Web Development Advice For FREE

[maybach]

"FREE?! It MUST BE GOOD!" - Lady from Focus Factor Commercials.

I definitely do not know everything about web development ( [HASHTAG]#webDevelopment[/HASHTAG] ), but I've been working in the field for a while now. How long is a while though? 14 years. If you have any questions about web development, feel free to ask at no charge. This thread might actually help me develop a teaching product, or just help me stay focused on production and not consumption.

 

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[MoneyDoc]

What type of budget is needed to create a dating site for a particular niche market.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Ninjakid]

How to install Django on my computer. Currently using a PC

I tried to figure it out, looked up tutorials and just got headaches. Plus when I would tell people about Django and I, I had to explain that I wasn't talking about the character played by Jamie Foxx

 

[HappyFighter]

Here's the question... Considering familiarity is not a question what would you recommend Django or Rails?
I've been hearing (reading) arguments in the net that Rails is suited for building fast prototypes and Django is good for long-term maintainability.

Aside from building a few practice apps in the two, I don't have anything to be base my decision on. What are your thoughts? Opinions? I'm open to consider other options (Go, Laravel, Node.js, etc.) if they are any good.

 

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[maybach]

What type of budget is needed to create a dating site for a particular niche market.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

This really depends. If you are a technical entrepreneur or not, and your plan how complicated or how simple (Tinder) you would like to make it. Simplicity can be very complex also, which is kind of ironic. Also depends on the language you choose to write this, because if you get any developer and they choose any language maintaining or firing your developer and finding a new one will be more costly or tougher (some things to consider).

Okay back your question if your a technical entrepreneur, you can usually outsource the mundane work and project manage it etc. Sometimes though this can be a horrible decision if you go to cheap, and pay people that know enough to get by.

As a technical entrepreneur, to build a minimum viable product ([HASHTAG]#MVP[/HASHTAG]) you might be looking in the mid xxx - x,xxx (low to mid low). This again, depends if you chose to make it from scratch, or you are using a scripting framework such as (Python: Django, RUBY: Ruby on Rails, PHP: Larvel, JS: Meteor).

As a non-technical entrepreneur, depending on the scope of your [HASHTAG]#MVP[/HASHTAG] you might be looking at mid to mid high x,xxx.

Also as either non-technical entrepreneur or technical entrepreneur, you can find a pre-made solution, a script that is free or very low cost for dating site and tailor it to your needs, this will allow you to fail fast, and pivot as needed.

When choosing a developer you'll want to go with the most confident, and perhaps the one that cost a bit more. Even though their rate is more expensive, they might be able to do the work a lot faster, but more importantly with better quality, with will save you on maintenance costs, and feature development.

 

[maybach]

How to install Django on my computer. Currently using a PC

I tried to figure it out, looked up tutorials and just got headaches. Plus when I would tell people about Django and I, I had to explain that I wasn't talking about the character played by Jamie Foxx

LMAO, yea Django. I'm not a super fan of Python but it's definitely a solid scripting language. I own a Mac computer, made the switch a few years back because I wanted to be cool. The real reason why I switched was because most development tools are created for unix based systems such as Linux and Mac OS so the support and installations are more document and less problematic.

I don't know much about Django and Python other than I used it a few times for a client, much less installing it on a windows computer but check this out, it might help; https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/windows/ (you might have already seen this) but also check logs or errors that come up so you can search it on google.

 

[AlterJoule]

You need to set-up a website in order to showcase your product and of course, get sales. You have zero experience with coding and only have $100 bucks. What would you do under those circumstances? What's the most user friendly, easiest way to get up and selling? What's the best way to drive traffic to such a simple site, perhaps with no built in SEO products? Or does you solution come with those options/extensions?

 

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[maybach]

Here's the question... Considering familiarity is not a question what would you recommend Django or Rails?
I've been hearing (reading) arguments in the net that Rails is suited for building fast prototypes and Django is good for long-term maintainability.

Aside from building a few practice apps in the two, I don't have anything to be base my decision on. What are your thoughts? Opinions? I'm open to consider other options (Go, Laravel, Node.js, etc.) if they are any good.

