Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with web and application

Do I need insurance for my web business?

tomargue — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 22:47:04 -0800

Do I need to insure my web business? I am setting up a to-do list + calendar web application that holds users' data. Do I need to insure against data loss, or down time? Or can I put all that in a EULA (e.g., [web application] will not be responsible for any data loss, down time, data corruption etc)? I plan to speak to a lawyer in about two months time about all the legal requirements prior to my web application "going live", but I want to get a bit of a feel of the risks associated before speaking to a lawyer and forking over $1000s or more.

If I do need insurance for my web app, what's the best way of finding insurance? (I've never looked at finding insurance before...my housemates have always taken care of home and contents insurance, and I've never owned a car). If insurance does exist for data loss etc, what's the ball-park figure on how much such a scheme would cost? Would I need to go with an multinational insurer, since the site will be available world-wide? Or would a small local insurer do (I live in Melbourne, Australia)? Or can I simply have an End User License Agreement and make my users agree not to sue me if I accidently lose their data. I know, even to this day, that Hotmail deletes user accounts if left idle for a few months....

How do I go about finding out how many servers (as a function of number of users) I will need to host my web application?

tomargue — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 01:33:39 -0800

I'm putting together a business model for my web application. As part of my expenditure, I need to estimate how many servers I need as a function of number of users. What's a good first step to finding this out? Depending on whether my application can support 100 concurrent users or 10,000 concurrent users, this will vastly change my estimates of server costs. I guess, in general, the number of concurrent users per virtual server will change dramatically depending on the type of web application[1], so I was wondering what the steps are to estimate number of servers required (presuming I can make a good guess of how many users will be online at any one time).

The first step I tried was load-testing my application to see how many users a single server can handle. My application is a GWT application (running on a GlassFish server) and I have actually been having a bit of trouble doing a load test due, in part, to the way GWT handles AJAX. That is, I tried jmeter, but ran into problems in the way jmeter encodes Content-Types. I was thinking if there was an easier way.

I was thinking about estimating the session size for each user then dividing Virtual Machine memory by that amount. But then, I'd also need an estimate on the CPU usage, too.

Maybe the numbers of users per virtual server doesn't change too much from web application to web application...and a "rule of thumb" exists: e.g., 1,000 concurrent users per server, or something like that. My gut instinct says such a rule doesn't exist...

[1] For those who are interested in the details, my web application is an online file manager and general life-organizer that uses hierarchical labels. At its most basic level it allows you to make to-do lists quickly: this would mean that the data exchanged between the client and server is minimal: text. But I've made it so you can also upload files, e.g., music files, and play them online: streaming data would be resource-intensive and probably hard to make a theoretical guess. That's why I'm thinking that load testing under a variety of conditions is the only true way to estimate number of concurrent users. In which case, any suggestions on how to load test GWT applications would be highly appreciated.

Am I on the right track? If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear.

Small web team needs a better way to track requests than MS Outlook.

Null Pointer and the Exceptions — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 21:39:57 -0800

Small web team needs a better way to track requests than MS Outlook. We're not a big web team, just three guys including the designer. We manage a site, not a complex web application. 90% of our work is creating or updating content: we don't do builds (we push to the live server individual changes after they are tested), don't do rollbacks (can get backups as needed for past year), and don't track bugs (we deal with content, not features, typos are the most likely issue). Requests can be for changing content, creating html emails, rebranding sections of the site and the occasional functional enhancement (mostly associated with pulling content from a db).

Our current workflow:

1. all requests come through a shared inbox
2. as we work on items in the inbox, we flag them in Outlook, each person has their own color.
3. when an item is done, we send a reply, then move the item to an archive folder.

It's simple and efficient, but I'm looking for something the team can use that would replace this, as colored flags don't work in Entourage and Outlook is the only Windows app we still use besides IE for testing.

Ideally it would be web based, have the ability to assign ownership, to set deadlines, allow for attachments and keep a thread if there are replies. I'm on the fence if it should require a login or not (e.g. just create tickets based on emails to the old inbox).

