Larry Wakeman

Re-theming

You may of noticed that I have re-themed the blog.  I know, whoopee.  Now I have to create a Drupal theme for the main site to match this one.  My work and education is cut out for me.

Some thoughts on the Political System

I don’t vote.  Don’t get your knickers in a not, I don’t vote for a very good reason, there is noone running for any office that I would care to vote for.

There was a congressman that I would of voted for if I lived in his district, but guess what, his party put up another candidate in a primary election and threw all of their support behind this new candidate.  Why?  Because he would vote his constituents desire and his own concieous, not the party line.  He was also not influeced by lobbyists.  With the budget crisis here in California and all the representatives following the guidelines of their own parties, it’s no wonder that the budget doesn’t get passed on time.  Representatives and Party Officials, hear this.  S0metimes you have to do what is right for the people you represent.  Sometimes you have to listen to the people you represent.  Actually, I would say that you have to do that all the time.

Another example is the Health Care Reform bills making their way through Washington.  I wonder why the representatives are preserving private health insurers?  Actually, I have a theory on that.  They are being preserved because if a Congressman or Senator were to support a bill that limited them in any way, the representative would lose a large donation to their campaign funds.  My girl freind is a financial analyst for a hospital, and I know from her that most of the expenses in health care come from them.  Increased staff to deal with billing.  Limits on the Doctors ability to treat diseases.  Medicine run for the bottom line and it is the Health Insurer’s bottom line that we are talking about.

It is time to revolt.  In the next election, vote out all those representatives who are in the pockets of the lobbyists.  Vote out all those representatives who blindly follow party line.  If we do this every two years, maybe they will figure out what is going on and start doing what they are supposed to be doing, representing our interests.

I know, it has been a while, but I have been busy.  Right now, I am waiting for my client to finish something so I can get back to work.

This brings me to the subject of clients.  How can prospective clients do a better job of having a successful project.

First, they need to know what they want.  I have seen so many times an RFP (request for proposal) that states the job as “Create a Web Page”.  What does this mean?  I have no idea.  It could be a single page or it could be a complete site of ten or more pages.

If a buyer doesn’t know what they want, they either need to figure it out so they can specify it to the prospective consultants or they should spend a little money and hire someone to figure this out.  They need to know how many pages, have a site flow (what page goes to what page), an idea of the technology they want to use such as static HTML or some type of server side scripting, and if they need a database and how is it structured.

They need to understand that this will cost some money so a reasonable budget should be alloted.  I would figure that it could take a week or two for this effort and that it would cost up to $4000.00.  That’s right, $4000.00 US.  It may cost less but this is the most important step in the porject.  Without a good specification and project plan, the rest is just wasted money.  If you decide to tackle this step yourself, be prepared to pay $500.00 to $1000.00 to have a consultant verify your plan and make recommendations on how to improve it.

Second, break up the project implementation into manageable pieces.  Ask yourself, what is the minimum that I need to implement to get started.  This might be as simple as the home page and the site template.  This part can be done quite quickly.  If you decide to use a CMS (content management system) for the basis of your project, that will require a specific skill site but it may be worth it in the long run in that later phases of the project will proceed more quickly and with less effort.  The drawback of a CMS is that you may be required to do more customization to create the final application.

Third, reuse, reuse, reuse.  There are a lot of solutions out there that have already been developed.  If you don’t know how to select the  appropriate packages, a consultant can help you find packages that will provide some of the functionality that you require.  I can guarentee that these packages will have to be customized and the ease of customization should be a consideration when selecting a package.  Customizing a package is a lot easier than building a new package from scratch.

Fourth, the cheapest price is not necessarily the lowest cost.  This is one of the reasons that you want to implement the project in phases.  This will give you a chance to evaluate the quality of the consultant.  If the consultant doesn’t come up to your expectations, hire a new consultant to fix what the first consultant did.  You may also want to have the consultant the you used for the specification evaluate the code that was written.  It may look right in the browser, but if it is not implemented in a clear and efficient manner, you may have problems with later phases.

Consider the effect of time zones on the implementation of a project.  You may be able to find a really inexpensive consultant half way around the world, but communication with these people can cause problems.  Email is a great form of communication, but the time lag between question and answer can cause delays in the implementation.  There may also be language problems.  It may be well worth the $25-$50 per hour that you would spend for a good local (as in the same timezone) consultant as opposed to the $10-$15 per hour for one halfway around the world.  This effect can be lessened by a good specification and the hiring of a reliable and capable consultant but be prepared to throw they’re work out if it doesn’t come up to the standards I have layed out here.

One of the most important item that the consultant has to provide is well covumented code.  If the web site is being implemented in php or java, the documentation must be flagged for phpdoc or javadoc.  It must also be understandable.

Fifth, test the web site.  Do allocate time for debugging and testing of the web site.  This phase can be as much as half of the project if not more.  The creation of a test plan the will help this phase go smoothly and efficiently.  This is another task for your initial consultant.  The test plan must be complete and specify checks for error conitions as well as proper functioning.  The worst thing your users can see is a blank page when they try to load your web site.  I have seen it too many times.

Make sure the site operates properly with error display on.  Php allows some of the error messages to be turned off.  Just because the error isn’t displayed doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.

So, to summarize:

1. Know what you want and what technologies you will use to implement it.  Prepare a design document.
2. Break up the project into phases.
3. Use existing packages that fill your needs but be ready to customize them.
4. The cheapest proposal is not neccessarily the lowest cost.
5. Test and Test again.

And the fun keeps on coming

I finally got a little time to work on the main page here.  I would like to have the email addresses as pictures and the link popup a window where php will use the mail function to send the message.  The email adresses are encoded to prevent spammers from lifting the email addresses from the web page.  What I ended up doing instead, was to apply updates to the Drupal system.  Not too bas, just a bit of learning is all.

Sometimes you have to fix it

Well, Monday after I posted the train pictures, I broke the web site.  I changed a setting trying to get the link on the logo to go back to the main website home page instead of the blog page.  WordPress (WP) broke something fierce.  I had changed the setting back in the dashboard, but it didn’t work.  Finally, today I was able to find the problem in the database and fix it.  I will look to see if there is someway I can change this link without destroying WP.

Coming into the station

Well, today I went to Martinez to see the Union Pacific Steam Train.  The train just went through the station but it was still Awesome.

Coming into the station

Pulling up to the platform

The Power

Leaving town

It’s scary

I am actually sstarting to get the idea behind WordPress.  I might be able to do just about anything that I would want to do to a blog with one theme.  I found the Atahualpa theme and it is so flexible, but it is also very complex due to it’s flexibility.  WIn Some…

Look who’s blogging

Well I finally did it, I created a blog.  I can’t guarentee that I will be making entries every day but I will try.

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!