What web-design program was used to design this site?

September 25, 2010 10:43 AM

What web-design program was used to design this site?

What web-design program was used to design this site?


http://www.goodserviceguide.com/

posted by jacobean to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

By web-design program are you asking what editor they used or are you asking what the underlying development framework is?
posted by superduperfly at 11:00 AM on September 25, 2010

There's no indication on the page nor in the source of any of the dominant code production softwares or content management systems, so I would bet the company commissioned a web programmer to create this. It is a simple database web application that exports static HTML instead of anything dynamic or AJAXy, presumably with a simple backend for ease of data management. The code is very clean and bloat-free thus I think it's generated automatically. The guide system could potentially even be a locally hosted database and an application that generates the HTML, which is then uploaded to the server.
posted by Meagan at 11:01 AM on September 25, 2010

The code is very clean and bloat-free thus I think it's generated automatically

That's funny, I would tend to think the opposite.
posted by RustyBrooks at 11:01 AM on September 25, 2010 [6 favorites]

Some info can be found by querying builtwith.com - http://builtwith.com/goodserviceguide.com. Everything it returns indicates the platform is pretty generic, no clear indication of a particular CMS or other tools beyond PHP and the Prototype javascript framework.
posted by nuffsaid at 11:04 AM on September 25, 2010

RustyBrooks - my instinct was to chuckle and agree, but upon further reflection, Meagan possibly means that content creators/editors type into fields for company name, company synopsis, phone number, etc, and the html of a page like this is generated from there, as opposed to giving the editors a rich text WYSIWIG box which they use to manually zebra-stripe, embolden, etc, which almost always results in nonsense creeping in.

Anyway, Nthing Meagan and nuffsaid, there are no obvious telltale signs of particular editors or frameworks.
posted by Slyfen at 12:01 PM on September 25, 2010

I think you really need to clarify what you're asking here. "Web design program" is extremely vague. In case it's not clear, a web page is simply text, and can be created in numerous ways. It can be typed in by hand using a text editor, or it can be designed using a WYSIWYG editor, or it can be generated on the fly by a program that's running on the web server. In turn that program is usually written by someone using a text editor, or sometimes a code development environment. Many times that program is not written from scratch, but is a generic framework that is adapted and customized by a web developer to fit specific needs. That program is also written in some language that has an interpreter, compiler, VM, etc.

So right there I've listed five types of "web design program": text editor (e.g. notepad), WYSIWYG editor (e.g. Dreamweaver), IDE (e.g. Eclipse, Visual Studio), code framework (e.g. WordPress), language (e.g. PHP). Those all serve completely different purposes but they're all "programs" in the vaguest sense.
posted by Rhomboid at 1:29 PM on September 25, 2010

Netcraft says it's running on MacOS and the Lasso/3.6.5 ID/ACGI web server (never heard of it), on an IP block owned by Dynapolis. Dynapolis turns out to be a personal/freelance site by Doug Gentry.

Doug has a little description of Lasso here and links to Lassosoft's page here. I think "Lasso" is the answer you're looking for.
posted by richyoung at 2:19 PM on September 25, 2010

richyoung is almost certainly right, but even so he's not (probably) answering the question the OP is asking. I agree with Rhomboid. The question, as asked, is flawed and we need clarification of the assumptions on which it's based.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 11:01 PM on September 25, 2010

Wow – I would never have guessed that anyone still uses proprietary interpreted scripting languages to develop on the web. Lasso? Really?
posted by sonic meat machine at 5:52 AM on September 26, 2010

I hear there are people out there still using Cold Fusion. Yikes!
posted by AmbroseChapel at 1:41 PM on September 26, 2010