If it can handle projects that's great, but it's not necessary as I'm the only one who does projects here and OmniFocus works great for that.

What useful web site should I write?

jlstitt — Tue, 05 May 2009 08:38:16 -0800

I want to write a web application. What would be useful to you? OK so I have been wanting to write a new web application. Something that can test my design skills, my coding skills, and generally provide something useful for people.

What kind of web application would you like?

Here's some of the ones I use and think are cool:

Google Maps and Calendar, Mint, okcupid, Meebo, Ning.

(Note that I'm a professional web developer, so I'd love a challenge)

Thanks!

Need timely replacement for web-based screen-sharing software.

mrmojoflying — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 10:44:56 -0800

I need help finding a replacement service for the very recently defunct Convenos, a web-based meeting application for use with PCs. Long story short, I need to replace my Convenos service by the end of the week to finish a few remaining virtual research interviews. If anyone has used or knows about a similar service, I would be very obliged to hear about it. The important parameters:

-It must allow me to remotely view a research participant's desktop live.

-It needs audio, or to be able to concurrently run Skype.

-The project demands crisp visual fidelity, which excludes using web-cams.

-It should be relatively inexpensive (i.e. no stand-alone software purchase, year-long subscriptions, etc.). I paid $30/month USD for Convenos, which was ideal.

-I need it this week or my primary research may never be put to rest.

Inserting XML into an HTML document

five fresh fish — Thu, 15 May 2008 17:44:25 -0800

I wish to insert a namespaced XML document into an (X)HTML web page. The "XML Data Island" trick is verboten. There appears to be two ways of accomplishing this. Both continue to elude me. The first method is to use JS to fetch the XML document and then run a traversal on the document, re-creating its nodes as nodes appended to the insertion holder element. The second method is to use XSLT to not-transform it, but merely replicate it directly into the holder element.

The source XML document is Docbook with namespaces, so the TITLE element doesn't collide with XHTML's self-same element (otherwise I get a validation error). This XML will then be styled using CSS.

I've been exhaustively researching and toying with this for the past week. It seems to me to be a perfectly natural thing to want to do, yet for the life of me I have not found a pre-made solution.

I spent most of today working on the JS solution, and I think I've nearly grokked it, save a few stumbling details. But as I was driving home it struck me that (a) this is going to be unbearably slow for any large document; and (b) a simple not-really-transforming XSLT might do the trick.

Anyhoo, I'd like to hear some ideas for ways of solving all this. I'm a rank newbie at the whole JS/DOM thing, but familiar enough that I'm more or less successfully muddling through it through judicious use of the internets. Feel free to post code, etc; at this point any info I can get that'll help me struggle through this is welcome¹⁰⁰.

LAMP/Windows Comparisons

kirkaracha — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 09:27:41 -0800

I'm looking for good, neutral, non-dogmatic comparisons of LAMP and Windows for building and hosting database-backed web applications. Comparisons of cost, security, stability, and maintenance would be especially helpful.

Help me remember this Free Custom Ringtone site!

Maia — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 17:32:39 -0800

What is the name of the website that allows you to upload mp3's to its site, converts them to ringtone format, and then text messages them to your phone for free (after a delay) or immediately (for a donation)?

Web App Dev

signal — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 10:19:53 -0800

Looking for a fairly simple database driven web application environment / framework. Thinking of Turbogears. I need to develop a web application that allows one to input professors and their publications and projects (within various categories), and returns many different views: General (with totals and averages), per professor, per year, per publication category, etc. Graphs would be nice, too. The whole thing should only be visible to logged in users (i.e.: admins or profs).

My first instinct is to roll my own using a framework, and I am learning Turbogears for this as I already know a some Python. However, it has crossed my mind that this is probably a fairly standard type of application, and there might be some more point-and-clicky sort of web-accesible database design environment that could save me a lot of heartache.

Does such a beast exist? Is there some other clearly easier / better choice?

