HTML - HyperText Markup Language - is the language for website creators creating web pages. Strictly speaking, it’s not the only language webmasters should know - far from it - but definitely the most important one. Without knowing it (or XHTML, its variation) nobody can create as much as one webpage looking even slightly prettier than a page of unformatted plain text. The WWW as we know it would never exist without the invention of HTML.

People unfamiliar with web design often ask if HTML is some kind of a programming language. The answer is, no, it isn’t. It’s a markup language that consists of tags and attributes that tell the browser how to render the web page. One of the possible examples of a tag is a <p> tag that means “paragraph”. At the start of every paragraph we should put a <p> tag (and opening tag), and at the end of the same paragraph, the </p> tag (it’s a closing tag). Attributes are placed inside tags to give the browser more information about tags. For example, the following code produces a hyperlink to Google: <a href=”http://www.google.co.uk/”>Google</a>. Here, <a href=”http://www.google.co.uk/”> and </a> are opening and closing tags of the link, and href=”http://www.google.co.uk/” is an attribute telling the browser where the hyperlink should point.

The first version of HTML was suggested by Tim Berners-Lee (a famous person and a genius respected by everyone who works online and specialises in any Internet-related things). It happened in 1990 and 1991, but it wasn’t until 1995 that HTML was officially recognised as a standard to be supported by browsers and other web software. That was HTML 2.0. Currently, the most popular standard is HTML 4.01 (published in 1999), and webmasters are already waiting impatiently for HTML 5.0, which promises to give them a lot of new tools that will make web pages still more elaborate and attractive.

Like everything in the world, HTML develops continuously, and, as the browsers become more sophisticated and support published standards better, webmasters change their approach to how they use HTML. In the past it used to be the norm to use HTML for visual formatting of the web text, and tags like <font> with various attributes setting the size and colour of the font were widely used. Today the accepted approach is that HTML should be responsible mainly for semantic markup (to tell the browsers and other software where the paragraph begins, where it ends, where numbered and unnumbered lists are, etc…) and the presentation should, wnerever possible, be delegated to CSS (Cascading Style Sheets - another language that good webmasters are expected to speak). Using CSS, a webmaster can change the way the texton the whole website looks by changing just one line of code, whereas with pure HTML and font tags it would take changing a lot of tags on a lot of pages - and countless hours to do so. In HTML 4.01 the <font> tag is considered deprecated.

Another example of transition to semantic HTML is gradual rejection of HTML tables (built using <table>, <tr>, <td> and some other tags) as the means of controlling the layout of webpages. A few yers ago table tags were used by nearly everyone to control how many columns the webpage should have and what width, height and colour they should be, as well as the header’s and footer’s design and navigation menus. These days, it’s considered extremely bad coding style, and the accepted approach is this: tables should be used to hold tabular data and nothing else, and the layout of webpages should again be controlled using CSS. This way of coding webpages is not very easy and requires a professional webmaster, but it’s more semantic and accessible and has some other advantages. More and more websites are built this way.

When the search engines analyse the content of web pages, they strip HTML tags to find textual content. They are good at that, but the less HTML code they have to remove, the higher the chances that they will determine the purpose of the webpage correctly. So, good webmasters strive to make their job easier by using “light” HTML markup and keeping the number of tags to the minimum. The idea of semantic markup goes hand in hand with this - that’s why such markup is considered more search-engine friendly, apart from other advantages mentioned above.

Let’s suppose you are seeking to build/rebuild your website, and your prospective webmaster is talking to you about table-free HTML or search engine friendly code. These terms should no longer sound Greek to you - what’s more, now you can assess the importance of these factors for your future project. Our other articles will explain in detail what CSS, JavaScript, PHP and other terms mean to you.

There are popular CMS systems: Joomla, Drupal and WordPress. Of course, WordPress is mainly used for blogs, but can be configured as a platform for an ordinary website or even an e-shop. There are less popular, but more suitable for people who come from the IT background and like more freedom in regard to programming and HTML code: Maxsite, Frog CMS, CMS Made Simple, E107, Typolight and others.

