how to jump start a brand new website (under the gun)

[Harry Slaughter]

I've got a client who wants to see some immediate results on a brand new
website. within a week, they'd like to see the following:

1) basic user authentication (using php sessions/cookies to maintain
authentication)
2) some basic content (text, photos, audio) uploading mechanism
3) basic content browsing in a somewhat neatly formatted presentation

knowing how quickly they wanted something they could look at, i
initially suggested using a framework such as mambo or seagull, but they
don't want to have to deal with the scalability issues and other
restrictions of those types of tools (issue is closed at this point, so
no need to argue scalability of these types of CMS frameworks.

oh, they also want a db abstraction layer so as to allow for future
flexibility and the ability to use a distributed db backend down the
road. maybe the option to swap out databases, you know the routine :)

I'm a little nervous promising all this in a week.

I've got two questions for the esteemed audience members here:

1) does this seem like a reasonable goal for a one week time frame?

2) is there any sort of "mini framework" that is not a full fledged
graphically oriented content management system but rather a "starter
kit" for a website that might have some of the following features:

- nice clean file structure defined (for some reason i have no
discipline when it comes to organizing conf tmpl and code files. I'm
sure I'm the only one here with that problem.

- modules/classes for stuff like authentication and session management

- minimal or no required DB schema. tables would be required only to the
extent that you want to use tool's modules. for example, if you want
authentication and session management, you'd need to set up users and
sessions tables

- modules/classes for uber common web app functions like file uploads,
user comments, publishing/browsing content.

- a means of cleanly and easily incorporating custom code for more
esoteric features.

- in addition to allowing for db abstraction, the tool would also
incorporate an MVC framework (smarty is the best that I'm aware of)

I'm talking something that would not assume the role of the website's
primary interface, but assume a sort of background role that simply
allows a developer to skip a lot of the tedius coding tasks.

all the tools I've looked at (and some of them are indeed very nice)
seem oriented towards non-programmers. that is, they assume that your
going to be using their graphical interface to do most (not all) of your
website creation. this is fantastic for folks looking for that. seagull,
mambo, tikiwiki and others are very nice apps if you don't want to do a
lot of programming and don't mind giving up things like scalability and
flexibility.

this is a one man show, and i'd really like to meet the customer's
needs. but as i see it, there's no real way for me to provide something
that's good, fast AND cheap without a developer oriented php framework.

I'm sure I'm not the only one out there looking for this type of thing,
yet I've found no such framework and no mention of anything like it.

thank you

[IWP506]

I'd tell the customer that I'd really not be able to provide a solution
to both my and his expectations in one week, and ask for two weeks to
make it really nice.

Sorry there's not code answers :)

[Jerry Stuckle]

Harry Slaughter wrote:

I've got a client who wants to see some immediate results on a brand new
website. within a week, they'd like to see the following:

1) basic user authentication (using php sessions/cookies to maintain
authentication)
2) some basic content (text, photos, audio) uploading mechanism
3) basic content browsing in a somewhat neatly formatted presentation

knowing how quickly they wanted something they could look at, i
initially suggested using a framework such as mambo or seagull, but they
don't want to have to deal with the scalability issues and other
restrictions of those types of tools (issue is closed at this point, so
no need to argue scalability of these types of CMS frameworks.

oh, they also want a db abstraction layer so as to allow for future
flexibility and the ability to use a distributed db backend down the
road. maybe the option to swap out databases, you know the routine :)

I'm a little nervous promising all this in a week.

I've got two questions for the esteemed audience members here:

1) does this seem like a reasonable goal for a one week time frame?

2) is there any sort of "mini framework" that is not a full fledged
graphically oriented content management system but rather a "starter
kit" for a website that might have some of the following features:

- nice clean file structure defined (for some reason i have no
discipline when it comes to organizing conf tmpl and code files. I'm
sure I'm the only one here with that problem.

- modules/classes for stuff like authentication and session management

- minimal or no required DB schema. tables would be required only to the
extent that you want to use tool's modules. for example, if you want
authentication and session management, you'd need to set up users and
sessions tables

- modules/classes for uber common web app functions like file uploads,
user comments, publishing/browsing content.

