Posts Tagged ‘website development philadelphia’

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The Variations of PHP Code

Monday, April 15th, 2013

PHP code is probably the single most popular source used today.

Why?

It’s flexibility and scalability is second to none. It can be combined with virtually any other source to execute endless customizations. PHP is most effective when used with databases. The most common database software is MySQL. Which when used correctly PHP scripts can perform extremely difficult programming tasks. Most web frameworks are constructed with PHP.  Its library is endless. There is however, a drawback.

PHP can be coded in many different forms. As popular as the code is there is no “one specific” uniform standard. Any expert in this particular field can build their code completely different than any installation at any time. To date I’ve run into at least 4 different variations which most times leaves me scratching my head. Ultimately in the end all variations tend to conform to one degree or another on some level. It takes time to analyze and eventually understand how the different configurations have been implemented. It can be very time-consuming doing so. It’s always best to take notes to track back mainly because of the fact we’re always updating content. We always have to remember how the configuration was the last time around. The larger majority of sites built to encourage guest or membership involvement tend to be about 80 to 90% PHP based. It’s very easy to install, and administrate. When developed and implemented correctly this code can practically run itself. All it needs is a little attention on a regular basis and you can grow a thriving personal website, on line existence and company all in one.

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The Dreaded Content Management System

Thursday, April 4th, 2013

The content management system or better known as “CMS.”

With the wide array of available scripts today, it’s inevitable a developer will be called upon to make changes to a client CMS.  In most cases, they vary on several levels with regard to administration.  Most scripts utilized by clients are free scripts such as Magento, WordPress, Thegemcart, PHPcake, Drupal, Joomla….the list is endless. None of which are administrated the same way. They tend to code their scripts in a way which forces the end user to wind up paying for service to support their site.

As a web developer, it’s my job to effectively support our client without the need to involve the manufacturer of said scripts. In some cases, making a simple change isn’t as easy as 1-2-3. One could be involved in making a change by sifting through thousands of files to find a single line of code to edit. It is a tedious and time consuming job.

The reason clients choose to utilize a CMS is mainly because it allows them to have full control of their site to make changes as they please without having to incorporate hiring their own website administrator. It’s a double edged sword though, as many clients have found administrating their own site isn’t as easy as it sounds. Properly running a content management system requires an understanding of basic HTML and how to navigate layers which all hook into each other to encompass a single page.

The CMS as I see it is the “headache” of the web development world. I guess in a perfect world there would be only one, unfortunately though there are hundreds of variations all very readily available to anybody with an interest of running and supporting their own all inclusive website.

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MOBILE and SEO – How To Make Them Come Together

Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013

As a society we become more and more reliant on technology. Whether it’s our need for faster results or our couch potato mentality, we are always looking for the easy way out.  Our mobile phones and other mobile devices like iPads and tablets have increased the need for SEO Companies and web developers to step up their game when it comes to optimizing these devices for the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Page).   There are many key factors to keep in mind when developing an SEO campaign for your mobile device.

One of the biggest issues with searching on a mobile device has always been the inability to navigate the site properly.  Small screens and unresponsive designs make clicking on the tiny navigation near impossible.  No, you don’t have “fat fingers”, the website you are navigating needs to be converted into a mobile friendly design.  Websites using HTML5 with responsive CSS will convert the website and not only improve the end-user experience, but will allow Google the ability to crawl through your content quickly and easily.

My biggest pet peeve with mobile websites is too much information.  Yes, there is such a thing.  Sometimes seeing a ton of content on a web page, especially a mobile web page, is a huge turn off.  When something becomes “work” we tend to back away.  Searchers to do not want to read through paragraph after paragraph of content in order to determine if you can fulfill their needs. Keep your content short and easy to read. Make sure it’s relevant to the keywords you want to come back for and the product or services you offer or sell. There is no reason to over inundate a searcher with filler content.

Another important part of developing a SEO campaign that is mobile device friendly is utilizing shorter keywords and the realizing the possibility of more local traffic.  People who are searching on their phones or iPads are typically in the “hurry up” frame of mind.  They are more likely to select shorter and more precise keyword phrases.  Searchers using a mobile device are also typically “on the go” and looking for local businesses.  Capitalizing on the local searches can mean quick profits for your company.

