Question for web developers/ designers/ people in the industry..

December 29, 2006 2:35 PM

Question for web developers/ designers/ people in the industry. I have a few questions.

First, can someone tell me what technology is used for this kind of exstension:

http://www.military.com/soldiertech/0,14632,Soldiertech_DREAD,,00.html

I see those a lot. Bunch of commas and .html.. is that php? No.. php should end in .php right?

Also, when you see blogs with user comments, is there a standard way of coding that functionality? I done my own in .NET but I'm just winging it, making it up as I go. But I want to know what's the "industry" way of doing it.

And last, all this "Web 2.0" stuff.. if I want to work for a company like monster,disney, amazon, etc.. Do I really need to have a repitoire (sp?) prior to applying for them? I feel I have a good foundation since I've developed web apps for about 4-5 years, but I've always done things my way. Only recently been venturing into web services, soap, xhtml & css. I feel so out of the loop though. Googling info just overwhelms me. Any advice for me to get further into this field?

Thanks!!!

posted by 0217174 to computers & internet (18 comments total)

Man, I did it again, posted the question where the title should be.

Metafilter--you're interface is a bit confusing. I posted the topic in the "headline" field, and the question in the "question" field..
posted by 0217174 at 2:37 PM on December 29, 2006

Well, it probably isn't php, but not because there's no php extension. Webserver configs can be hacked to make anything look like anything so that's rarely a reliable clue.

My guess would be some flavor of java, but that's more guess than anything.
posted by Skorgu at 2:38 PM on December 29, 2006

It's some hideous content management system called Vignette, as I recall.

Though there's absolutely no reason '.htm' should correspond to a HTML page or '.php' to a PHP script — this is totally configurable. For example, many Mefi pages end in .mefi.
posted by matthewr at 2:40 PM on December 29, 2006

It's some hideous content management system called Vignette, as I recall.

Formerly known as StoryServer. It's used by an enormous amount of old media/corporate websites.
posted by cillit bang at 2:42 PM on December 29, 2006

Most blogs (that I've seen, anyway) are put together using prepackaged systems that sit on top of a LAMP stack. Movable Type or Wordpress are two examples. Both let you start off with a server that has nothing but Apache/MySQL/PHP and deploy a full-featured (if generic) blog in a few hours. Wordpress is free software, so you can download and disassemble it, if you're curious.

Of course, most users these days really don't even do that much work themselves, they just sign up with a blogging hosting provider that already uses one of the systems, either a CMS like MT or Wordpress, or something custom (Blogger, etc.).

Rolling your own blogging system, unless you have some fairly unique requirements or are just doing it as an academic exercise, would be like reinventing the wheel. There are tons of content-management systems out there; blogging software is just the tip of the iceberg.
posted by Kadin2048 at 2:43 PM on December 29, 2006

Answering your questions properly:

First, can someone tell me what technology is used for this kind of exstension: http://www.military.com/soldiertech/0,14632,Soldiertech_DREAD,,00.html I see those a lot. Bunch of commas and .html.

As mentioned above, it means the site is running Vignette StoryServer, the corporate equivalent of Movable Type or WordPress. It doesn't mean anything, it's just the way they chose to do URLs.

Also, when you see blogs with user comments, is there a standard way of coding that functionality? I done my own in .NET but I'm just winging it, making it up as I go. But I want to know what's the "industry" way of doing it.

No. Just do whatever works. There are no rules and the web was designed to be as flexible and loosely coupled as possible. The only real rule for URLs is that they should be stable, so that if you bookmark a page and come back a couple of months (or years) later, it will still be there.

And last, all this "Web 2.0" stuff.. if I want to work for a company like monster,disney, amazon, etc.. Do I really need to have a repitoire (sp?) prior to applying for them?

Most of those companies have their own platforms and tools. As long as you're a decent programmer to begin with, they'll train you on them.
posted by cillit bang at 2:55 PM on December 29, 2006

You can alter URLs in a number of ways, using apache's mod_rewrite or mod_rewrit. So you can turn a url like http://www.metafilter.com/username/delmoi into something like http://www.metafilter.com/username.mefi?user=delmoi without the user ever knowing it. That way parametric URLs look "normal" and are more likely to get indexed by search engines.

Diffrent web companies have different standards. If you're familiar with .net, you might be interested in the new AJAX framework for .net. I haven't messed with it, since I only do .net at work. AJAX is one of the big parts of "Web 2.0" which is mostly just a marketing buzzword.
posted by delmoi at 3:13 PM on December 29, 2006

Thanks for the help, I'll have to check out WorkPress..

I remember using struts and changing the extensions from .do to whatever else, I just didn't know if it was possible with other platforms.

AJAX looks interesting too.