PHP-based CMS systems are expected to have at least the following features

1. Ability to edit pages using an online MS Word-like editor (also known as WYSIWYG - What You See IS What You Get).
2. Ability to categorize pages, add them to menus.
3. Ability to manage navigation system through the site using menus, breadcrumbs, sitemaps and other standard means of navigation.
4. Ability to customize page layout using templates.

Besides most of the available PHP open-source CMS will have plugins contributed by third party PHP developers, such as eCommerce, discussion forums, user profiles (with avatars), blog (unless the blog format is the default one, like with WordPress), some tools and functions for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), tag clouds, social media shortcuts and a lot more. You can choose which plugins (or, in the case of Drupal, modules) you need and which ones you don’t need, thus minimising your system and at the same time making it meet all your needs.

Most of them have an overwhelming number of features, which creates a problem for a business user, as extra features make it difficult to configure administer and support the web-site based on it. This brings forward the necessity to hire an experienced webmaster who has worked with the CMS of your choice and can help you out of most problems. It’s also possible that you won’t find a plugin/module for your sophisticated business logic and will have to hire a programmer to write it for you from scratch.

When selecting an open source package many would go for a feature match. They will prepare a list of required features, and then see if pre-selected PHP-based content management systems match that set of features. But having a feature does not yet make this feature easily available for the end user; neither does it make it easy to use. For example, any PHP-based CMS will have a feature of adding pages, but how easy is it for you to do? If you are unsure, it’s a good idea to arrange a training session with your designer beforehand, so you are taught all the essentials once the site is ready. Besides, if you are adding a dozen of simple pages daily, clicking through a few times and then selecting a few options just to post a page can be a substantial time overhead.

Some system can be configured to hide/bring out some functionalities, but will it be easy to do? How much of you valuable time it will cost, or how much should you pay to a developer for doing this?

So, to summarise, this is our advice on the choice of the CMS:

If possible, go for a system you have a previous experience with. If you are entirely new to it, find a good developer, and go for the system they consider a good one (find out why). In experienced hands, Drupal is as good as Joomla; in unexperienced hands Drupal is as bad as Joomla. If you trust your developer, and they are a stable company, even a bespoke system will do - but make sure they teach you to use it, so you don’t depend on yoru developer forever.

Why so many agencies create their own PHP-based CMS systems? Because it will probably take as much to learn an open source PHP CMS as it is to build a new one. Besides an open-source system will probably have its own software architecture paradigm, which will not match the paradigm the agency use for creating other web applications.

What are other options? Maybe you do not need to stick to a community-developed open-source, but search for an open-source system developed by a commercial vendor? Even the most enhanced open-source systems like Drupal or Joomla could never compete with commercial systems, like Bitrix, for instance, in terms of either flexibility and comprehensiveness or the quality of support. Also, it doesn’t really have to be PHP. Both Java and .NET have a variety of robust enterprise-level content management systems, some of them are quite easy to use.

PHP CMS Systems used for particular purposes

Here are some e-commerce CMS based on PHP: ZenCart, Magento, osCommerce. There are others and they all have an overwhelming set of features specific to e-stores. they all are relatively easy to install and customize, but it’s still a good idea to ask an experienced webmaster to do this job for you. Also, most good CMS’s have e-commerce plugins/modules, for example Drupal has Ubercart, WordPress has WP e-Commerce and Joomla has VirtueMart.

Blogging platforms

Here, no doubt, WordPress has no rivals. It has the most blog-specific architecture as installed out of the box, the highest number of plugins written with bloggers’ needs in mind. Its history has been the history of a blogging platform, and the community that develops WP has always payed the highest attention to what a blogger might need. Of course it’s not perfect and has some subtle bugs - for example it’s not unusual to change the current theme and discover that due to a subtle bug in the platform it lost all your themes and, consequently, your blog is no longer available. It might take an experienced web developer to fix this; if you are unexperienced, the only way out of this is reinstalling the blog and losing all the content. Sounds scary, but, fortunately, happens very seldom.

