The Web Design & Development Megathread

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Fcdts26: Mar 18, 2009

Im currently working in IT for a small company. We have a small access application that the owners would like ported over to something more current/web friendly. The database is small and simple and should not really grow beyond where its at currently. It consists of about 30 project numbers and about 30 employees who basically just update how many hours they are working on each project a week. 90% of the usage is to just see who is working on what. Right now you type in a project number and it returns a table with the project and who is working on it. The hours can be updated and people can be added and removed.

Any advice on what would be the best language/framework to port this over? My company has said its something that I can take on if I want too and I would be given a decent budget and around 20 hours a week to learn and develop this. I did some Java/SQL in college but I am in no way a developer, but its something I would love to be able learn. I would much rather learn this myself and be able to support it then hire someone to do it for us. Any advice would be great!

# ? Dec 1, 2014 05:43

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# ? May 10, 2024 12:34

pokeyman: Nov 26, 2006; That elephant ate my entire platoon.

Pretty much any language and framework. They are all designed to thinly disguise a database.

# ? Dec 1, 2014 06:09

My Rhythmic Crotch: Jan 13, 2011

That question comes up a lot... it's almost like we need to consolidate all of our web threads or something.

My personal choices for the backend (server):
If you want to go with an easy language, start with Python and use Flask. I like Flask because it does not require a bunch of configuration, and it does not make any assumptions about what you are trying to build. When I used Django (another framework) I constantly ran into situations where the developers had decided something, and changing it was a pain (this was like 3 years ago, and could be better now).

If you care about performance or you are more comfortable with Java, try Spark. It is also very minimal and makes no assumptions.

I will just list my current backend stack in Java if you are curious:
Spark - web framework
GSON - json encode/decode
Simple - xml encode/decode
JDBI - database driver

On the front end, the situation is very different. Javascript is the only choice as far as language, but there is a vast array of libraries. I'd recommend starting with jQuery and learn to make a "hello world" ajax call to your server. There's a post at the end of the previous page that might serve as a good starting point for that.

# ? Dec 1, 2014 06:20

Pollyanna: Mar 5, 2005; Milk's on them.

Flask is a super great framework for learning. If you decide to go with it, I'd say the three main topics you want to learn are HTTP methods (GET, POST, DELETE, etc.), HTTP headers, and Ajax. Flask gives you just enough control to familiarize yourself with those things. The only caveat is you have to look up how Flask ties into methods and headers yourself - but it's totally possible.

# ? Dec 1, 2014 14:50

YO MAMA HEAD: Sep 11, 2007

socialsecurity posted:

So I've been out of the web design game for a while but my msp want's me to start working on some light sites. I used to work in Joomla a bunch it seems that it is not as popular as it was like 5 years ago, I've been reading good things about Drupal should I head in that direction or there an easier/better CMS out there.

Has anyone else used Craft CMS? I used it on a few small projects that benefited from its blank-slate-ness and liked the idea of being able to define all of my own custom fields, but had some issues with its (reported?) memory usage on my hosting.

# ? Dec 1, 2014 15:40

kedo: Nov 27, 2007

socialsecurity posted:

So I've been out of the web design game for a while but my msp want's me to start working on some light sites. I used to work in Joomla a bunch it seems that it is not as popular as it was like 5 years ago, I've been reading good things about Drupal should I head in that direction or there an easier/better CMS out there.

WordPress is really the only other super popular CMS* out there at the moment. There are a ton of new ones, but if you care about community involvement and number of readily available plugins, you're stuck with WP or Drupal.

Joomla is still terrible.

*open-source / free. I'm always astonished at the number of people I come across who use ExpressionEngine.

# ? Dec 1, 2014 17:44

Spatulater bro!: Aug 19, 2003; Punch! Punch! Punch!

For low-medium traffic sites without any highly specialized requirements, there's no reason to NOT use Wordpress.

Now awaiting all the reasons to not use Wordpress.

# ? Dec 1, 2014 18:19

lunar detritus: May 6, 2009

caiman posted:

For low-medium traffic sites without any highly specialized requirements, there's no reason to NOT use Wordpress.