2013 is going to be a huge year for Google and mobile device usage.  As the trend for devices like iPhones, iPads, Androids, and tablets increase so does the need for better “mobile friendly” SEO campaigns.  Your website design, content, and keyword selections all play a very important roll in your effectiveness in the online market.  Take the time to review your mobile website or lack of one with your current SEO company.  Make sure you take full advantage of the increasing mobile traffic that is just begging to land on the right website!

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Should You Be Favoring Your Social Media Site Over Your Website?

Friday, October 5th, 2012

As I sit here and evaluate how Facebook continues to grow and their potential talks of a search engine, I know they are going to be around for quite some time (in my opinion anyway). However when I saw that Mashable released an article saying “50% of Consumers Value a Brand’s Facebook Page More Than Its Website” I was definitely shocked at the fact businesses would consider ridding of a traditional website in favor of a social network, although I can’t say I’m surprised.

I believe in a strong social media presence and engagement, but do not see it as a wise choice to favor a Facebook business profile page over a traditional website. As the business page came about it was to help enhance your businesses presence online but never to replace it (although could that be a part of Facebook’s master plan?)

There are a few reasons you might want to consider not relying on Facebook for your overall online presence. For starters, you don’t get to choose the updates that occur on Facebook (for example the uproar over timeline that rolled out this past year). You also need to understand that the design and layout is something you cannot control because in the end it is not your site. On the other hand with a traditional website that you own, you can design the way it looks and make any changes that you think will create higher conversions.

Another concern should be a no brainer you don’t “own” your social profile. Think of it this way you have to abide by all their terms and conditions. If you fail to corporate they have every right to deactivate your account. So in having said that since you technically do not own your social profile all of your content, photos, followers, and conversations could all be lost, gone, finito.

Lastly, Facebook cannot take the place of an e-commerce site. Although I, we, everyone spend millions of hours on social sites but do not have the luxury of purchasing from Twitter or Facebook (not yet at least). We have to remember the reason for social media, which is to connect, and engage in conversation. I will say that it is a great way to post opinions and reviews on a buying experience. Therefore becoming an influencing media channel, however I think it is a wise choice to invest in a traditional website and not cut corners with your online presence.

 

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3 Things To Consider When Building A Mobile Website

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

Being one of 1SEO.com’s resident code geeks, I owe it to myself and my reputation to keep abreast of trends in the Internet marketing game. One surprising statistic that was recently released is the growth in mobile search. Mobile search of course leads to mobile web browsing. While most websites look absolutely fine in a standard smart phone browser, it is absolutely to your benefit to also build and launch a mobile version of your website for the best end user experience.

What Are The Keys To A Good Mobile Website?

1. Easy and bold navigation. In a traditional website, horizontal navigation is the winning solution here, but that may not necessarily translate well in a mobile environment. Big buttons or bold bars are the way to go when it comes to a mobile website. Remember, you have about 3.5 inches diagonally to work with, so make it count!

2. Simple color scheme. Following the same rule of thumb with the size of the media, you do not want to overwhelm the end user. Keep the graphics simple and eye catching.

3. Calls to action, my long standing favorite. As you may recall from my last post, Design, Implement, ACTION!, I touched on the importance of making the end user react to your site the way you want them to. The same principles apply here…keep the phone number large (and clickable!), make sure your buttons are large (relative to screen size of course) and evenly spaced, and be direct!

Remember, this is a mobile world and people are moving faster than their 4G cell phones can handle. You want to make sure you streamline your information here, and deliver your sales message home and as quickly and effectively as possible.

 

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Choosing The Right CMS

Monday, October 10th, 2011

CMS’s have come a long way in the last few years, they come built in multiple languages, run on multiple web servers, and each offer nice features for those building websites or intranet systems with them. Choosing the right CMS can be a bit of a chore before you even get to building, there’s so many of them out there. The more well-known names on the block are Joomla, Drupal, Silverstripe, even WordPress is used as a CMS now. For a developer picking a CMS a lot of times it depends on how a client will be able to use it and what their technical proficiency is. Other times it’s a matter of what you’re willing to hack and modify to make it do what you want.