No More V1@grA

tmcw — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 12:45:15 -0800

PHPFilter: I'm about to write part of a web application that allows visitors to submit ratings and comments for events. How can I keep spam to a minimum? I've discovered, from past efforts, that essentially anything with a textbox will get spammed on the net. There isn't going to be user registration for this, and almost I will be monitoring for certain IPs, it will not be filtered.

So, the parts are CodeIgniter, PHP, MySQL. On a PHP4 server I have virtually no control over.

Any ideas? I'd like to avoid captcha if possible.

Thanks!

Questions about creating a humorous flash survey

ISeemToBeAVerb — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 15:48:51 -0800

I have an idea for a humorous flash survey designed to place the user into a certain profile (similar to the "What kind of hipster are you?" survey). I'm sure many of you have used or seen such surveys (or their results) on sites like Myspace or CollegeHumor. The idea I have would lend itself to the same kind of usage; I can envision people placing the results onto their friends Myspace pages and so forth, or perhaps embedding the application into the page itself. I understand Flash and Actionscript, but I've never created anything like this before, so I have a few questions. 1. Is there ANY profit potential in this? I'm not expecting much, as I am perfectly comfortable financially, but I am curious to know if anyone makes money off of these things. I would (naively) assume that with a dedicated site one could make money through traffic and advertising.

2. How do you deploy a little application like this? Do you create a website around it (possibly profiting off of advertising)? Do you license the application to other humor sites for a fee?

3. How do you market something like this? Is it a matter of submitting links to various sites and hoping it becomes viral?

Any input would be greatly appreciated. Thanx.

Reminder email system sends emails only when files have not been received

bakerybob — Sat, 26 May 2007 22:09:55 -0800

Looking for a web system to automatically send reminder emails to registered clients who don't submit documents on time. Our clients register to visit us a couple of months in advance of actually coming. After they register, we ask them to submit several documents (text or photos), by email. These documents have different deadlines: some must be received a month in advance, some a week, etc.
Currently, as all documents are received by email, we have to keep careful track of who sent what, and also send reminders when documents aren't submitted on time. This is busywork that we'd prefer not to have to do.
We are looking for an online system that would allow us to register clients and their visit date, then perform the following tasks:
1) allow clients to upload required documents to the website themselves (best: provide a list of required documents to the client, only displaying ones not yet received)
2) track which documents have been uploaded by each client
3) send a reminder email if a client doesn't upload a required document by the deadline. Ideally, the deadline would be calculated automatically. So, for example, if we register the client as coming on August 15th, and they haven't uploaded their photo by July 15th, the system will automatically send the client an email requesting the photo.

I've searched as best I can, but a big part of the problem is that I don't know the terminology - what would this kind of software be called? It's not exactly CRM, I think, though I may be wrong.
Free software would of course be great, but if there is something that can do exactly what we want, we'd be happy to pay. Something we can install on our own site would be fine, as would a service we can contract with a web company for. Just for reference, we tried Moodle, but it didn't seem to have the automated email sending capability, or really any reasonable scheduling facility. Any advice much appreciated!

Flickr for Clothes, y'all! Good idea?

Firas — Sat, 12 May 2007 23:36:14 -0800

Wardrobe software. Has nobody done this? Wouldn't a social webapp for clothing be fiercely awesome? I'm not the target user really (I assume a hypothetical userbase would skew heavily towards the other gender) but even to the extent that I see it being personally useful, it does seem awesome.

Think something like: being able to list everything, add pictures, define combinations, take pictures of yourself in those combinations, get people to suggest combinations for you, etc. Basically a heavy emphasis on organization and communication instead of just spreadsheet-style itemization.

I know that 'social shopping' is an exploding niche and that people have done this with eg. perfumes (basenotes), but I'm concerned that this may be a solution looking for a problem.

Whatcha think?