- a means of cleanly and easily incorporating custom code for more
esoteric features.

- in addition to allowing for db abstraction, the tool would also
incorporate an MVC framework (smarty is the best that I'm aware of)

I'm talking something that would not assume the role of the website's
primary interface, but assume a sort of background role that simply
allows a developer to skip a lot of the tedius coding tasks.

all the tools I've looked at (and some of them are indeed very nice)
seem oriented towards non-programmers. that is, they assume that your
going to be using their graphical interface to do most (not all) of your
website creation. this is fantastic for folks looking for that. seagull,
mambo, tikiwiki and others are very nice apps if you don't want to do a
lot of programming and don't mind giving up things like scalability and
flexibility.

this is a one man show, and i'd really like to meet the customer's
needs. but as i see it, there's no real way for me to provide something
that's good, fast AND cheap without a developer oriented php framework.

I'm sure I'm not the only one out there looking for this type of thing,
yet I've found no such framework and no mention of anything like it.

thank you

If you have to ask, the answer is no.

--
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
js*******@attglobal.net
==================

[Michael Vilain]

In article <T9********************@comcast.com>,
Jerry Stuckle <js*******@attglobal.net> wrote:

Harry Slaughter wrote:

I've got a client who wants to see some immediate results on a brand new
website. within a week, they'd like to see the following:

1) basic user authentication (using php sessions/cookies to maintain
authentication)
2) some basic content (text, photos, audio) uploading mechanism
3) basic content browsing in a somewhat neatly formatted presentation

knowing how quickly they wanted something they could look at, i
initially suggested using a framework such as mambo or seagull, but they
don't want to have to deal with the scalability issues and other
restrictions of those types of tools (issue is closed at this point, so
no need to argue scalability of these types of CMS frameworks.

oh, they also want a db abstraction layer so as to allow for future
flexibility and the ability to use a distributed db backend down the
road. maybe the option to swap out databases, you know the routine :)

I'm a little nervous promising all this in a week.

I've got two questions for the esteemed audience members here:

1) does this seem like a reasonable goal for a one week time frame?

2) is there any sort of "mini framework" that is not a full fledged
graphically oriented content management system but rather a "starter
kit" for a website that might have some of the following features:

- nice clean file structure defined (for some reason i have no
discipline when it comes to organizing conf tmpl and code files. I'm
sure I'm the only one here with that problem.

- modules/classes for stuff like authentication and session management

- minimal or no required DB schema. tables would be required only to the
extent that you want to use tool's modules. for example, if you want
authentication and session management, you'd need to set up users and
sessions tables

- modules/classes for uber common web app functions like file uploads,
user comments, publishing/browsing content.

- a means of cleanly and easily incorporating custom code for more
esoteric features.

- in addition to allowing for db abstraction, the tool would also
incorporate an MVC framework (smarty is the best that I'm aware of)

I'm talking something that would not assume the role of the website's
primary interface, but assume a sort of background role that simply
allows a developer to skip a lot of the tedius coding tasks.

all the tools I've looked at (and some of them are indeed very nice)
seem oriented towards non-programmers. that is, they assume that your
going to be using their graphical interface to do most (not all) of your
website creation. this is fantastic for folks looking for that. seagull,
mambo, tikiwiki and others are very nice apps if you don't want to do a
lot of programming and don't mind giving up things like scalability and
flexibility.

this is a one man show, and i'd really like to meet the customer's
needs. but as i see it, there's no real way for me to provide something
that's good, fast AND cheap without a developer oriented php framework.

I'm sure I'm not the only one out there looking for this type of thing,
yet I've found no such framework and no mention of anything like it.

thank you

If you have to ask, the answer is no.

They seem to have definite ideas about function and scalability. What
about resources required? The site is going to handle uploading, so it
will keep data. What about backings for that data in case of loss?
What about bandwidth requirements? How long will the keep the data?
Any scheme for archiving?