If you’re looking for basic capabilities like editing text, changing pictures, etc. then pretty much any CMS will do. For more advanced functionality I always felt its best to use a CMS that is built on a solid application framework. Drupal and MODx, as well as others, use pretty solid frameworks that make it easy for a developer to build on and extend. I been experimenting with MODx Revolution a little bit, and so far I really like what I see. It uses a PHP5 Object Oriented framework that’s fairly easy to pick up on and the manager/admin section is built using ExtJS javascript framework. It doesn’t seem to confine you to one way of doing things, which I like. That’s always been one of the things I don’t like about Joomla.

One of the most common problems I see with some popular CMS‘s is that they all try to be a one size fits all solution. That has it benefits but also at one time or another forces to do some hacking around their core functionality to make something work they way you want it. Plugins often only give you 80% of what you’re looking for, that other 20% is what leads to modifications under the hood. When it comes down to it, picking the right CMS is a matter of finding that balance between out-of-the-box functionality and ease of extending core functionality through an api. Of course you could always build your own custom CMS but if you’re not willing to write extensive documentation and offer support it’s best to use an existing one with a strong community behind it.

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The Legacy of Steve Jobs and How We Viewed the Internet

Monday, October 10th, 2011

No one man in the last 20 years has affected the way we live more than Steve Jobs. You may not see it evident but it’s all around us. You have only as far as your smartphone to look to truly begin to understand the presence Steve Jobs had and will have for many years to come.

Sure, Bill Gates created Microsoft and put computers into, as of 2011, around 80% of American homes. It took years for people to adopt the personal computer though, either because of need, price or space. It was a big, hot, noisy, gray box – and we had to have one, even if we did hide it in the corner under the desk.

What Job’s did was make it sexy to own a computer. Look at the offerings from Apple over the last decade or more and it was all about aesthetics, without sacrificing performance. iMac, iPhone, iPad – it became him to own a computer and more specifically, an Apple product.

Here’s a company that as recently as 1997 was near bankruptcy and struggling for identity, purpose and solvency. Re-enter Steve Jobs.

In the years since his return, Apple has revolutionized the way we view the Internet. Once the bastion of portability, laptops have taken a backseat and desktops have all but disappeared from their prominence on retailer web sites. Now, it’s about iPads and mobility. It’s about App’s and iPhones. Want to find a new restaurant to try in your area? Go on your phone while you’re on the road and look it up. Need a plumber while you’re holding a leaking pipe closed with one hand? Use the other hand and look it up on your iPhone. Developers chomp at the bit to develop App’s for the phone in hopes it will catch on and make them rich, becoming the next Angry Birds.

Business is anything but status quo when developing web sites to help businesses reach clients. The days of doing a simple HTML site with a page or two and a phone number are long gone. It’s about mobility, and mobile applications, mobile development is here, now! It’s past being important, it’s time to catch up, time waits for no one and neither do busy customers looking for your business, and if they don’t find you, the first guy that has a mobile site popping up on their smart phone, easy to find, easy to read and easy to call, right from the same device.

Did Steve Jobs invent the PC? Did he invent the internet? Did he invent the phone? No, but he found a way to bring them all together, make it attractive, affordable and inseparable from our daily lives. Android has 43.7% of the U.S. smartphone OS market. Android exists because of Apple, and Apple exists because of Steve Jobs. He changed the way we live and has enriched our lives in so many ways; we may never fully appreciate it in every single way.

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SEO—The Secret Ingredient To Winning On The Web

Tuesday, September 13th, 2011

When building a website or an online presence for you brand, there are many things to consider.  There is always design vs functionality, there is ecommerce vs blog, etc.  The ONE commonality all successful websites share is that they are searchable on Google.  With over 73% of search going through Google, why would you even bother having a company without playing online?  When was the last time you did any of the following:

     -Went to the Yellowpages

     -Watched a Banner Ad

     -Played a Pop Up game

If you are reading this, then the answer is probably not as of late.  The TRUE results that matter when you play online is your conversions.  If your site doesn’t convert to sales leads or prospect to answer a goal your site seeks to accomplish, there is not a reason to have a website. 

