Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with web and development

How do I save the planet with computers and stuff? and get paid!?

Gaeacon — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 00:19:34 -0800

I want to help guide the development of "new" environmentalism... Where should I (educated/trained as an Ecologist) start on a career change into media (online/web development)? better explained... I graduated in June with a Master's in Ecology/Conservation and a certificate called Leaders in Sustainability. I started out in the PhD program, but about half a year in I started thinking a lot about doing something at the interface of environmentalism/activism/science through an online medium. I distracted myself immensely, setting out my grand entrepreneurial vision. I thought I could balance all that....and my very demanding dissertation research abroad.

Well, I couldn't. A couple of years of tortured back and forth, I decided to take the Master's and try to explore the sort of channels I was envisioning. The entrepreneurial vision still exists, although on the back burner a bit. I was faced with the reality that I have a lot to learn, and my ideas need maturation.

I set out to learn more and gain experience. In my last year of grad school, I worked with an environmental non-prof that aimed to engage youth in recreating activism...a lot of interactive, educational pieces at events and festivals. I functioned as an event coordinator/"engineer"/educational programmer....many hats, so to speak. I really enjoyed the broad audience and the "cool" factor of this type of work. The work, however, wasn't paid and would not last forever.

Since graduating, I have worked with The Nature Conservancy. It was a short term position that has been extended by working myself into some new projects....but I am starting to earnestly look forward to what's next. TNC has been a great learning experience - amazing to see conservation on the ground and to be involved behind the scenes with all the different stakeholders. That being said, I still feel my heart gravitating to the entrepreneurial vision I had in grad school.

I know I can't rely on a vision alone, so I need the help of you MeFites to figure out my next steps....

My "vision" rests deeply upon the future of the internet/social networking and the fusing of media with environmentalism/science.

What would be a logical next step to dive into this realm? What kind of jobs can I apply to? I feel like I have been hovering around the conservation world for a bit....and maybe I should be exploring the media side some more.

I am very interested in computers and web development. I don't have much of a "formal" background in computers so I am not even sure which area would be the best (or if I even would have a chance of working anywhere).

What about back-up plan? Should I continue in the conservation world? Perhaps seeking out work with environmental consulting companies?
(OH YEAH, I am in debt and need something that pays at least 30-35k)

Any tips on career change and anything that would help get me closer to my goal would be greatly appreciated. TY

I live in Los Angeles...if that helps

How to game my Google search results?

citron — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:59:42 -0800

What are some good IT-related, or editorial-related, blogs and sites on which to comment, so that if my name is Googled by potential employers, these comments will show in the search rankings? I'm not trying to get my name out there, what I'm trying to do is: kick some old and irrelevant Google search results down, so that relevant and current interests show up first. I'm doing copy editing work at the moment and have some background in web development, though my skills are not as sharp as they should be, and I'm trying to learn more. Ideally, early next year, I'd be searching for a job that requires more web editing and/or development.

But in today's job search process I'm well aware that potential employers will Google me, and while my social media profiles are professional and fine, I don't have much else that shows aside from a few arts section reviews I wrote for a college journal, years ago. They're not the worst thing in the world, but way too snarky, so I don't like them now and they probably don't present me in the best light. I'm embarrassed of the attitude I've had in the past, basically.

What are some sites I should be reading and commenting on now, just for talking shop? I need sites that would 1) be useful places to comment and ask questions about web development and design processes, user experience, social media, web editing and where I could comment under my own name, where comments are Google indexed & thus show up if someone Googles me? For instance, I used to read A List Apart religiously, but I am out of touch, the web moves so fast! There must be more sites to recommend like this. Thanks!

Which HTML/CSS/JS IDE do I want?

drjimmy11 — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:31:52 -0800

Which HTML/CSS/JS IDE do I want? So I've been doing AS3 development for the last few years, using Flex Builder, but am now moving back into HTML/CSS/JS. I've gotten used to having a fairly intelligent IDE and I'd like to not go back to the bad old days of having to type every single param and property from scratch every time. (I'm looking for code help, not just highlighting.)