I'd go even further than the other response to this thread. I could
provide an analysis of their options and create a requirements
specification document based on interviewing people and finding out what
they want. But I wouldn't offer any working site in that time-frame.
I'd also require a retainer up-front and a signed contract outlining
their responsibilities and my deliverables. I would not attempt to
undertake creating anything they could "try out" in that 1-week
timeframe.

If they're paying by the hour (or time and materials), I feel this
reasonable for an initial project. They can take the resulting spec and
shop it around to other web development firms and ask for a fixed-price
bid in the 1-week project. That is, if they get anyone to bid on it.

If this is the first time they've hired outside consulting or web
development, they need to be educated on the development cycle. I
wonder if a single-person shop can't really do something this complex
without doing some degree of what I used to call "Hallmark programming"
(i.e. "We only care enough to reuse the very best.") in their
time-frame. I'm sure there are code monkeys out there that can and they
charge accordingly.

Such "under the gun" projects can sometimes indicate a political
situation. So part of my interviews would be to find out who's driving
the requirements for the site--people who will use it, some project or
marketing manager saw something "cool" and wants a site "like that", or
something else. I'd meet with them to discuss scope of the project and
find out how hard that deadline is. If they're paying fixed price or
hourly, you could get others involved to code up something in a week,
but without prioritizing their punch-list, it would be hard to commit to
their timeline.

I personally would turn down this type of project because of the
political landmines I envision with their timeline and requirements.
But that's me.

--
DeeDee, don't press that button! DeeDee! NO! Dee...

[Harry Slaughter]

IW****@gmail.com wrote:

I'd tell the customer that I'd really not be able to provide a solution
to both my and his expectations in one week, and ask for two weeks to
make it really nice.

Sorry there's not code answers :)

I'm definitely not looking for code here :) I'm looking for a way to
make my abilities match the customer's desires.

As of this moment, I'm considering Drupal (http://drupal.org) as a
possibility. It's proven on fairly high profile websites, it's mature,
it's free, it's flexible.

[Harry Slaughter]

Jerry Stuckle wrote:

If you have to ask, the answer is no.

Do you have a clue?

[Harry Slaughter]

Michael Vilain wrote:

In article <T9********************@comcast.com>,
Jerry Stuckle <js*******@attglobal.net> wrote: ...... They seem to have definite ideas about function and scalability. What
about resources required? The site is going to handle uploading, so it
will keep data. What about backings for that data in case of loss?
What about bandwidth requirements? How long will the keep the data?
Any scheme for archiving?
these are definitely issues that need to be handled at some point, but
they aren't really top priorities.

the question is really the fastest way to develop a site that will be
extensible, maintainable, down the road.
they want. But I wouldn't offer any working site in that time-frame.
I'd also require a retainer up-front and a signed contract outlining
their responsibilities and my deliverables. I would not attempt to
undertake creating anything they could "try out" in that 1-week
timeframe.
I'm pretty much convinced that only a framework such as Drupal will
enable a single developer to meet the types of demands we're talking about.
If this is the first time they've hired outside consulting or web
development, they need to be educated on the development cycle. I
wonder if a single-person shop can't really do something this complex
without doing some degree of what I used to call "Hallmark programming"
(i.e. "We only care enough to reuse the very best.") in their
time-frame. I'm sure there are code monkeys out there that can and they
charge accordingly.
LOL, that's a good one. The good ol' cut/paste design method, aka
glueware, aka unmaintainable junk. I'm all for borrowing, but you can't
borrow a whole lot before you have a big pile of unintelligible junk.
Such "under the gun" projects can sometimes indicate a political
situation. So part of my interviews would be to find out who's driving
the requirements for the site--people who will use it, some project or
marketing manager saw something "cool" and wants a site "like that", or
something else. I'd meet with them to discuss scope of the project and
find out how hard that deadline is. If they're paying fixed price or
hourly, you could get others involved to code up something in a week,
but without prioritizing their punch-list, it would be hard to commit to
their timeline.