Scheduling application for church publicity??

clh — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 15:30:39 -0800

I am looking for a scheduling app to help me keep track of what events get publicized when, and where. I work at a large-ish church, with lots going on. When someone has an event coming up, there are several avenues to publicize it. 1) a short blurb in our printed weekend bulletin, 2) bigger events may warrant a full-insert in the bulletin, 3) a verbal announcement during church, 4) a "slide" on the screens shown before church starts, 5) a manned table on the patio before and after church, 6) one of three highlight positions on our website, 7) a spot in our weekly email newsletter, oh yeah 8) a short video during church. All of this needs to be scheduled and kept track of. We need to have views of: what publicity is "Event A" getting / what is being advertised in each venue this week vs. next week.

Everyone with an event would like to have all eight advertising options, but they can't. Some of the options are more limited than others (i.e. only two verbal announcements per week). People usually don't know what advertising they are getting until it happens (or does not happen.) And, we struggle to keep track of it all and not let anything fall through the cracks.

A web-based app would be great. Different people handle different venues, and people could see what they are getting. We haven't found anything so far. MS Project looks more complicated than we need. Something must exist that can help us!!!

CSS and Standards-Based Enterprise Software Solutions

syzygy — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 10:53:14 -0800

Is CSS and standards-based design ready for use in web-based enterprise software solutions? I'm a consultant leading a team of developers on a project that's building an enterprise software solution (think sector-oriented ERP) which has a front end that is 99% web-based.

Most of my developers have reasonable thick client experience, or reasonable web experience using tables for layout. None of them have much CSS experience. I'm pretty comfortable with CSS and standards-based design/layout, but I don't have time to program on this project, and that's not my job description (I take the specifications from the customers and bring them down to the software engineers). I've also never used non-table layouts for more software-oriented solutions (as opposed to websites whose main focus is dissemination of information).

Is CSS and standards-based design ready for use in web-based enterprise software solutions? If so, what are some good resources that deal with this topic?

Technical details: working in ASP.NET 2.0 and developing solely for IE 6+ (for right now - they'd like to make the application cross-browser compatible, down the road).

Web page updates for the musically-inclined

purplefiber — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 20:55:58 -0800

Help me update my group's website without pulling my hair out... I play with a musical group that is presently (though hopefully not for much longer) doing all its own admin: finances, promotion, management, and website. We are trained in music, and untrained in everything else, so we end up spending WAY too much time trying to do tasks that, for the more technically savvy, should take just a few minutes. For example- simple content updates and revisions to our website.

Presently I'm using an html template and plugging in the relevant details of upcoming events, etc. However I find html code very tedious and dizzying to look at, so I would love to find a program (I know they exist) into which I can type normally and it will convert into code. The catch (and I'm not sure if this is much of a catch) is that we want to stick with the same layout, fonts, etc that we have already, so something like Google Page Creator, where you have to use their layouts, wouldn't work. Can you recommend any applications (bonus points if they're free) that would allow me to do this more easily, freeing up hours of my time for practise and surfing AskMefi?

Thanks!

XML for my product lists and rollover menus?

brianvan — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 16:42:34 -0800

Are there any good XML/XHTML frameworks for using XML data to automatically populate both/either web page content and JavaScript rollover menus? I'm working on a website for a client; it will basically be an online brochure for available products in a bricks-and-mortar store (without any merchant features). We've already decided that this site will have an index page with a rollover menu, and that the menu will link to subpages populated with product content.

I've now realized that, as opposed to writing everything out in (X)HTML, I could compose XML files with all the appropriate product data - a field for the product name, description, thumbnail filename, full-size filename - and make a general template page that could read XML data and populate a list with it. While we're at it, why not do the same thing for the navigation menu? Not only would that allow me to flexibly change the product menu whenever I want, but it would keep the menu consistent for the whole site. As a former applications programmer (ASP, C++, SQL), this sounds like life would be great if I could get both to work.

So before I either try writing this in PHP (which is a new language for me) or contracting the work out on some freelancing site, does a framework or template exist (open source, perhaps) to just drop this into my site and go with it? Or is this application really simple enough to do in an hour of my spare time? If I have to code it myself + debug it, I may simply do everything by hand in existing authoring programs the way it is classically done, at the expense of tedium in making future updates. (Plus, I have to provide deliverables to my client sometime in the next few weeks. In this case, "finished quickly" is way better than "elegant".)