This. And for god's sake, don't make your own CMS.

# ? Dec 1, 2014 18:21

me your dad: Jul 25, 2006

If a web page has an image that is resized through the CSS, does the image file size stay the same?

In other words, if a hosted image is 1000x1000px but the CSS says it's 200x200, will the file size reflect the original large image or the smaller one?

# ? Dec 1, 2014 18:27

Diabolik900: Mar 28, 2007

The file size stays the same.

# ? Dec 1, 2014 18:30

me your dad: Jul 25, 2006

Diabolik900 posted:

The file size stays the same.

Thanks - I figured that was the case but I wanted to make sure before making myself look stupid (not too difficult).

# ? Dec 1, 2014 18:56

Maluco Marinero: Jan 18, 2001; Damn that's a
fine elephant.

caiman posted:

For low-medium traffic sites without any highly specialized requirements, there's no reason to NOT use Wordpress.

Now awaiting all the reasons to not use Wordpress.

Nail on the head. As long as the client is willing to bend on a few 'well this is the way WordPress does it' elements, you can go a surprisingly long way with it. Bung in the JSON API plugin and then you can get even further by doing the fancy on the client side.

# ? Dec 1, 2014 22:18

Heskie: Aug 10, 2002

YO MAMA HEAD posted:

Has anyone else used Craft CMS? I used it on a few small projects that benefited from its blank-slate-ness and liked the idea of being able to define all of my own custom fields, but had some issues with its (reported?) memory usage on my hosting.

Craft CMS looks great. The only barrier I see really is the license, its similar to EE that way.

That said, I'm always surprised how little attention Symphony CMS gets. I've always suspected that if it used Twig or even Smarty rather than XSLT it would have been much more popular. Whenever I've built a client's website with it, they've instantly 'got' it.

I do really like WordPress, but its nice to have 100% control of front-end markup and the admin panel in Symphony (without relying on filters to cut back on stuff before you've even begun).

# ? Dec 1, 2014 23:07

revmoo: May 25, 2006; #basta

I feel like we're in a golden age of great CMS products honestly. Even EE which feels doggone ancient at this point is pretty enjoyable to work with.

# ? Dec 1, 2014 23:11

BlackMK4: Aug 23, 2006; wat.; Megamarm

This is horrible poo poo but I don't know where else to ask that will get any kind of logical response.

I started learning PHP and poo poo a few weeks ago and my first little project was to take the hundreds of PDFs that Ducati people get to deal with if they want to look up parts and make it easy to browse/cross reference/etc. I've got this right now:
http://user12cis166.achins.com/ducfiche/index.php

Keep in mind that there are no consolidated online microfiches like this for Ducatis in existence... there are approximately 200ish PDFs of data that are broken down by year, model, trim and it takes me about 35 minutes to move the data from the PDF into my database for one PDF. Is it worth fleshing this project out a bit if I were to monetize it with AdSense or whatever in the end? There isn't anything else like it so I think it could move a little bit of traffic...

# ? Dec 1, 2014 23:45

streetlamp: May 7, 2007; Danny likes his party hat
He does not like his banana hat

Looks like an awesome project, I know nothing about Ducatis but could definitely use something similar for plenty of other cars I end up with.

35 minutes per PDF seems awful though, I assume your just manually entering this stuff? Could you speed it up at all with some OCR magic or something? I don't know too much about adsense stuff but I do know you need a buttload of traffic to make any coin and the time needed to input your data would surely kill any profit. Also could look into mechanical turk?

Might want to check out the Blog for bucks thread in the business sub too for adsense questions.

# ? Dec 2, 2014 01:15

Kobayashi: Aug 13, 2004; by Nyc_Tattoo

I don't know how litigious Ducati is, but it seems like you could run into copyright issues by posting all of those schematics. That aside, it looks like a cool project.

# ? Dec 2, 2014 01:30

My Rhythmic Crotch: Jan 13, 2011

Some European companies are pretty lax about that kinda stuff - Ikea for example. Others like Ferrari, not so much. You might try contacting them first to see if they say anything at all.