Of course, it’s possible to build a blog using Drupal too, but it will be heavier, requiring a mroe powerful web server and at the same time it’ll have fewer features than a WP-powered blog. Drupal has always been developed as a general CMS with the blogging side considered secondary, and it shows.

Here are a few others. None of them, except WordPress, is very popular though. Serendipity used to be, but couldn’t compete, and at some point they had to delete the list of their proud users from their own website. Guess why? While it was still available, half of the links led nowhere (the blogs had ceased to exist), and the rest of those blogs had switched to WordPress. But it’s still possible to download this script and many others for those who’d like to test them and let us know how it was.

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Software for project management makes a big class of applications, which can be either standalone (desktop) or web-based. Project management is a complicated task, so the software programmed to schedule, track, control, allocate resources and otherwise support the project on the various stages of its imprementation has to include diverse and sophisticated functionality.

There are currently a lot of project management solutions available on the market; Wikipedia has a comprehensive comparison table. As you can see, most of those solutions are proprietary, and of those few available under the open source lisence still fewer have the complete set of functionality you might expect to find in a high-quality project management program. The chances are, even with the most advanced proprietaty system you’ll still find certain necessary features lacking, which will suggest ordering a bespoke system.

Some of the project management solutions that exist focum mainly on project planning and scheduling and don’t provide enough functionality for the tracking stage. Others, on the contrary, concentrate mainly on project tracking. There are standalone and web-based solutions available. Of course, the web-based option presents usual benefits as well as drawbacks of web software: there’s no need to install any special software to access the data, and it’s possible to work with the application from any computer anywhere in the world, but on the other hand, the Internet connection is essential, and security considerations become more critical.

The tasks that full-scale project management application should be available to solve are as follows:

• Scheduling
• Issue tracking
• Project portfolio management
• Resource management
• Document management

Not all existing solutions have all the features presented - so any business could make choices and definte priorities. But as mentioned above, certain kinds of businesses - e.g. medicine related - might find it necessary to order bespoke solutions for managing their projects, due to specific requirements existing in some industries.

Investing in the wrong kind of project management software (either too simplistic or too sophisticated) can become a total loss to your budget; investing in the right kind will save thousands for you in the long run. That’s why it’s important that you make a thorough research of existing solutions, as well as into the feasibility of ordering a bespoke application, before you actually buy. We are planning on a series of articles covering various types of project management software in detail.

Whether you want to work remotely for convenience (avoiding long commutes) or for necessity (you are a salesman on the move), at some point you will need to organise access to your data and systems, which is stored at your computer at work. There are several options for organising remote work.

First option: Remotely access to your computer at work/home.

On the move, from home, off working hours (other cases) you need to connect/access your computer at work or home where all your data related to your work is stored. Depending on the situation you might use a netbook or a hand-held device, or a full-sized computer belonging to somebody else (in the library).

You have a couple of alternatives here:

Operating systems have a build-in facility for remote connection. Remote Desktop Services, is one of the components of Microsoft Windows (both server and client versions) that allows a user to access applications and data on a remote computer over a network and the Internet.

There are alternative software packages that allow you to do the same as windows remote desktop, and you can find them by searching Google or Download.com

With windows remote desktop connection, you do not have to pay anything, but should have enough technical skills to configure the remote connection initially, and do it securely. If any problems occur, you are also left alone for troubleshooting.

There are services on the Internet that solve the above problems by making remote access programs more usable, taking care of user security and authentication.

The most popular services we are aware of are PCanyware and Gotomyps. To setup a remote access you need to register with them, download a small program and install it on your (host) PC. Then you can access your computer from anywhere using an Internet browser.

Second option: keep your data with you.