I love Meteor which is javascript, and it's a Node.js Framework. It does limit have it's limits, such as only using Mongo DB as your database, but it might support MySQL at some point.

Anything that is a Framework such as Django, Ruby on Rails, Meteor, Laravel (CodeIgnitor, Cake PHP...etc) will make development much faster than writing your application in it's native scripting language.

The biggest benefit for Node.js, to me, is context switching from languages. Since everything is in javascript I don't have to switch my brain from oh this is PHP, in PHP I need to use x function, then switch to javascript when I need to work on FrontEnd.

To add on to all of this, build it in something that makes sense to you or that you feels natural to your brain, so that you can build a "MVP" Minimum viable product. Try not to focus to much on the technology and more on getting something out there, even if it sucks or it's kind of slow, perhaps even if it's a coding mess. If your MVP takes off, and generates you a passive income, you can then hire, or focus choosing a better language or a mix of languages to play on there strengths. All the debates are engineering masturbation.

When I was reading a blog post, by the guys who wrote Discover Meteor everything made sense to me for that one minute;
"Pareto principle, learning 20% of a language should be enough to cover 80% of situations."

Usually people like to go with older proven technologies to build their products, because they have been proven in time that they work and are stable... etc, but if it walks it walks, you can upgrade and upgrade as you go.

 

[maybach]

You need to set-up a website in order to showcase your product and of course, get sales. You have zero experience with coding and only have $100 bucks. What would you do under those circumstances? What's the most user friendly, easiest way to get up and selling? What's the best way to drive traffic to such a simple site, perhaps with no built in SEO products? Or does you solution come with those options/extensions?

Sell drugs. All kidding aside, honestly I've been in those circumstances, specifically when I was in Highschool and I first started wanted to make money online with 0 dollars. You have to visualize your internet life as your real life.

What I mean by that is, in real life let's say you have $100 and you want to build a Print Design business. If you think about it this is impossible, but let's say you go to the library and pick up a book on "Print Design". You use some of that $100 for materials at the thrift store or they are gifted to you, you might not have the best tools but F*ck it you make it work, and hell you're half way decent at it.

Now what do you do with $80 left, and you need to market yourself? Well you go to the agencies that contract Print Designers, you go with your samples and show it to them, hell you even offer them 1 free trial, so that you can show them you have what it takes.

You see where this is going ?

#1 If you don't know anything about coding, get learning. You have the world at your finger tips, use it, coding can be fun if you find challenging work to be fun, and most importantly never give up and understand that you will never know everything. For example http://www.codecademy.com/

#2 Warm Calling, is a sales technique to get sales people warmed up, basically warm calling is getting the people you know interested in your product. So use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, to do your initial traffic injection.

SEO is complex, and easy. Search engines write algorithms the best they can to provide the best result for the people searching. Your content is KING so start writing articles in the niche of your product. For example you're selling a dark chocolate bar, write article about where dark chocolate comes from, write about how it may benefit your health,...etc.

SEO is mainly has to do with content, then how many people link back to your site, your meta data, how fast your site loads, how long a person stays inside your site before hitting the back button, and God only knows what else.

If you want to get started today or tomorrow or whenever I would recommend http://wordpress.org/, I'm not a fan. I don't think too highly of it, because I'm a developer, but if I wasn't this would be the perfect solution for me because I could learn a little coding and get it setup, and write nice articles.

 

[AlterJoule]

Good reply. Thank you, your reply will help someone in this situation and you've taught me too.

 

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[maybach]

Good reply. Thank you, your reply will help someone in this situation and you've taught me too.

Dope, glad I could help.

 

[Ninjakid]

LMAO, yea Django. I'm not a super fan of Python but it's definitely a solid scripting language. I own a Mac computer, made the switch a few years back because I wanted to be cool. The real reason why I switched was because most development tools are created for unix based systems such as Linux and Mac OS so the support and installations are more document and less problematic.

I don't know much about Django and Python other than I used it a few times for a client, much less installing it on a windows computer but check this out, it might help; https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/windows/ (you might have already seen this) but also check logs or errors that come up so you can search it on google.