At 35 minutes per PDF, I would be really tempted to outsource it...

# ? Dec 2, 2014 02:42

BlackMK4: Aug 23, 2006; wat.; Megamarm

Hrm, thank you guys. I'm not manually inputting it - this is what one of the PDFs looks like
http://store.proitalia.com/media/downloads/diagrams/ducati/2003-sbk749.pdf

I've been using Tabula (http://tabula.technology/) and it's great but so time consuming to match everything up after the raw data gets dumped to a CSV. I can't figure out a better way to do it... I mean I know how to do it by hand efficiently but I don't really think it can be scripted because Tabula is fairly flaky. There are a few sites distributing these PDFs so I don't think it's an issue, though I will do my due dilligence to see what's up with licensing or copyright.

I'm going to look into Mechanical Turk and the blog for bucks thread, thanks guys.

Seems like the ads would be fairly targeted since there are only a few big parts dealers.

http://www.ducatiomaha.com/products.asp

This should give everyone some kind of idea as to where this kinda thing stands... Duc Omaha is pretty big and the best they've got is a form that requires you to enter an unformatted part number to get one price at a time.

# ? Dec 2, 2014 06:20

Chris!: Dec 2, 2004; E

I totally suck at jquery! But I'm trying to get better.

I'm trying to use it in a project at the moment. What I want is, I have a 3x3 grid of thumbnails. When the user moves their mouse over a thumb, the other thumbnails change to display the whole image.

Something like this:

Images used are just for example purposes, this is mostly a personal exercise in improving my jquery skills.

What I have so far is:

code:

		<ul>
		  	<li class="index-block">
			  	<div class="index-block--container" data-block-num="1"><img src="img/image1.jpg"></div>
			</li>		  	
			<li class="index-block">
			  <div class="index-block--container" data-block-num="2"><img src="img/image1.jpg"></div>
			</li>		  	
			<li class="index-block">
			  <div class="index-block--container block-news" data-block-num="3"><h3>News / Blog</h3></div>
			</li>		  	
			<li class="index-block">
			  <div class="index-block--container" data-block-num="4"><img src="img/image1.jpg"></div>
			</li>		  	
			<li class="index-block">
			  <div class="index-block--container" data-block-num="5"><img src="img/image1.jpg"></div>
			</li>
			<li class="index-block">
			  <div class="index-block--container" data-block-num="6"><img src="img/image1.jpg"></div>
			</li>
		</ul>



$(document).ready(function() {
	$(".index-block").mouseover(function() {
		$(this).siblings().children().children().css("opacity","0") /* hide the image or whatever content is there */;
		$(this).siblings().children().css("background-image","url(/img/bg1-" + data('block-num') + ".jpg)") 
/* change the bg image for the set of images that relate to that project, obviously this doesn't work */;
	});

	$(".index-block").mouseout(function() {
		$(this).siblings().children().children().css("opacity","1");
		$(this).siblings().children().css("background-image","none");
	});
});

The data('block-num') is what I'd like to do - but obviously it doesn't work like that. So I'd like to refer to the data-block-num attribute for each list item. So the li with data-attribute="4" will load /img/bg1-4.jpg. How would I achieve that?

To reiterate, this is just a project to learn and improve my jquery, not something being rushed into production for a client.

Chris! fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Dec 2, 2014

# ? Dec 2, 2014 18:31

Lumpy: Apr 26, 2002; La! La! La! Laaaa!; College Slice

Chris! posted:

I totally suck at jquery! But I'm trying to get better.

I'm trying to use it in a project at the moment. What I want is, I have a 3x3 grid of thumbnails. When the user moves their mouse over a thumb, the other thumbnails change to display the whole image.

Something like this:

Images used are just for example purposes, this is mostly a personal exercise in improving my jquery skills.