I personally would turn down this type of project because of the
political landmines I envision with their timeline and requirements.
But that's me.

I'm hoping to turn this in to a legitimate project for myself. Dealing
with questionable time estimates is certainly preferable to dealing with
what you get in a big corprorate environemnt (at least IMHO).

[Jerry Stuckle]

Harry Slaughter wrote:

Jerry Stuckle wrote:

If you have to ask, the answer is no.

Do you have a clue?

Sure I do. I have almost 40 years of programming experience.

The point here is - if you're not sure you can do it in the timeframe given, you
can't. You obviously are relatively new to this, and a bit unsure as to what
you're doing.

There's nothing wrong with this - we all have to start someplace. But what you
have is a vague set of requirements and a very short deadline. It's a recipe
for disaster, even to an experienced programmer.

Also, as to Michaels' comments about function, scalability and the rest are dead
on target. They need to be addressed NOW - not at some future date.

I also agree with Michael that this project is ill-defined at this point. On a
web site this complicated, you really need a requirements document to lay out
exactly what the customer wants.

If you just jump into this, you're courting disaster (and possibly a lawsuit).
Either you'll be constantly changing the code for free because the site
requirements were never properly defined, or the customer will fire you (and
possibly sue) because you're not providing what they want at the price they
thought they agreed on.

All of this will take longer than a couple of days or even a week.

So, if you have to ask, the answer is no. If I were in your position, I'd run
from this one unless they agreed to a realistic timeframe. (One of my hardest
problems when I became a consultant was to learn to say NO to the "bad"
contracts/customers.

--
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
js*******@attglobal.net
==================

[Harry Slaughter]

Jerry Stuckle wrote:

Sure I do. I have almost 40 years of programming experience.

The point here is - if you're not sure you can do it in the timeframe
given, you can't. You obviously are relatively new to this, and a bit
unsure as to what you're doing.

I've been doing Internet development for about 10 years, but I've never
been responsible for developing an entire product from scratch with no
dev team and little to no specification and a timeframe measured in
weeks. I know most experienced developers wouldn't touch something like
this. But I'd like to make an effort to match the client's expectations
with the resource available for the task, me.

I'm aware of what happens when you try to develop before you know what
you're developing. And I can recognize mutually exclusive demands (the
old "good, fast, cheap, pick any two" rule). But before I simply bail on
the task, I want to try to find a way to make it work.

Since there's no time for real design and working without one would be a
mistake, I think my only option here is some form of framework that will
allow me to quickly put together a basic website with all the generic
features the client is looking for (content creation, user comments,
forums, user auth/session, site layout/design management...), while
freeing me up to develop the unique features of the website.

There's no shortage of options for this type of framework
(http://www.cmsmatrix.org/). Many of these tools are very feature rich.
Most of them allow you to write and incorporate your own tools into
their framework.

The only requirement not generally addressed by these tools is
scalability. The one unanswered question is how much load can these
frameworks support (concurrent users and/or [typical] page requests per
timeframe)?

Drupal, for example, is used by Mozilla.org, which I'd guestimate would
be somewhere in the top 20 percentile of high traffic websites. Of
course, mozilla.org does not utilize a lot of the features of drupal and
perhaps is not the ideal measure of drupal's scalability. Nonetheless,
drupal is obviously capable of scaling well past the needs of the
average website.

But what if the client wants to be prepared to support hundreds of
thousands of concurrent users? Yes, I know what you're all thinking :)
That's quite an ambitious target. And it's not one that stands a
statistically significant chance of ever being reached.

My thought is that something like drupal would be capable of supporting
a site that is popular enough to have proven or disproven its business
plan. At that point, it may or may not be necessary to redesign the
site. But also at that point, there would be the money available to hire
a complete engineering team to address problems.

Yes, the requirements are ill-defined and the expectations unrealistic.
But I think a single developer with the right framework could stand a
chance at developing a decent, customized website in a relatively short
period of time. A site which would scale at least to the point that the
site is somewhat successful and capable of generating enough money to
take it to the next level, whatever that may require.