Thanks buddy. Yeah me personally, I'm a mac guy but I'm using my old hardware right now. My next computer investment will be a mac

 

[maybach]

Thanks buddy. Yeah me personally, I'm a mac guy but I'm using my old hardware right now. My next computer investment will be a mac

You're welcome. You could partition your old hardware and run ubuntu and windows on it, that way most of the tutorials and support would be some what tailored to you especially when they use terminal commands. This might make your headache worst, but it will definitely upgrade your street cred.

 

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[tafy]

Ok so I have a question...

Im planning on developing a B2B app

I am currently working with a freelance designer making photoshop mockups of the app, each screen at a time untill its all done. Theres like 50 screens in total with the settings and all.

Then get a programmer to make it a reality

How will I know I hired a competent programmer or not?

 

[Silverhawk851]

You need to set-up a website in order to showcase your product and of course, get sales. You have zero experience with coding and only have $100 bucks. What would you do under those circumstances? What's the most user friendly, easiest way to get up and selling? What's the best way to drive traffic to such a simple site, perhaps with no built in SEO products? Or does you solution come with those options/extensions?

Pretty Easy.
Step 1:
Watch this video on Wordpress if you don't know how to set up a wordpress site:

Step2:
Get OptimizePress or a similar Landing page theme. Set up a Landing page, with some Sales copy on your product. "Buy this now for not 97, not 67.... only $17!"

Step3:
Set up Facebook Ads, run your $100 to a TARGETED group of people.
Good example : Dog training videos on a FB page for "My Dog is out of control and I don't know what to do!"
Bad Example : Guide to picking up hot babes on "Quilt Knitting for Elderly Women in Retirement"


If you have a product that the customer values, and needs, they will buy.

You want to sell burgers to a crowd that is starving, not a crowd that just ate and is full.

Find the starving crowd, give them a meal and you will make $!

Hope that helps.

 

[maybach]

Ok so I have a question...

Im planning on developing a B2B app

I am currently working with a freelance designer making photoshop mockups of the app, each screen at a time untill its all done. Theres like 50 screens in total with the settings and all.

Then get a programmer to make it a reality

How will I know I hired a competent programmer or not?

Identify a competent programmer, is one of those things that are easier said than done. If you are non-technical person it get's harder, because no matter what technical data that you get from your candidate, how could you tell if it's good or not. Most non-technical professionals only rely on results, so perhaps the best way would to get what you are looking for is to read all the reviews you can get your hands on, especially if you're using odesk or some site of that nature.

Also what type of programmer are you trying to hire? Going from PSD to HTML / CSS / Javascript can be a front-end developer thing, and then building the database and scripting logic to process a user's actions through front-end is a back-end developer thing. Some developers called "full stack" developers are developers that can do a bit of everything.

In my experience working with developers, backend developers get lazy with front-end work and just do a good enough job to make you say okay, it's done let's move on. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing but you'll probably end up finding another developer.

Front-end developers, usually want nothing to do with back-end code and sometimes are not that great at it.

So ask potential candidates if they consider themselves more of a back-end or front-end developer, if they say full stack without you mentioning it that is a sign in the right direction. I would also recommend hiring someone in your timezone and in the US if financially possible.

 

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[tafy]

Ok so I think I got my guy, if I hire him is it a good idea to hire someone for a code review? And do you tell the dev that you will do this?

 

[maybach]

Ok so I think I got my guy, if I hire him is it a good idea to hire someone for a code review? And do you tell the dev that you will do this?

Well if you think you have your guy, then I don't know if I would hire a someone to do a code review. The code review could end up being counter productive and perhaps a waste of money and time. If you have seen your guy's products and like how the UI and UX is and how the flow of the applications or websites he has made then go with it. If you have seen the developers work from his early stages to now, and has improved that definitely a good sign.

I would definitely not tell your dev that you're going to do a code review, unless it's a new developer you've never worked with. You can say "hey, I subject all my developers to a quick code review, just to make sure the code you are writing for X scripting language is following best practices for X scripting or X language."

