I mucked around with the samples throughout the book and think that Gennas Jewellery site is probably ok for layout and style. I will probably tweak it a bit – definitely try to do something with the logo section to be laid out a bit better.

I have the idea in my head of what to do with the amount of content – move from 11 top level pages down to 6 and re-write most of the content there. The catalogue I am still not 100% on.

Just started reading Building Findable Websites so that I have a better idea of what to do with the content I write for it.

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I had thought about throwing together a wee 3 page site or so in a variety of formats – XHTML1, 1.1, 2, HTML5 with liquid/fixed/fluid layout etc to try and clean off the rust.

Rather than just flail and read random bits I bought a decent looking book and intend to go through it working through the examples from everything from the most basic things to the most advanced.

No idea how long it will take but the experience should be worthwhile as I would then have a more realistic idea of what can be done in CSS to then re-look at Gennas site afresh.

Gennas site

When I first made Gennas site she wanted it small and with a well-defined number and variety of pages. If WordPress or a similar CMS had been readily available at the time I would have used it. As it was I had tried to manually create a kind of category/tagging system for the jewellery in static HTML. It seemed ok with 20items, at the current 200+ it is unmanageable.

I had had to manually add each page for each new item Genna added – which when making one-off pieces the majority of time is a lot of wasted effort compared to someone who makes 30 of something and adds it to a shop once. I gradually managed to show Genna how to do some HTML editing which is really good – she learned the basics of a skill in a field totally unrelated to what she does.

Unfortunately Notepad has no spell checker so it was easy for mistakes to creep in.

The other pages were added to the top level of the site over time and now number 11, most of which have sub pages.

When it came to add a shop I threw on an off the shelf package which I haven’t even taken the time to modify. When I realised the amount of time wasted maintaining a new page I threw on a blog which has been far better.

Both of these are great as Genna can write copy like in a word processor and I can switch tabs to code for clean-up/doing anything more complicated.

Near term work

What have I been doing lately

Adding her blog to directories etc.
Set up twitter account
Set up Facebook Group page
Linked blog to Facebook and Twitter so messages are automatically sent to each service.

So what has to be done in the near future:

Reduce duplicate content
Review each page for keywords and make sure we are not doing anything stupid which for a small amount of work would give way better performance in search engines.
Reduce top level pages – I have already identified some to go.
Review catalogue (Genna and I disagree over what to do, see below).
Give site a complete once over for code-validity and useability. Re-review in all browser strains and new ones since I last did it.
Design new WordPress template for blog.
Look at new template/add ins for shop.

Catalogue

Genna makes lots of one-off pieces. How do we best manage this. In the near past each item was given a new page inside a category (rings, bracelets etc). When pieces went to galleries each price had to be changed to Currently on display at X gallery etc.

With the addition of the shop this was easier as it would be marked as out of stock.

This posed an additional problem though. Add 20 rings, sell 18 and you have only two in stock. We solved this by paying a tiny amount for an add-in that hid out of stock items.

Brilliant, except now items that had sold no longer appeared on the site. This posed two more problems.
1. Someone buys an item and can’t then review it.
2. We spend ages building up a keyword of a type of item and then have no page to link to say none in stock, order one to be made for you.

It’s a pickle and once I have not had the time to sit down and think long and hard about. I think the best solution may be to write a blog piece about each new design then add into the shop so that it is there for historical purposes but am not 100% sure.

This is in the future though, I need to re-learn what I might have forgotten about HTML/CSS then after that work through the list, then learn enough PHP to modify her shop code.

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I had heard great things about both Drupal and Joomla so figured they would be top of my list. Looked at the install for Drupal, looked simple enough. Tried to install on my machine and got no end of problems.

Hey let’s create an “install.php” but not make it do a complete install, sod that we want our users to learn loads of unix commands to set it up, too hard for the authors to script.

Fuck that noise.

WordPress and Cubecart being the two other applications I have installed both had this facility. I don’t mind editing a config file or anything but that was a step too far. When I install an application on Windows you follow the options and click appropriate sections. You don’t have to hand edit the registry. Why? Because you shouldn’t have to.

I then downloaded Joomla, waited and age for it to upload to server and then went to the directory. Redirected to installation directory where it checks my requirements. It tells me I have a problem, the help file with the handy screenshots tells me exactly what I need to do to fix it. It then checks again. It asks for FTP and MySQL usernames etc. Installs and is all set to go.

I have no idea yet if it does what I want it to do but unlike Drupal it has passed the first hurdle of making it possible for me to find that out. It could be that WordPress would do but I think the option to easily integrate forums etc is a good bonus. I have to have her shop in it too which will be another hurdle.

Lesson: you may have the greatest web application in the world but if you make users jump through hoops in order to test it you will get nowhere. If I cared enough to look into it I would have managed to set up Drupal, I just didn’t give enough of a shit to. My time is too valuable to me to waste learning how to do stuff your install should script for me. How you expect Joe Bloggs to do so is a mystery.

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