What I have so far is:
code:
		<ul>
		  	<li class="index-block">
			  	<div class="index-block--container" data-block-num="1"><img src="img/image1.jpg"></div>
			</li>		  	
			<li class="index-block">
			  <div class="index-block--container" data-block-num="2"><img src="img/image1.jpg"></div>
			</li>		  	
			<li class="index-block">
			  <div class="index-block--container block-news" data-block-num="3"><h3>News / Blog</h3></div>
			</li>		  	
			<li class="index-block">
			  <div class="index-block--container" data-block-num="4"><img src="img/image1.jpg"></div>
			</li>		  	
			<li class="index-block">
			  <div class="index-block--container" data-block-num="5"><img src="img/image1.jpg"></div>
			</li>
			<li class="index-block">
			  <div class="index-block--container" data-block-num="6"><img src="img/image1.jpg"></div>
			</li>
		</ul>



$(document).ready(function() {
	$(".index-block").mouseover(function() {
		$(this).siblings().children().children().css("opacity","0") /* hide the image or whatever content is there */;
		$(this).siblings().children().css("background-image","url(/img/bg1-" + data('block-num') + ".jpg)") 
/* change the bg image for the set of images that relate to that project, obviously this doesn't work */;
	});

	$(".index-block").mouseout(function() {
		$(this).siblings().children().children().css("opacity","1");
		$(this).siblings().children().css("background-image","none");
	});
});
The data('block-num') is what I'd like to do - but obviously it doesn't work like that. So I'd like to refer to the data-block-num attribute for each list item. So the li with data-attribute="4" will load /img/bg1-4.jpg. How would I achieve that?

To reiterate, this is just a project to learn and improve my jquery, not something being rushed into production for a client.

Why not store the URLs in the data attributes? Plus, you have a lot of markup you don't need... why are there DIVs in there at all? Here's a crappy example making LIs have different BG colors based on a data attribute: http://jsfiddle.net/kvvz6tj7/

I'm sure someone will beat me to it, but I'll code up a working version of what you want in a couple hours, as it's a pretty cool thing.

# ? Dec 2, 2014 19:44

fuf: Sep 12, 2004; haha

So what's the deal with the .io tld? Did it get popular just because lots of names were still available? Do you think the popularity will last? Is it worth registering [my_startup_name].io?

# ? Dec 2, 2014 19:58

my bony fealty: Oct 1, 2008

caiman posted:

For low-medium traffic sites without any highly specialized requirements, there's no reason to NOT use Wordpress.

Now awaiting all the reasons to not use Wordpress.

I am a big Wordpress fan and I definitely recommend it; I have been told by people that they don't like Wordpress because they "don't want to use PHP". It is a mystery.

# ? Dec 2, 2014 19:59

Chris!: Dec 2, 2004; E

Lumpy posted:

Why not store the URLs in the data attributes? Plus, you have a lot of markup you don't need... why are there DIVs in there at all? Here's a crappy example making LIs have different BG colors based on a data attribute: http://jsfiddle.net/kvvz6tj7/

I'm sure someone will beat me to it, but I'll code up a working version of what you want in a couple hours, as it's a pretty cool thing.

Hey, thanks for taking the time to look at this for me!

Your example code looks great so far, and since I'm new to jQuery it's very useful for me to see how you've achieved that. Much more elegant than what I'd done, I'm going to keep working on the problem and hopefully learning from what you've done.

The extra divs were a holdover from some other aspect of the idea I'm working on; for the life of me, I can't figure out why I had them in now.

If you did manage to make a working example of it, that would be fantastic, thank you!

Edit: Ah yes, because each li will need a different image number (the 4th div will load images ending ...4.jpg for example), and each thumbnail will generate a different set of project images ("project-whatever...*.jpg"), I'm not sure how to do this.

It's a good learning problem for me! Might not be viable, due to the amount of images needed to be pre-loaded or called in....

So far I'm scratching my head, so if anyone does have any ideas, I'd love to hear them!

Chris! fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Dec 2, 2014

# ? Dec 2, 2014 20:05

Spatulater bro!: Aug 19, 2003; Punch! Punch! Punch!

fuf posted:

So what's the deal with the .io tld? Did it get popular just because lots of names were still available? Do you think the popularity will last? Is it worth registering [my_startup_name].io?

