you, but we know what works best. The goal is to produce an end product you’ll be happy with for a long time.
• Start out with a realistic deadline in mind. Hiring a coder to design and then code a website with a two day turnaround time is a bit unrealistic. Additionally, if your project is able to be completed during that time, you might find quality has suffered at the expense of quickness.

This is just a very brief overview and hopefully got you thinking if you’re looking at having a website made. As always, feel free to contact us if you’re interested in seeing what we can do for you!