I have tried a few but none seems to have everything I want:

1. Dreamweaver:
Pluses: When you link to a stylesheet, you can CTRL+space and get a list of styles to choose from.
Minuses: Weak support for JS. (no auto-complete at all)

2. Aptana:
Pluses: Seems to have excellent JS support, including major AJAX libraries.
Minuses: Unless I am missing something, I can't choose Css styles off a list, and that is a major major timesaver for the work I'll be doing.

3. HTMLPad 2010:
Plusses and minuses seem about the same as Aptana, plus it costs money. (DW CS3 is already installed on my work machine so no cost there.)

So, am i doing something wrong with Aptana? Is there another piece of software I'm not aware of? Or should I settle for DW for html/css and Aptana for JS? (The work will probably be 80% or more on the html/css side.)

thanks!

Need money now thankyou.

drjimmy11 — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 15:50:15 -0800

What are some good tech-centric temp agencies in L.A.? Hi! Yet another in my long series of job-trauma questions.

I'm currently between jobs- I'm a web/software developer, specializing in flex/AS3 but with years and years of doing html/js/ajax/php type stuff too. I have a pretty strong resume, I like to think, going back about 10 years.

I'm currently getting contacted by a lot of recruiters and going on a lot of interviews, but it's a very drawn-out process. Basically I need a gig to bring in some money now- cutting up PSDs or whatever is fine, I'm not proud at this point. I'm curious if anyone knows any decently reputable agencies who could get me something like this soon. Specific names of agencies are appreciated, referrals to specific people are even more appreciated. (meMail me if you like).

(I'd also be interested in where I can advertise myself as a flex freelancer, but I'm more inclined towards W2 right now for a few reasons.)

Thanks!

Web Dev - How to inform browsers to update their cache?

LoopyG — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:25:20 -0800

I am developing a website that has a moderately-sized user base. I am going to be rolling out a new version of the page soon. In my testing, I have noticed that my browsers don't notice that there are new versions of some of the CSS files available on the servers, and renders the page with the old CSS files. This causes display glitches. How do I let browsers know that new CSS/Javascript files are available and to update it's cache?

Pros & Cons of bringing web development in-house?

MeatLightning — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:33:22 -0800

Pros & Cons of bringing web development in-house? Hi all -
I manage a mid-size e-commerce website. We currently work with an agency to build and maintain our site. We are considering hiring a dev (C# / .NET, SQL) and taking over development... or at least much of it (still may go out of house for UX, front-end dev).

Anyone have any advice, experiences, warnings, etc they can share?

Have you gone down this road? How did it go? What should we watch out for?

thanks in advance!

I want to build a web site where gamers can converse via video. Where do I begin?

raddevon — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 07:16:08 -0800

I want to build a web site where gamers can converse via video. I'm thinking of something a bit like a Seesmic targeted toward gamers. Where do I start? I'm not a developer, but I can poke around in code a bit on my own. I wouldn't be opposed to using a roll-your-own-social-network solution and doing it all myself as a hobby. I also wouldn't be opposed to hiring a developer off elance and positioning this as a business. I don't really know where to start in either direction. Does anyone have any suggestions? I have experience with Wordpress and Drupal.

"Proactive? Paradigm? Aren't those just words dumb people use to sound smart?"

drjimmy11 — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 08:49:10 -0800

Where does one proactively look for software (specifically Flex) jobs these days? So I'm on the market. I have about ten years web/software development experience overall, with the last 3 focused in Flex. I'm in Los Angeles and not keen to move.

In the past I would just put my resume up on Dice and get bombarded by recruiters. This time though, the response has been a little more sparse, and I'd like to find something sooner than later.

So:

Are the major search sites (Monster, Careerbuilder) as useless as I remember them for tech jobs?

Is there anywhere tech-specific besides Dice I should post my resume, or search for jobs? This would include job sites or message boards or whatever.

Are there any other strategies I'm missing, or should I just browse the websites of specific employers who i think I might like?