Explanations I've heard for why it's so popular, especially for tech related things:
-It's short
-There are a fair amount of good domains available
-It's kinda inherently techy when you think of I/O
-Some words end in "io", so people have fun coming up with domains, e.g. cloudrad.io

As for whether it'll stick around for long, I have no idea. I'm rooting for .xyz myself.

# ? Dec 2, 2014 20:24

The March Hare: Oct 15, 2006; _{Je r�ve d'un}
Wayne's World 3; Buglord

fuf posted:

So what's the deal with the .io tld? Did it get popular just because lots of names were still available? Do you think the popularity will last? Is it worth registering [my_startup_name].io?

Input/output - it's just cheeky and caught on.

# ? Dec 2, 2014 20:24

Bastard: Jul 13, 2001; We are each responsible for our own destiny.

caiman posted:

Now awaiting all the reasons to not use Wordpress.

If you are a developer and like working with a reasonable codebase?

In my experience, if a client just wants to update some content pages and perhaps a blog/news system, sure, Wordpress will do fine. When they want something that Wordpress doesn't do out of the box and you need to dive into the whole plugin structure, run away. Never have I been so completely frustrated and burned as when working with Wordpress plugins.

# ? Dec 2, 2014 21:58

revmoo: May 25, 2006; #basta

Bastard posted:

If you are a developer and like working with a reasonable codebase?

Yep.

If running the site IS your job, then never use Wordpress.

# ? Dec 2, 2014 22:30

Robot Arms: Sep 19, 2008; R!

revmoo posted:

If running the site IS your job, then never use Wordpress.

Okay, running a site is my job, and WordPress is all I know. What should I learn to use instead? (This is the site.)

# ? Dec 2, 2014 22:40

Spatulater bro!: Aug 19, 2003; Punch! Punch! Punch!

revmoo posted:

Yep.

If running the site IS your job, then never use Wordpress.

I know WP isn't perfect, but "never" use it? Really? I'd like to hear you expand on this opinion.

# ? Dec 2, 2014 23:01

revmoo: May 25, 2006; #basta

samglover posted:

Okay, running a site is my job, and WordPress is all I know. What should I learn to use instead? (This is the site.)

That looks fantastic and I would not advocate changing it for the sake of using a better platform.

That said, I'd personally put it on a roadmap to upgrade to a Laravel app so that you can leverage MVC and Composer packages.

# ? Dec 2, 2014 23:02

down with slavery: Dec 23, 2013; STOP QUOTING MY POSTS SO PEOPLE THAT AREN'T IDIOTS DON'T HAVE TO READ MY FUCKING TERRIBLE OPINIONS THANKS

revmoo posted:

That said, I'd personally put it on a roadmap to upgrade to a Laravel app so that you can leverage MVC and Composer packages.

Laravel? Really? What's so bad about content management systems? Do you feel similarly about Drupal/EE?

# ? Dec 2, 2014 23:03

revmoo: May 25, 2006; #basta

^^ I mentioned on this page I think that I enjoy working with EE. Drupal is quite ok as well. Again I also mentioned that I think we're living in the golden age of web frameworks because they're all pretty good.

caiman posted:

I know WP isn't perfect, but "never" use it? Really? I'd like to hear you expand on this opinion.

Because its backend architecture is poorly suited to the kind of custom work and scale that full-time devs are going to be focusing on.

# ? Dec 2, 2014 23:04

down with slavery: Dec 23, 2013; STOP QUOTING MY POSTS SO PEOPLE THAT AREN'T IDIOTS DON'T HAVE TO READ MY FUCKING TERRIBLE OPINIONS THANKS

revmoo posted:

Because its backend architecture is poorly suited to the kind of custom work and scale that full-time devs are going to be focusing on.

Just because you're a full-time dev doesn't mean you're operating at scales where CMS platforms are inefficient(which are few and far between). CMS platforms like Drupal are used plenty and on very high volume sites. I don't have any examples of high volume sites operating on Wordpress, but I bet they are out there.

revmoo posted:

^^ I mentioned on this page I think that I enjoy working with EE. Drupal is quite ok as well. Again I also mentioned that I think we're living in the golden age of web frameworks because they're all pretty good.