Development get's weird because everyone has a way of doing things there own way, even though there are general programming best practices, design patterns, and theoretical ways of doing things and not everyone knows everything about one language, unless they are specialists at something and geek out about new features.

 

[HappyFighter]

I love Meteor which is javascript, and it's a Node.js Framework. It does limit have it's limits, such as only using Mongo DB as your database, but it might support MySQL at some point.

Anything that is a Framework such as Django, Ruby on Rails, Meteor, Laravel (CodeIgnitor, Cake PHP...etc) will make development much faster than writing your application in it's native scripting language.

The biggest benefit for Node.js, to me, is context switching from languages. Since everything is in javascript I don't have to switch my brain from oh this is PHP, in PHP I need to use x function, then switch to javascript when I need to work on FrontEnd.

To add on to all of this, build it in something that makes sense to you or that you feels natural to your brain, so that you can build a "MVP" Minimum viable product. Try not to focus to much on the technology and more on getting something out there, even if it sucks or it's kind of slow, perhaps even if it's a coding mess. If your MVP takes off, and generates you a passive income, you can then hire, or focus choosing a better language or a mix of languages to play on there strengths. All the debates are engineering masturbation.

When I was reading a blog post, by the guys who wrote Discover Meteor everything made sense to me for that one minute;
"Pareto principle, learning 20% of a language should be enough to cover 80% of situations."

Usually people like to go with older proven technologies to build their products, because they have been proven in time that they work and are stable... etc, but if it walks it walks, you can upgrade and upgrade as you go.

Thanks for your reply. Working on legacy applications I just can't shy away from thinking about the future and how decisions made on the present affects it.

 

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[maybach]

Thanks for your reply. Working on legacy applications I just can't shy away from thinking about the future and how decisions made on the present affects it.

I definitely know the feeling. Have you ever heard of Erlang? I want to get to know more about it, it's suppose to be really great for "Build massively scalable soft real-time systems". Also in the Beta Yosemite of Mac OS X they have included a beta of Xcode that allows you to code in Swift.

The "Scripting" and programing language markets grows every minute of every day, because of people's comforts and needs. That's why I mentioned that the debates are pointless most times, because everyone's needs are different even though we all want to reach the goal of success, and we as human's we want to make the best decisions we can.

I think the best thing to focus is on the database, is your database structure the most optimized, are you using the write database for the job, maybe in the future you can have a mix of databases Sql and NoSql. Because a great database structure is really what matters when you have large sets of data, so even if your "API" or language is fast, but your database queries are slow then restructuring data can become a nightmare, more so than just picking a language to code in.

 

[RogueInnovation]

you can find a pre-made solution, a script that is free or very low cost for dating site and tailor it to your needs, this will allow you to fail fast, and pivot as needed

I'd like to find a few of these, what are the best places to find these or to search for these.

 

[maybach]

I'd like to find a few of these, what are the best places to find these or to search for these.

You might want to try your luck at sites like hotscripts, maybe also google "open source X", so "open source dating application" or "open source social network"..etc. Also I'm not sure if you can, do search on github, a lot of developers open source there project, on which you could potentially build on.

 

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[RogueInnovation]

"Pareto principle, learning 20% of a language should be enough to cover 80% of situations."

How well does that work out for people?

What would you consider the main masturbatory things that coders can do?

In the history of your programming experience what do you feel was the most crucial change in insight that helped you really make it click.

 

[maybach]

How well does that work out for people?

What would you consider the main masturbatory things that coders can do?

In the history of your programming experience what do you feel was the most crucial change in insight that helped you really make it click.

I'm not sure if I have a category for "main masturbatory thing that coders can do", but perhaps when a developer recreates the wheel in a new technology and tells you that your technology is obsolete or useless, when in fact they both do the same thing, and it's possible that your "old technology" is more effective. Also the feeling when you're not using the "latest and greatest" that your application sucks because of that fact.

I'm an early adopter, and consider myself to get caught up in that masturbatory mind set.

Believe it or not it was actually jumping around from languages, things started to click because the documentation of one language was easier to understand than another. Also I stopped using the internet as my sole educational tool, and started reading those very technical books.

