The Innocent Statement

First off, a little disclaimer;

I tried posting this entry last night, from my Nokia 3360. It all seemed to be working well, but when I posted the form, only the first line (or less) of the entry was sent. The result being that this entry has been one half of a sentence over night. But now I am here to right that wrong! (More to come)

Back to our scheduled programme: the beginning of something

Last night I went to the "launch" of WebProWales. "Launch" might possibly have been the wrong word to use. Put it this way, if WebProWales was a Ship, then we wouldn't have been smashing any bottles of Champaign on it since it is still only half built.

We at Netring have been partly involved in WebProWales over the last few months. About a month ago I went to a meeting with other companies, all of which want to be part of this organisation. The ideas behind the WebProWales organisation are good ones; members will be made up of Welsh web development and web service companies and sole traders. The organisation will set a minimum standard for its members. This is something I hope will be fueled by W3C standards compliance, as well as other aspects, such as whether that company provides a professional service, and how happy the companies' customers are.

Benefits to Member and the Public

The benefits of being a WebProWales member should become obvious, if the organisation sets a high standard. Becoming a member should mean that your work meets this high standard, and can prove it. As WebProWales grows, more and more customers will go through the organisation to find a company or sole trader than has the skills needed to achieve their projects goals; this should mean more business for its WebProWales members. Members will also benefit from the option of being able to join forces to work on larger projects that they would normally not be able to take on. This will hopefully promote our type of business in Wales and stop larger jobs leaving the country when not necessary.

The Public (customers/clients) benefit will also be a key factor in how this Organisation gets set up. WebProWales should be the promoter of best standards and high quality products, whether that product is a service, a website, web application or so on. Customers will then benefit from using WebProWales, because it should be a mark of Professionalism (hence the WebProWales).

The Process

As I said, this is only a half built Ship at the moment, but everyone involved wants it to stay afloat much longer than a proverbial Titanic. So it is worth taking time now to make sure that the process involved in member selection, and other aspects of the organisation are well planned out. No real process has been put in place yet and there are no real members either - just affiliates that will have to go through this process themselves, when it is in place. So keep a keen eye on this, especially if you are a business based in Wales.

The “Launch” Night

The turn out last night was brilliant. I would say that there was easily over 80 people there, possibly closer to 100. All these people were there because they are interested in the idea of WebProWales. Web Development companies from Cardigan, Haverfordwest, Swansea, Cardiff, Carmarthen and more, as well as people from such organisations as I.T.Wales, Antur Teifi, and the WDA who have helped with the setting up with WebProWales so far. There was also a surprising amount of clients there that wanted to see how WebProWales will help other customers and clients, by providing an access point to quality companies and services. I went there quite sceptical, but came away quite enthused! Time will tell.

Get involved

If you wish to express an interest in WebProWales, please check out www.webprowales.com. There you will find a form that can be filled out to express your interest.

If you have ever had a disagreement with a client over some photos, a CD, or any other type of client materials, you will no how much of a pain it can be. The client insists they gave you something, you insist they didn't. Or, they insist that you still have their precious photos, but you insist that you gave them back weeks ago. What do you do? How do you resolve this with as little hard feeling as possible?

Enter the 'Client Materials Log'

It may seem like a little bit of extra hassle, but the potential benefits are great.

The idea is, when ever the client hands over some physical materials to your studio, you make a log of it, and give the client a receipt. So, the client has a receipt making them happy. And, you will have the log of materials so that you will never forget what you're meant to have.

Then, when you hand the materials back the client, you kindly request that they sign your log to prove that they have had it back.

It's a simple concept, but it works.

Download an example of the Client Materials Log, and the Client Materials Receipt document that we use at Netring.

Can someone tell me the link between this entry and the film Lightning Jack?

Yesterday at Netring we had an experience. To be honest we have lots of experiences here, and when I get the time you will probably be able to share in them somewhat, if you wish.

Note: In this post, backend development refers to server side development such as ASP, ASP.net, PHP programming, SQL databases and all the others stuff that is out there. Front-end development refers to the HTML/XHTML design, CSS and JavaScript, and Graphic Design, as well as others.

While I have been reading the book Web ReDesign: Workflow that Works there has been mention along the way of the need to have a separate workflow plan for backend development. This workflow should run in parallel with any front-end workflow in place for the project. The book, however, does not go into what the backend workflow should include, since it only focuses on front-end workflow.

Since I read that I have been thinking about backend workflow, and how it should run in parallel with the front-end developments. Obviously, there must be certain points in the front-end development that backend development should be considered, and visa versa. It’s not as if you can just run both workflows at parallel with each other and then introduce them to each other at the end. If it was done that way, there would most definitely be some incompatibilities found between the front-end and backend.

It also has me wondering why front-end is hyphenated, but backend is not.

Since I am on the matter of re-development today, I would like to show you something I have been testing out. The idea is to plan ahead before diving into development, by drawing up a complete structure of the site beforehand.

planning ahead with a project map

At this point you should be thinking about usability, and effectiveness of certain methods. It will differ depending on whether you are developing a web site or a web based system, but the basic rules remain the same.

I have been drawing this Project Map over the last two days for a system I am developing. It pretty much summarizes all the issues I have been thinking about and planning ahead for. While I plan ahead like this, I can find ways of addressing the Usability Issues of the system, and create a better Information Architecture.

This approach might not be a very new one for you, but to me it is a whole new method of developing. To plan out everything I can think of first before I even start coding.

I must admit that I have already built a relational database for the system, but that seems like another part of the planning, since it gives you an idea as to what the best way to structure the system will be.

I will be using this same technique for the wubbleyew.com re-development. By the way, thanks to all who gave me input into my wubbleyew.com 'rethink'. Maybe I will post a project map for the new wubbleyew.com when it is done.