Thanks!

Turn on, tune in, log out?

telegraph — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 12:27:55 -0800

Webdev filter: What tools can I use to avoid developing a registration/log-in feature from scratch? I'm an amateur web developer -- I took a few programming classes in college (Java), know HTML and CSS pretty well, and can get by in PHP and SQL, albeit while checking references constantly. I'm trying to build what I think should be a pretty simple web application: the nuts and bolts of it are that it should allow member registration and login/out, and while the user is logged in, s/he can input numerical data, as well as view some statistical juggling of that data.

The data entry bit I feel fairly confident that I can do using PHP/MySQL. I've written a rudimentary registration and login system (with an email confirmation message, etc), but I can tell that it needs a lot more features and even though I am mostly n00b I can think of ways it could be compromised -- if at all possible I'd prefer to just use code that is already written and known to be fairly stable.

Is there a pre-built, standard kind of thing (I don't even know what the proper word to call it is) I can use for this? I think that Ruby on Rails could be used here, but my attempts at teaching myself how to use it have been kind of futile, and I don't really need all of the version control and other features like that. I'd like to keep this really really simple, at least for now.

As you can see I'm not very experienced and don't really know the proper terms are, so let me know if I need to clarify anything. While I'd like to learn other languages in the future, my goal is to get this thing up and running so I'd prefer advice that presupposes PHP use as opposed to telling me to go learn Python (though I guess I understand if that's the only option). Thanks.

Which forums do the best web programmers hang out at?

jackson5 — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:15:45 -0800

Which forums do the best web programmers hang out at? Long story short: I've got a web site that already does over 1 million pageviews per month. I've got a great idea to take it to the next level, but I'm looking for someone who can handle the coding and technical aspects in exchange for an equity stake.

I'm wanting to bring aboard a great programmer who doesn't necessarily need the work but will be motivated by the equity.

Which forums would you recommend I post on to find this person?

Also, if there's anyone interested here, let me know.

What programming language should I use for a Digg-like web site?

jackson5 — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 11:37:41 -0800

What programming language should I use for a Digg-like web site? I'm no web developer, but I already have a high traffic picture gallery which I want to turn into a digg-like picture voting site.

I'm going to hire a developer and would like your recommendations on which programming language I should target for the site?

My site currently does about 2 million pageviews per month already, so I expect the traffic to go up. The programming language should easily handle a lot of traffic on 1 dedicated server.

I keep hearing a lot about Ruby on Rails. I'm familiar with PHP/MySQL, but not sure if that is the best programming language for this project.

I also keep hearing a lot about cloud hosting. This sounds like a good option as well.

Basically, to sum up my question: I want to post a "programmer wanted" ad for this project. What should I be looking for from a developer?

Have a Macbook and a burning desire to learn web development. Tell me where to begin.

capitalist.pig — Wed, 27 May 2009 12:47:35 -0800

I have a Macbook and a burning desire to learn web development. Tell me where to begin. Apart from being very comfortable in OS X, I know very little about web development. What are some helpful books or websites for the beginner. There's just so much, I don't know where to start. Thanks.

Coop TLD Registrars?

thebigdeadwaltz — Mon, 11 May 2009 06:12:09 -0800

I'd really like to get a Coop TLD, but I'm having a hard time finding an affordable and easy-to-use registrar. Any recomendations for companies that do a good job with this TLD? Any experiences? I'd really like to be paying sub-$20/year.

Online Payments

AMP583 — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 06:13:35 -0800

I need to build something that allows a client to make credit card payments to my client. I want to use Authorize.net as the gateway but im not sure what backend i should use - a modified opencart or something similar. I DONT want to use paypal, blinksale, etc. as its not so much 'invoice' based but more of a method of sending funds. This thread is very similar but no dice. I think some sort of modified cart might work, but i was wondering if theres a better solution thats somewhat more streamlined and easier to implement. Also i'm not a developer by trade, more of a designer.