Laravel is really a whole different beast though. I was just surprised you suggested that sort of move as opposed to a more fleshed out CMS

# ? Dec 2, 2014 23:04

revmoo: May 25, 2006; #basta

E:dited this post in so I could reply to all these points in turn

Pretty much all CMS systems can be adapted to large amounts of traffic. The point I was trying to make is that when you're running a site as your full-time job, you have not only the time, but the inclination to do a lot of really custom work, in an effort to delivery higher quality. This applies across the board.

Using a cleaner architecture at your site's core enables you (and your team) to do a really rapid release cycle for new features.

I recognize there is a difference in what Wordpress delivers out of the box compared to what Laravel delivers, but if you have the time you owe it to yourself and your company to construct a more low-level application, at least over the longer term.

Also ^^

The Wizard of Poz posted:

This is a really stupid suggestion. The poster has a pre-built CMS that is working exactly how he wants it to, and you are suggesting with a straight face that he looks at hand coding his own CMS? Are you for real?

That's actually the opposite of what I was recommending, however it would be a good idea for anyone to put a clean-sheet solution on your long-term roadmap if you intend to grow and scale over the years.

revmoo fucked around with this message at 23:16 on Dec 2, 2014

# ? Dec 2, 2014 23:10

putin is a cunt: Apr 5, 2007; BOY DO I SURE ENJOY TRASH. THERE'S NOTHING MORE I LOVE THAN TO SIT DOWN IN FRONT OF THE BIG SCREEN AND EAT A BIIIIG STEAMY BOWL OF SHIT. WARNER BROS CAN COME OVER TO MY HOUSE AND ASSFUCK MY MOM WHILE I WATCH AND I WOULD CERTIFY IT FRESH, NO QUESTION

revmoo posted:

That looks fantastic and I would not advocate changing it for the sake of using a better platform.

That said, I'd personally put it on a roadmap to upgrade to a Laravel app so that you can leverage MVC and Composer packages.

This is a really stupid suggestion. The poster has a pre-built CMS that is working exactly how he wants it to, and you are suggesting with a straight face that he looks at hand coding his own CMS? Are you for real?

# ? Dec 2, 2014 23:15

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

revmoo posted:

Pretty much all CMS systems can be adapted to large amounts of traffic

Except WordPress which only really scales if you throw more horsepower at it. Try load-balancing it and see what happens. Hope you don't have anything stored in the media library!

# ? Dec 2, 2014 23:21

Lumpy: Apr 26, 2002; La! La! La! Laaaa!; College Slice

Chris! posted:

Hey, thanks for taking the time to look at this for me!

Your example code looks great so far, and since I'm new to jQuery it's very useful for me to see how you've achieved that. Much more elegant than what I'd done, I'm going to keep working on the problem and hopefully learning from what you've done.

The extra divs were a holdover from some other aspect of the idea I'm working on; for the life of me, I can't figure out why I had them in now.

If you did manage to make a working example of it, that would be fantastic, thank you!

Edit: Ah yes, because each li will need a different image number (the 4th div will load images ending ...4.jpg for example), and each thumbnail will generate a different set of project images ("project-whatever...*.jpg"), I'm not sure how to do this.

It's a good learning problem for me! Might not be viable, due to the amount of images needed to be pre-loaded or called in....

So far I'm scratching my head, so if anyone does have any ideas, I'd love to hear them!

You don't need a different image for each block when you display the "big" version. Just use one big image as a BG and set the viewport via CSS positioning: http://jsfiddle.net/hyr5vhp5/

# ? Dec 2, 2014 23:23

Iseult: Apr 21, 2010; hoc est bellum; Hell Gem

Macaw at 75% off

http://macaw.co/payitforward/

# ? Dec 2, 2014 23:32

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 10, 2024 12:34

Chris!: Dec 2, 2004; E

Lumpy posted:

You don't need a different image for each block when you display the "big" version. Just use one big image as a BG and set the viewport via CSS positioning: http://jsfiddle.net/hyr5vhp5/

That's a great suggestion, thanks!

# ? Dec 2, 2014 23:34

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > The Web Design & Development Megathread

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