If you just need to access some files, consider copying all your critical data onto a removable storage (usb flash card). You might have plenty of files, and a large amount of data to move, but there are some clever programs that help you to synchronise data, thus speeding up the process by avoiding copying files that have not been changed. The one I use is called GoodSync. A few years back, I have tried a few programs of that sort, and GoodSync appeared to be the fastest and most reliable.

There are additional benefits of using this approach: you can work offline, and you maintain a backup copy of all your important data.

You can also sync files with a remotely located server. You will have to have an Internet access for that, but you do not have to carry files with you in that case. It also might be a pretty reliable option as an “off-site” backup / data storage. This is a paid for option, but it usually does not cost much, and most of providers offer a free basic account. There are two types of services: one more oriented to data synchronisation, and allows to browse your data via browser, the same way your brows your local folders. Dropbox, and Box.net are good examples of that.

Another type of services is more oriented towards backups - for example mozy.

I carry all my data on a usb flash drive, and sync to a remote server / service. So if my notebook is stolen together with a flash drive, at least I will be able to recover my data.

Whether you have your data on your computer, or on a removable storage, you have to think about security. Operating systems offer some basic protection, in form of data encryption, but it is better to use a specialised software for this. Truecrypt is a very popular option.

There is also an option for “hardware encryption”, where your files are encrypted within the storage, rather then by a software. This option is more expensive, but easier to use, and normally faster.

You will have your data with you, but not all the software and systems that you can access at work. Although some software packages can run from USB drives, there are only a few of them.

This moves us to a third option:

Third option: use online services and software to do your work.

If you are Internet-connected consider using online/social collaboration software - keep your stuff there instead of a hard-drive. There are many specific, and general (Google Apps) services, that can help you to do more or less everything that can be done by using a desktop software. But this is a topic for my next post.

You want a bespoke web application to be developed, whether to automate your business or to create a new service or portal on the web. Which technology should you go for? There are three mainstream technologies for building web-based applications: .NET, Java and PHP. If you approach different development companies and each of them advocates that the one they use is the best, which one should you listen to?

You might browse the internet to find the answer, but most articles comparing technologies are written by technical people for technical people.

My advice is (unless your budget is over a million, and you have a substantial investment to make in a feasibility study): do not bother about the technology itself. Find a good team and go with the technology this team is proficient in. There are too many factors contributing to the success of a web software project and for most projects technology is not a major one.

Application security, reliability and performance will depend on the ability of your developers to design and develop with security, reliability and performance in mind – it’s as simple as that.

Blogging has become an important feature of the World Wide Web and is now an integral part of other emergent Internet trends such as social networking web sites, online video and podcasting. The word ‘blog’ is short for ‘weBLOG’ and can be thought of as an online diary or forum, where the author can convey thoughts on any subject he or she chooses. In fact, blogs evolved from newsgroups (or moderated forums), when users began to post in a more consistent, serialised style. (more…)

It’s aimed at people who run a business or are responsible for their company’s site or application and who have a basic grasp of the technologies involved:

An introduction to CSS—and 5 good reasons why you should use it on your web site.

Here’s one of those things that sounds too good to be true—a simple, web-based language, which, if applied correctly, can save you money and enhance your website or your web application.

A bold claim, indeed. But what is it?

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This article introduces you to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)—and advanced technology used to build modern web pages and explains how this technique can be used to improve the quality of websites and optimise their future support.

As your business grows and develops, so will your website. When you build it today, you should already be taking into account how you might want to improve it in the future including possible modifications to its look and feel and even complete change of the visual design.
We view websites via so-called browsers—the software built to explore websites and make the best use of their functionality and features. The most popular browsers are Internet Explorer and Firefox, but there are many others. They allow us to see web pages as formatted text. The web pages are formatted using a special markup language called HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and the browsers interpret the HTML to present the web pages to us properly. HTML is also read by mobile phones, screen readers and other devices.
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