Vietnamese Website Character Issue

Timen — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:29:16 -0800

I am developing a English/Vietnamese site but some characters in Vietnamese don't go over well, especially on Windows. For other sites there is no problem: what do I need to change to make it work? I am developing a site and the baby beta is here. I am having problems with the Vietnamese characters as they seem to be not transferring properly from the server to the browser. The problem only comes up when using Windows and is especially clear when I look at the source code; somehow the rendered text looks fine most of the time. The exception is that the Georgia font should support VNese characters, but doesn't look right in IE6 (see the sidebar newsletter subscribe form). I think this is a related problem.

I think there is a problem with Apache, and have tried modifying the charset through .htaccess but that didn't work (AddDefaultCharset utf-8). I don't see what I'm doing differently in the source code, which makes me think it's a server issue. Any ideas?

Looking for .NET based server software for video blogging

Riemann — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 13:33:30 -0800

Looking for .NET based server software for video blogging I am looking for recommendations for server software (.NET, version 2.0 or newer + SQL server) that can be used as the base for a video blog site. I have resources (developers etc...) and budget to do a fair bit of customization so a package that has a strong blogging core but no inherent video blogging features is fine.

Commercial or enterprise software is fine. Doesn't need to be free though Telligent Community Server Enterprise is at the extreme high end of the budget I have at $25,000.

Packages I am already looking at include:

Oxite
Blog Engine
Telligent Community Server

Software based on license that requires the open-sourcing of my code is not an option. Also, LAMP, Ruby on Rails or other non-.NET platforms are absolutely out of the question.

Any suggestions or experiences with the above software would be much appreciated.

Make my urls purty!

drjimmy11 — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:01:08 -0800

What's the best way for me to create human-readable urls for a Wordpress site? So I've taken a job converting a very static site to one that will use Wordpress as a CMS. A couple of key points up front:

1) We are 100% committed to using Wordpress. Thanks for respecting this.
2) I will NOT be making use of any wordpress theme or allowing users to go to any Wordpress pages at all. We are using it as a CMS on the backend, and on the frontend I will write custom php pages and queries to display what i want to display.

The site as it stands now has 1000s of articles in totally flat html pages. We want to get away from that for obvious reasons. My inclination is to create one page to use over and over again, so where the old url would've been like:

www.thesite.net/article_name.html

the new url would look like:

www.thesite.net/article.php?id=124

two issues with this:
1) the site is quite popular, so a lot of people have probably bookmarked old articles and I dont want those links to die when we remove all the flat html pages.

2) I would prefer people to see human-readable urls rather than ugly querystrings.

My first instinct would be to create a big redirect file (301), sending every old article url to the new format. This addresses point one but not point two, since after the redirect the user would still see the ugly url, right? (if not, please enlighten me!)

My other thought is to use the "ugly" article.php as an include inside a wrapper, so create "article_name.php" which contains nothing but a variable for the article id and a copy of the include which takes in that variable. problems with this are a) we still clutter up our server with 1000s of files, and b) I have non-tech people messing with code and ftp, which i'd rather not.

So, what is the solution? How does mefi get those awesome clean urls like "http://ask.metafilter.com/107722/Batch-Adding-Text-File-Name-to-JPEG-Images"?

I'm guessing "107722" and "Batch-Adding-Text-File-Name-to-JPEG-Images" are some sort of aliases and not literal folders on the server. Is this something automated that is beyond the power of Wordpress? I hope not.

thanks!

Tell me about writing for the commercial web!

Miko — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 07:04:26 -0800

What do I need to know about writing for the web? I'm talking to some people who run a wonderful, small, independent web-development and design firm. They have had great success doing websites for regional and national companies and local businesses, updating image as they go with fresh design and new messaging. They do everything from toy stores and book stores to hospitals, advocacy groups, professional service firms, etc. Their business is increasing rapidly and they will probably be asking me to do some writing for them soon, on contract. They've seen my writing, which at this point is a very occasional moonlighting activity for me, in local newspapers (features, reviews) and magazines (food writing for the city mag). So they're confident I can put words together and deliver clean copy on a deadline.