The biggest hurdle of technical books, is the vocabulary and imagining the concepts that you're reading. Of course it depends on the writer, is he making it easy to read or does he expect you to know what iteration, concatenation, ...etc. What I would do when I started reading, was read the book till I was done, that was my goal and focus, instead of being focused on actually understanding what the author was talking about.

Now when I read and don't understand something, I'll stop and look it up on the net, youtube, post it on a forum, or I'll ask a fellow developer to try to explain it to me. I try not to move on if I don't get something.

 

[RogueInnovation]

Ah, so flitting around, not doing stuff in ways that just make sense is masturbation.

I've been working on just taking it as it comes and chilling out with the problem, trying to figure out what other guys have done and stay sharp enough to try to find poignant parts of what is happening and try to think of/research things he may have missed (as I guess you can only represent a certain amount of ideas at a time).

While I do that, its hard to exactly confirm my reservations, or enforce a creative view I have.
How would you say it is best to introduce a new idea with confidence that is not being given attention and stay clear of uselessly floundering on what serves no longer term purpose.

If you were to list the three most critical steps in evaluating a creative choices legitimacy to pursue, what would they be?

 

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[maybach]

Ah, so flitting around, not doing stuff in ways that just make sense is masturbation.

I've been working on just taking it as it comes and chilling out with the problem, trying to figure out what other guys have done and stay sharp enough to try to find poignant parts of what is happening and try to think of/research things he may have missed (as I guess you can only represent a certain amount of ideas at a time).

While I do that, its hard to exactly confirm my reservations, or enforce a creative view I have.
How would you say it is best to introduce a new idea with confidence that is not being given attention and stay clear of uselessly floundering on what serves no longer term purpose.

If you were to list the three most critical steps in evaluating a creative choices legitimacy to pursue, what would they be?

In the development world it's hard to impress other developers (we are very critical), so you kind of have to change the mindset, if that is one of the frames that you are in. In general if someone else says there solution is better, ask how and why, just out of curiosity and to expand your knowledge, stay humble even if you know it's wrong (This book helped me in that aspect "How to Win Friends and Influence People").

It's also easy to get caught up in solving the wrong problem. I don't know if you've read "The Lean Startup", but if you haven't you definitely should. They talk about using numbers to stay focused on the their goals, wether or not is to pivot or to work on a specific feature.

It's hard to say what the most critical steps in evaluating a creative choices legitimacy to pursue. Using the "Scientific Method" approach can be very vital, and presenting them as solutions and not ideas will help. People that do not understand tech want solutions!

Let's say your SEO guys comes in and says "Hey guys, we need this page to load in less than 2 seconds". Oh so many ways, but you come up with a great way of introducing lazy loading on things that do not need to be loaded as soon as the person visits that page. Everyone else, wants to use another method maybe caching the file, but this presents a problem that you have identified, the data on the page will get outdated soon.

Now test your idea and see if it solves the main problem, and the problems that other solutions could potentially create. Your idea turns out to be the best one, then you write down your findings. So when you present your SOLUTION (not IDEA), you say guys "I was able to get the page loading under 1 second, and have avoided all these other possible problems that the other solutions proposed may cause."

Try to keep your emotions out of it, it's tough. If you get to the point were you feel like you're not being heard or your not learning anymore then perhaps it's time to move on.

 

[RogueInnovation]

Hmm
1) True indicators and being generous with your considerations
2) Natural and well thought out alternatives that you test and compare as simply as possible
3) Handling your emotions and being aware of the environment you are in

And if I add on
4) Don't flit around do stuff in a way that makes sense

That basically says it all (and says you are a good coder).


I do have another question, I hope I'm not tiring you out
The question is
How do I ascertain that I'm even in the right project space.
I mean, I know you probably don't have to think about it much yourself because you naturally move past it and struggle to find your own niche, but...
When intermediate how do you avoid being a croney that is just wasting time.

What do you feel is the key to having clarity of purpose that seperates you from that whole scene.

What really clears away that apathy and gets you on path.