Advice in designing a web application for a self-taught developer.

fishfucker — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 23:20:59 -0800

I'm going to write a web application that, if it is successful, will need to be "enterprise-level" -- that is, robust, secure, and extensible. Given the limitations of my current skills, what can I do to minimize design errors? Lots more inside. Here's the deal: I'm writing a web application with a partner that is essentially a tracking and accounting program. My CS skills are primarily self-taught (I've only had the very basics of a CS education in college before I dropped out of the program), and I realize that this will mean that the design of the application will be less than perfect. The project is no-budget, so hiring experienced programmers and designers is not an option at the moment, however, in the future, I'd like to be able to bring professionals in to extend the code.

Simply, I want to build a functional proof-of-concept that will have as much reusable code as possible.

With that in mind, here are the specific questions I have in mind:

1. Is writing such a project in PHP a foolish undertaking? PHP is currently the language I know best. I don't anticipate us needing much more power than what the language is capable of -- since it's mostly storing form data in a DB and recovering it -- but I'm concerned because I've seen other potentially successful web apps fall victim to their own popularity. I'm mainly thinking of Friendster in this case, and how seemed to fall over under the weight of its own codebase (and it's lengthy rewrite), and I want to avoid this. Is it worth the potential code mistakes I'll make writing this in something that other people consider a more "proper" language but with which I am not familar-- like Python, for example? I'm planning to use MySQL as a backend because that's what I'm most familar with (and I don't think we will need more power).

2. Should I consider using existing libraries? For example, in a lot of the work I've done already, I've avoided using stuff in the PEAR repository because it doesn't meet the specific requirements I have. Is this a bad way of doing things? Should I instead base modules on existing libraries and extending them where they do not meet my needs? In short, is hand-rolling everything a mistake?

3. Can you recommend some good books that will help me avoid stupid design mistakes? I've already read a lot of the Joel on Software stuff (which seems more about software PM), and I don't really think I need to read about process (or do I?). Here's what I'm planning to do: get up a barebones proto as fast as possible and have some of the audience who's going to be working with this software evaluate it and give us advice for future iterations. The spec is going to be developed by the person I'm working with who is familar with the industry, so my knowledge of the "what" that the app needs to do is taken care of, but I'll be highly involved in the "how" -- that is, developing a good and very simple (essential for our product) UI.

4. What do I look to for security best practice? I want to take all precautions possible to make sure that the private data remains private. Backup, etc, I'll consider an IT problem, but I want to make sure that do things that are difficult to change later (like user authentication) right there first time. What's the best way to make sure passwords are encrypted in the DB and that cookies are difficult to spoof? How do I make sure my authentication routines are secure AND not sluggish?

5.Besides good documentation and modular structure, what's the best way to make sure that other people can work on code that I've (possibly badly) developed? I don't know if it'll be possible or smart to throw the codebase away after the prototype is completed -- if you think otherwise, please let me know. Is it ever a good idea to just write something as a prototype (that is destined to be thrown away)?

6. Everything is going to live on one server -- should I plan for an eventual distribution of server duties? Is this something a developer even needs to worry about? I've really never had to deal with this before, so I can't elaborate on this question.

Thanks, I'm sure I'll think of tons of questions later as answers come in. Unfortuntely, I can't really entertain any ideas of just having someone else do it because that would pretty much eliminate my participation in this project (which I don't want to do). It's not realistic either that I'll be able to somehow get enough education to meet the skillset of someone with a B.S. either, so although I appreciate responses advising that I gain some more academic experience before undertaking this project, they aren't useful for my current situation.

Anecdotal experience involving your own web application development (and business ventures!) is welcome.

Websites that display user-entered text.

davebush — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 16:42:30 -0800

Would like to see examples of web applications that display user-entered text in a chosen font. In other words, I choose a font from a menu, enter text in a field, click submit...my text is displayed in the font I chose.