However, I feel like there are some real specifics about writing for commercial web sites that I could stand to learn, and having some guiding principles going in would be really helpful.

So I'm asking a very, very open-ended question: what would you tell someone who has written for print, on mostly arts and culture topics, and for professional reasons (grant applications and museum labels and training manuals) about writing for the web on contract for a client who is trying to convey a specific image and message?

What jargon will I hear? What basic questions would I, as a content writer, need to ask at the beginning of a project?

What web resources would you direct a content writer to?

What is the range of fees for this service? How should I start the negotiations? I honestly have no idea what to offer here - print pays by the publication, usually a flat fee in a fee structure giving a range of compensation for type of article and word count. With web projects, do writers charge by the hour? By word count? By type of feature? By package? I have absolutely no idea what to ask. Of course I'm sure the range goes from 'peanuts/free' to 'sky high for the best companies,' but this company is doing very well and growing, they intend to pay, and I am a professional writer looking at this as an income source, not a hobby. So I would love some examples of fees and fee structures that web writers use for different situations and different levels. What are the industry standards?

What other advice do you have that I don't know enough to ask yet?

Thanks a lot. Writing/developing websites could be a really wonderful skill to add to my career bag-of-tricks, so I'm eager to be successful at it.

Basic costs for simple web development?

googly — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 07:10:14 -0800

I am writing a grant for a project that will include some relatively simple web development. Please help me with some rough estimates for labor and equipment costs. I am writing a grant for an academic project, part of which will involve developing a small website. The primary function of this website is to include a survey that asks respondents to compare visual materials (different representations of data) and answer some questions about them. [The research goal, for those who are interested, is to explore how visual representations of health information impact peoples' understanding and evaluation of that information]. I am woefully underinformed about web development, but here are two things that I know we will need:

- The site does not need to be commercially slick, but we would like it to look professional and be visually appealing, because the quality of the presentation plays a significant role in the research. I am thinking some kind of basic (flash-type?) animation rather than just a series of static pages.

- We want people to answer questions, and we want to collect data on the responses, so there will be some simple data management involved. (We can do more complicated analysis of the data on our own).

My questions:

(1) Roughly how much time would I need to budget for the programming and upkeep of something like this?

(2) Who can I get to do this work? I assume that a savvy CS undergrad or grad student could do this kind of thing, but is it necessary and/or worth it to hire a real web developer/designer?

(3) Depending on who we hire, roughly how much would this cost? We are in Montreal, Canada, BTW.

(4) We are already budgeting for some good (Mac) computers, so I think we've got the hardware portion covered - though any advice would be most appreciated of course! Do I need to budget for software as well, or can I assume that whoever I hire will already have the software? If the former, is there a standard software package that I should budget for (ideal), or do I need to have a rough figure and leave the specifics up to whoever I hire (less ideal)?

Apologies in advance for the vaugueness of these questions. If its not already apparent, I'm a total noob on these matters.

How can I study the server load/impact impact of my PHP scripts in a shared hosting environment?

jorlando — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 09:35:39 -0800

How can I study the server load/impact of my PHP scripts in a shared hosting environment? The hosting company isn't very helpful. I want to be proactive and not wait for a call that my scripts are causing trouble. Also want a website that isn't slow and unresponsive. The server is Apache2 w/PHP5

I'd like to learn in general terms about it but the specific case I have is as follows:

I'm building a website that does a lot of thumbnailing using phpthumb(). I send an AJAX request to the server to generate thumbnails and return a list of SRC tags. This puts a certain load to the server. phpthumb() caches the thumbnail so the load happens only once

I want to also have PHP look up and return the dimensions of the original image using getImageSize. This is additional load and caching wouldn't happen. If I do the lookup 100 times/second would it overwhelm the server?

Is it something I should be concerned about? I have no idea about how my scripts might affect the server. The site gets about 15k hits per day and is growing.