 

[HappyFighter]

I definitely know the feeling. Have you ever heard of Erlang? I want to get to know more about it, it's suppose to be really great for "Build massively scalable soft real-time systems". Also in the Beta Yosemite of Mac OS X they have included a beta of Xcode that allows you to code in Swift.

The "Scripting" and programing language markets grows every minute of every day, because of people's comforts and needs. That's why I mentioned that the debates are pointless most times, because everyone's needs are different even though we all want to reach the goal of success, and we as human's we want to make the best decisions we can.

I think the best thing to focus is on the database, is your database structure the most optimized, are you using the write database for the job, maybe in the future you can have a mix of databases Sql and NoSql. Because a great database structure is really what matters when you have large sets of data, so even if your "API" or language is fast, but your database queries are slow then restructuring data can become a nightmare, more so than just picking a language to code in.

I like learning new programming languages, but I haven't tried Erlang, though. I can agree with your opinion on databases. Although Rails and Django has their respective ORM's (Object Relational Mapping), I haven't given serious thought about how their tables and fields are structured. Thanks.

 

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[maybach]

Hmm
1) True indicators and being generous with your considerations
2) Natural and well thought out alternatives that you test and compare as simply as possible
3) Handling your emotions and being aware of the environment you are in

And if I add on
4) Don't flit around do stuff in a way that makes sense

That basically says it all (and says you are a good coder).


I do have another question, I hope I'm not tiring you out
The question is
How do I ascertain that I'm even in the right project space.
I mean, I know you probably don't have to think about it much yourself because you naturally move past it and struggle to find your own niche, but...
When intermediate how do you avoid being a croney that is just wasting time.

What do you feel is the key to having clarity of purpose that seperates you from that whole scene.

What really clears away that apathy and gets you on path.

It's interesting because sharing my experiences and thoughts through this thread is helping me realize a lot about myself.

Kind of, those are just indicators of good to amazing coder's you'd probably find it best to work with. A person with great / amazing code, has great /amazing code, their personality and all that will not matter much, and they may be hard to work with, but if their code is great or amazing you might just have to live with that.

What does this mean? "how do you avoid being a corney that is just wasting time."

My biggest advice to anyone, is just to build, build, build. A coder told me once when I was just starting out coding, "Build it how ever you can. When you learn more, you can come back and optimize it". Usually only other coders are the only ones that really critic how bad or good your code, application or site is, unless there is something obvious that does not allow your users to use what you have created.

If you're not building anything how can you run into problems to solve? Books can only teach you so much but experience is the true educator. In the "The Millionaire Fastlane ", if I'm not mistaken it talks about looking at the world's problems and thinking how could I solve these.

I believe what will separate you from the whole scene is becoming specialized. I'm sure most of the coder blogs you visit, are usually coders that are specialized, in either security, optimization, front-end...etc.

"What really clears away that apathy and gets you on path." Well coding, programming is creation. It's one of those things that can make you feel godly, and what you're programming is essentially an extension of you or your thought process. What get's on the path are overcoming the challenges of a project, or competition. There will come a time were you're just tired, and that's okay take a break for a few hours, or days if you have to, go enjoy life and you will come back. You also need to make this fun for yourself, and not a choir or something you do because you know how to do it.

One day, I was sitting and thinking "Man, in the old days, people were craftsman... experts. Like those stories you hear of Japanese sword makers." I think that epiphany, lead me to want to specialize in Javascript. I feel like as humans in this day in age, were everything is instant, easy, and we're exposed to so much, it's easy to loose track of your path.

 

[RogueInnovation]

we're exposed to so much, it's easy to loose track of your path

Thats it

Finding your purpose
Having a sense of purposefulness

1) True indicators and being generous with your considerations
2) Natural and well thought out alternatives that you test and compare as simply as possible
3) Handling your emotions and being aware of the environment you are in
4) Don't flit around do stuff in a way that makes sense
5) Have purpose/be purposeful

That smells like a process and a bunch of good mindsets to me! Everything a growing coder needs

It seems important to connect with what you are doing, so that you give it your all!