SEO is the key factor when playing online and generating conversions.  If you want leads, sales, and more traffic you NEED to SEO your site.

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CRUD and ORM

Monday, September 12th, 2011

Websites today are heavily database driven, everything from simple blogs and forums to social networking sites. Developers at one time used to, and still do, write raw SQL queries that are executed by their scripts, whether it be PHP, Java, Python, etc. It used to be a pain, at least for me, to manage a global resource that performed all your CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations. For a small project its no problem, but when you have a larger project backed by a higly relational database that includes reporting statistical data, user management, and ACL’s it can be pretty tedious managing and organizing prepared SQL statements that include all the usual joins, updates, unions, stored procedures, etc.

One thing that used to get on my nerves was whenever I had to do fixes or updates to code something someone else wrote and see random connection strings and queries all over the place (ASP coders seemed to do this a lot). Practices like that made spaghetti code real quick and a head ache to clean up and organize.

These days when it comes to developing projects that need CRUD functionality, I encourage the use of a ORM (Object Relational Mapper) or an ActiveRecord implementation. An ORM libray can save you lots of time and write less code when developing the database layer of your project, if you have a good grasp of Object Oriented Programming you can dive into using an ORM and immediately see the benefits. You can perform very complex queries with just a few lines of code. The idea is simple, each table in your database is abstracted by a class that extends the base ORM class. Each column in the table is a property in the ORM class along with built in methods for retrieval, searching, updating, creating, and deleting.

Here’s a very basic example of the traditional method of executing a query with PHP and iterating through the records returned:

$q=”           

     SELECT e.firstname, e.lastname, e.department_id, d.department

            FROM employees e

            JOIN department d ON  e.department_id=d.id

”;

$results=mysql_query($q);

foreach($results as $r){

            echo(“First Name: ”.$r['firstname'].” Last Name: ”.$r['lastname'].” Department:

”.$r['department']);

}

Now, here’s the same thing using an ORM:

$results=ORM::model(‘Employees’)->get();

foreach($results as $r){

            echo(First Name:”.$r->firstname’.” Last Name: ”.$r->lastname.” Department:”.$r->department);

}

And bam, just like that. That is just a bare basic example, but just imagine being able to execute a far more complex query that included 50+ fields, 6 related tables, and thousands of records with just a couple lines of code. Sweetness.

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User Experience and SEO: Good for Biz-nass

Monday, August 22nd, 2011

When I first started building websites (in high school), user experience was probably close to last on my list of priorities. It was all about aesthetics, and making sure the words were there. My how times have changed…

Maybe it has a lot to do with maturity, or it could be my natural progression towards the inevitable salesman attitude that will surely consume every piece of my personality that used to be there, but the first thing I have to think of before hand hits mouse and color hits monitor, is how the end user will be interacting with this site. I am glad that my mentality has taken this route thinking back on some of the sites I had built in the past, but that was the way things were done.

Today, with Search Engine Optimization in any smart business owner’s marketing tactics, right along side of that is the importance of having a website that will attract your prospective customer, and keep them on the website long enough to become a paying customer.

What can you reevaluate on your website to make the User Experience more effective? You go back to the basics! First, look at your navigation. If a potential client has to click more than once to get to the meat-and-bones of your business, chances are they you may lose the opportunity. If they have to click more than twice, you may as well write that person off as a client for your competitor. Next, you want to look at your color scheme. These are the basics of Graphic Design that I am talking about here, and Marketing 101. If your website is supposed to appeal to an older crowd, and you are using hot neon colors, you may want to rethink your strategy. Finally, it’s picture and video placement. They say a picture is worth 1,000 words. Well, a video is worth about 10,000, since it is statistically shown that videos have a positive impact on the conversion level of a website.

User Experience is an awesome part of my job, because this is ultimately what makes a website work or not work. Subtle differences in color choice and type placement are the ultimate creative challenge, and it keeps me going. Well, that, and about a gallon of coffee.

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