Thanks

How to link to the contents of another link?

mathis23 — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 09:24:55 -0800

Is there a way for a hyperlink to simply 'parrot' whatever a second hyperlink might be pointing toward? The overly simplified version of my situation would go something like this:

I have set up LinkA on Page1 to point toward a given file. I also need LinkB on Page2 to point toward this same file. The file however, and it's name, will change quite often.

Is there a way to set up LinkB to simply mimic/mirror/imitate whatever LinkA is pointing toward, so that all I ever need to do is to update the properties of LinkA?

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:58:40 -0800

What's the best approach to take with the a lead software developer after being left holding the ball? About a month into a new full-time development gig (after almost a decade of contracting/freelance for me) the lead developer left for a two week vacation with assurances that we were more or less feature complete and the only thing left to do before launch would be cleaning up a few bugs.

Lies. (duh)

While on vacation we've found huge areas of functionality that were unimplemented, and others that were implemented so fragilely that they were bound to break. It's been a week of hell scrambling to get everything finished while at the same time not throwing lead-developer under the bus with the higher ups.

Lead developer has a huge amount of seniority. I'm the only other member of the team with any experience in the software industry (other developers have less than a year of professional experience). There's no formal project management at the company.

I'd like this job to work out. What approach do I take with the lead when he gets back? Do I point blank (in private) confront/talk-to him about the the lack of organization/management and what I view as a lackadaisical attitude towards developing code that actually works? Do I accept this is just his MO and work around it while covering my ass at the same time?

Any advice on ways to deal with this situation in a positive way would be appreciated. I'm used to being brought into situations like this as a contractor where I can drop in, hurt feelings, get something done, then move on to the next gig. I don't think that works in a situation you'd like to work out long term.

Where can I find a car database?

pb — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:15:40 -0800

Where can I find a database of American cars? I need a database of American cars that includes make, model, and year for a web application. I want to build drop down menus that let people choose their car like you see on Kelly Blue Book, Consumer Reports, and dozens of other sites. Is there a standard database that powers these menus?

How do I justify the purchase of a Mac for web development?

Awkward Turtle — Thu, 08 May 2008 13:36:14 -0800

Is there a definitive source I can point to or glean knowledge from in order to justify the purchase of a Mac for web development and design? I'm trying to put together a request for the purchase of a MacBook Pro. I have already included its ability to enable my working from the road. I've also thrown in the increasing number of Safari/MacOS users accessing our site. I'm in search of arguments in favor of the Mac (for development and design) which don't dwell on stability and security, but rather how the Mac is a better platform for development.

Color me rather uneducated, but at a recent technology conference I was surprised to find most of the developers in attendance claimed to use Macs for all their coding work. As a web developer by trade (and designer by necessity as our organization is small) I have worked with varying flavours of Windows and Linux/Unix over the years. While I previously coded mostly by hand, I switched to DreamWeaver when my org moved to ColdFusion. A kind person recently pointed me to CFEclipse which has me rather excited (I do love code snippets).

I work for a large state university, in case that makes a difference. I've found a few articles that are not quite what I'm looking for (but are close).

Will switching to a mac make developing awesome?

Why Mac? 37signals can tell you
The video on this one doesn't seem to be there anymore.

Almost half of Princeton computer purchases are Macs

Where does a small web design/development company find work?

petah — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 14:25:40 -0800

Where does a small web design/development company find work? We've been in business for a little over a year, and 100% of our clients up until now have been through word of mouth. Most of our work has been designing and integrating into a CMS like Wordpress or Joomla, with a few eCommerce sites as well. Lately though, it seems that our network has dried up, and we've been short on work.

We've tried looking at craigslist, with no success. ("$20 AND EQUITY TO CREATE FACEBOOK CLONE!!1")

We're currently looking at eLance as an option, but we're not sure if we'll be able to compete with all of the off-shore companies. (We're three guys from the U.S.)

I've seen a lot of those job boards that have been pretty popular on all the web design blogs, but they seem to be directed towards full-time hires or freelancers.

So I guess my question is, how do you guys find work as web designers/developers? Are any of you guys in a similar situation?

Thanks in advance for any tips/advice.