Do you feel I SHOULD learn PHP? I'm okay with .net and java, coldfusion I only know the basics, but I feel like php is more with the grass roots community, which seems to dominate the world of blogs, forums, etc.
posted by 0217174 at 3:32 PM on December 29, 2006

Stick with what you are good at for now.

if you want to get into web development in a more team oriented/corporate sense I'd try and find a currently existing opensource project that uses .net or java and dig in. Chances are the people who made it are fairly competent, used best practices, and have a fairly stable way of solving problems/getting things done that probably would suit you well when you are dealing with a corporate development environment.

http://www.dotnetnuke.com might be a good place to start.

php is a good language to learn, simply because it's widely used, and there are lots of places to turn for help. If found that big shops tend to not use php, or at least begin to have a much more heterogeneous language environment.

As for hiring, just show them how smart/willing and able to learn you are, and that you get things done, and if they know what's good for em, they'll hire you.
posted by Freen at 3:44 PM on December 29, 2006

Perhaps you should work on your English language skills first. I'm serious. You asked how to get work for major corporations as a web developer. You won't get past first base with spelling and grammar of the sort on display in your post.
posted by spitbull at 4:18 PM on December 29, 2006

[quote]
And last, all this "Web 2.0" stuff.. if I want to work for a company like monster,disney, amazon, etc.. Do I really need to have a repitoire (sp?) prior to applying for them? I feel I have a good foundation since I've developed web apps for about 4-5 years, but I've always done things my way. Only recently been venturing into web services, soap, xhtml & css. I feel so out of the loop though. Googling info just overwhelms me. Any advice for me to get further into this field?
[quote]

I would say creating a good portfolio would be good place to start. You need to showcase your skills and let the world know about them
posted by chrisranjana.com at 6:29 PM on December 29, 2006

Perhaps you should work on your English language skills first. I'm serious. You asked how to get work for major corporations as a web developer. You won't get past first base with spelling and grammar of the sort on display in your post.


Hmm, took a look at you're last post:

What is the most striaghtforward solution for setting up user accounts with quotas for printing on a small closed office network, mixed Mac OSX 10.4 (mostly, PPC and one Intel) and Windows XP (one machine), printing to a HP 3390 laser all-in-one?

I believe that's "straightforward".

Sorry just had to get that in there.

Thanx for all the other replies.. oops, I mean thanks. No corparations want somebody who uses an X in place of an S..
posted by 0217174 at 7:15 PM on December 29, 2006

Oh yeah, and that's "your" not "you're"..
posted by 0217174 at 7:17 PM on December 29, 2006

Looking at the URL, I would explain it thusly:

/0,14632,Soldiertech_DREAD,,00.html

you have a bunch of variables in the URL, with commas delimiting them. So the above URL could also be written more simply as:

/index.html?a=0&b=14632&title=Soldiertech_DREAD&c=00

As others have shown, you could also do what I do here on MetaFilter, which is use fake folders to delineate multiple variables, like so:

/a/0/b/14632/title/Soldiertech_DREAD/c/00

Basically, the URLs are some attempt at being a "search engine friendly" URL in that it doesn't look like a script with a bunch of variables (it ends in .html, can be parsed as a filename by google, etc). They chose to delineate variables with commas in the URL but you can certainly do it in other ways.
posted by mathowie at 9:10 PM on December 29, 2006 [1 favorite]

I never understand that about the URLs affecting search. I Love Music (down just now so no link) has old-school .php?message=xxx style URLs, and gets indexed by google in a matter of hours after they go up. It's rated so high that it was the top hit for "lost myspace password" for a while, when someone had just mentioned the term in passing.
posted by bonaldi at 7:43 AM on December 30, 2006

To be precise, that is a "CURL", and the parameters are used directly to key the requested page to the StoryServer caching system.

This is described in detail in U.S. Patent No. 5,740,430 filed by C-NET in 1995 (and issued in 1998), describing the system which would later become StoryServer after Vignette was spun out to its own corporate entity.

Despite being highly reviled by many and very pricey, StoryServer nonetheless had (at least in the late 90s) some very cool technology for its day under the covers and it was possible to build very great and usable sites with just the good pieces. The caching system was one such piece, and it enabled web applications to get extremely high performance for an asymmetrical publishing model (where most of the dynamic content is set periodically, and then served in largely the same form to many different people), which is what it was designed for in the first place.
posted by Caviar at 8:49 AM on December 30, 2006

Oh yeah, and that's "your" not "you're"..
posted by 0217174 at 10:17 PM on December 29

Priceless. I make a typo, and you make a major grammatical error while calling me out on casual web posting with advice to proofread business correspondence more carefully if you don't have good English skills. LOL.
posted by spitbull at 10:17 AM on June 2, 2007

I agree that DotNetNuke might be a good place to start. It looks like PHP to me as well but some of the pieces would be easier to add to DotNetNuke without all of the work. There are plenty of DotNetNuke Modules available out there where you don't have to re-invent the wheel. DotNetNuke also is free and includes the option to use friendly URL's.
posted by datasprings at 6:28 PM on June 12, 2007