PHP file manager?

crickets — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 09:13:34 -0800

I'm looking for a PHP file manager to act as an extranet... I need an application I can install that will act as a simple, easy-to-use extranet. This is for a small business -- the files in question will mostly be word docs, spreadsheets, PDFs, etc. It would allow uploads and downloads, store comments about files, etc. User management is a plus. Free is not required.

Any thoughts?

Ideas for Differentiating a Social Networking Application

Firas — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 12:19:04 -0800

So, the Achilles' heel of Social Networking is the 'What Now' Issue. Once you've listed all your friends publicly, which doesn't solve any problems you had in the first place, you're pretty much left hanging. Ideas about getting around this problem in building a social networking app? I'm in the 'scribbling in journal' stage, so any type of input is welcome: links to articles or essays, pointers to blogs that keep an eye on these things, and any suggestions, theories or other musings on your part about what sort of social networking app you'd actually use.

Current observations:

I think Facebook does very well on the 'defining the social network' issue, down to the nitty gritties of how you know whom. On the other hand, there's really no reason to keep logging into Facebook unless your friends are using the messaging features.

MySpace user behaviour seems to suggest that perpetual next steps are: * Find more hot people to add to your friends list, * Use the internal messaging feature as a replacement for email, * Use the 'Comments' thing to keep in touch with short notes (eg. 'Nice profile pic!')

Current differentiating ideas: Open Source (eg. drop it into your club or association's site and voila, membership and event management), Not an Island (recognizes that it's not the only social software site you're going to join, so uses others' APIs and feeds, perhaps federates your identity to an extent), Solve Real Problems ([your idea here]—anything I come up with in this section veers towards PIM features and I have no intention of using my spare time trying to compete with Outlook, Google etc. in that field.)

Five minutes here, ten there, oh no!

bkudria — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 04:13:52 -0800

I'm having a bit of trouble tracking my time for web consulting work. I need to be able to handle small increments of time, and it needs to have a flexible reporting system. What (preferably web-based) software should I use? I build and consult on websites, and I often get small 'tasks' from clients that will pile up in my inbox until I get into a purging mood and finish them all off. I would like some app that will let me queue up and check off the tasks with the following structure: I have a list of clients, and each client has one or more projects, and each project has one or more tasks. Then, each task has a time associated with it.

I've looked at TiddlyWiki, but it is too unstructured and open-ended for me. I have ended up using it for other tasks. I have also tried TrimPath's Next Action, but it is too restrictive and GTD-focused. Basecamp looks really nice, but it costs money. I don't want to pay any money for this (although I am open to suggestions!)

I would like a web-based app that I could install and access from multiple locations, or a portable html file (like TiddlyWiki or TP's Next Action) that I can carry around on my USB key. Last in preference would be a desktop app, and this has to run on Linux.

Needed features:
- Free
- Easily accessible/reachable (this is why i don't want a desktop app)
- Must keep track of time
- Allow me to generate reports in the format: "Client - Project - Task: Time" or something similar.

Extras (for bonus points), that would be nice:
Web 2.0

Online Wedding List?

sdevans — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 04:24:50 -0800

Is there a online wedding list service where the gifts can be from anywhere (just a descriptive list, not for ordering)? I'm getting married next year, and since my partner and I have been together for a while already, we don't want to get loads of stuff we've already got, hence the need for a wedding list.

I don't want it restricted to one shop (online or off) and would love a simple checklist of presents and where they can be found/hyperlinks. Ideally this list would be password protected and I could just email out to the guests where it was.

I thought about using basecamp, but don't want to have to force people to join just to edit the page.

Any ideas mefites?

Looking for an application to give me phonetic spellings of words and surnames.

Heatwole — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 11:05:38 -0800

I need an application (preferably web based) in which I can enter a word, including surnames, and get the phonetic spelling in return. Any ideas?

Need replacement for Formmail and NMS Formmail

Pinwheel — Mon, 17 Jan 2005 14:54:05 -0800

Due to "security concerns," my web host provider has just banned two Form-to-email scripts (Formmail and NMS Formmail). Now I'm hard up to find a replacement. Any ideas? I'd prefer a solution that doesn't require a mastery of PERL to configure.