Ok, I've lost myself. :)

[Michael Vilain]

In article <0LUEe.67190$ro.53303@fed1read02>,
Harry Slaughter <ha*************@slaughters.com> wrote:

Jerry Stuckle wrote:

Sure I do. I have almost 40 years of programming experience.

The point here is - if you're not sure you can do it in the timeframe
given, you can't. You obviously are relatively new to this, and a bit
unsure as to what you're doing.

I've been doing Internet development for about 10 years, but I've never
been responsible for developing an entire product from scratch with no
dev team and little to no specification and a timeframe measured in
weeks. I know most experienced developers wouldn't touch something like
this. But I'd like to make an effort to match the client's expectations
with the resource available for the task, me.

I'm aware of what happens when you try to develop before you know what
you're developing. And I can recognize mutually exclusive demands (the
old "good, fast, cheap, pick any two" rule). But before I simply bail on
the task, I want to try to find a way to make it work.

Since there's no time for real design and working without one would be a
mistake, I think my only option here is some form of framework that will
allow me to quickly put together a basic website with all the generic
features the client is looking for (content creation, user comments,
forums, user auth/session, site layout/design management...), while
freeing me up to develop the unique features of the website.

There's no shortage of options for this type of framework
(http://www.cmsmatrix.org/). Many of these tools are very feature rich.
Most of them allow you to write and incorporate your own tools into
their framework.

The only requirement not generally addressed by these tools is
scalability. The one unanswered question is how much load can these
frameworks support (concurrent users and/or [typical] page requests per
timeframe)?

Drupal, for example, is used by Mozilla.org, which I'd guestimate would
be somewhere in the top 20 percentile of high traffic websites. Of
course, mozilla.org does not utilize a lot of the features of drupal and
perhaps is not the ideal measure of drupal's scalability. Nonetheless,
drupal is obviously capable of scaling well past the needs of the
average website.

But what if the client wants to be prepared to support hundreds of
thousands of concurrent users? Yes, I know what you're all thinking :)
That's quite an ambitious target. And it's not one that stands a
statistically significant chance of ever being reached.

My thought is that something like drupal would be capable of supporting
a site that is popular enough to have proven or disproven its business
plan. At that point, it may or may not be necessary to redesign the
site. But also at that point, there would be the money available to hire
a complete engineering team to address problems.

Yes, the requirements are ill-defined and the expectations unrealistic.
But I think a single developer with the right framework could stand a
chance at developing a decent, customized website in a relatively short
period of time. A site which would scale at least to the point that the
site is somewhat successful and capable of generating enough money to
take it to the next level, whatever that may require.

Ok, I've lost myself. :)

OK, you might want to think about "level of effort" here. You've
already identified a possible solution you could make work in the
alloted time-frame. You don't have any sort of specs to work from so
you're just guessing on some things. Rather than obsess about "there
might be something better" out there, go with "good enough" and do the
week's worth of work, cash the check, and move on. They've only paid
for a week's worth of your time. What are your chances there will be
follow-on business?

I'd be looking for more long-term clients with more budget. If you want
the learning experience, put in the 1 week effort then move on.

--
DeeDee, don't press that button! DeeDee! NO! Dee...

[Harry Slaughter]

Michael Vilain wrote:

In article <0LUEe.67190$ro.53303@fed1read02>, ............................

OK, you might want to think about "level of effort" here. You've
already identified a possible solution you could make work in the
alloted time-frame. You don't have any sort of specs to work from so
you're just guessing on some things. Rather than obsess about "there
might be something better" out there, go with "good enough" and do the
week's worth of work, cash the check, and move on. They've only paid
for a week's worth of your time. What are your chances there will be
follow-on business?

I'd be looking for more long-term clients with more budget. If you want
the learning experience, put in the 1 week effort then move on.

Yeah, I've gone with the Drupal framework. So far, so good. I'm able to
get straight to 'new things' without having to spend any time creating
the basic components of the website. I'm impressed with it so far.

In a situation where there are no specs, I think a CMS is almost a mandate.