With just 128 days to rollout, I have begun the final phase of the website development. This is when I debug every page and add widgets to make life easier for the users.
I use a basic principle for this phase or you could call it my personal goal for the entire website.
1) Anything that can be done should also be able to be undone.
2) Anything that is not clear should be made clear using simple instructions.
3) Anything less than perfection is unacceptable for the GUI.
4) Make the entire application able to support most, if not all browsers.
5) Make the entire application as fast as possible.
6) Make it a place to call home.
7) Put the user in control.
What do these goals mean to you?
Well, let's have a look at an example.
Example: A user comes to the website and signs up for a membership by entering their information.
We can now apply the goals above to this process.
1) We allow the user to undo the sign up if they wish. We also allow any field that is filled in to be changed once they enter the website for the first time.
2) Any part of the sign up process that varies from the norm, we provide detailed instructions for these items.
We then place these instructions in a place that you simply can not miss.
3) Every field should line up to make everything appear perfect. The overall flow of the page should be simple and perfect from any flaws. Any graphics used on the page should be perfect.
4) The sign up page gets a rigorous test in the browsers that most people use. Some of those being IE 6, IE 7, Firefox all versions, Safari all versions, and cell phones (as many as I can get my hands on for testing).
5) The sign up page is then tested under a load- to see how it performs under stress using a load- simulator application I wrote that can simulate several thousand users at one time. This will shake loose any speed issues and they can be resolved prior to rollout.
6) Make the interface and its function as pleasing to the eyes as possible and as uncomplicated as it can be.
7) I guess this one is my biggest pet peeve. Most websites seem to want to restrict users from doing certain things. I was also guilty of doing this when I wrote the Swapper Network website. Well, I have rethought this and now I am on the other side of the fence here. I want the website to feel like it is your website. Putting you in control of how everything looks and feels. You will get control over the colors used and format of how things look.
The best example I can give you is the default page you get just after login. This page will be a custom page that will allow you to configure all kinds of cool content.
If you have ever seen Yahoo's custom home page, you will get an understanding of what I mean here. It will allow you to add new content or remove content from a rich list of widgets I have created.
These widgets will do some very slick stuff. You will also have complete control over the skin the website uses. Meaning you can make it to fit your own preference.
Frankly, some colors are more pleasing to other people than any color combination I could come up with. This is why you can make it the way you like it. When I wrote the Swapper Network, I used blue everywhere. I can not imagine anyone not liking the color blue, but lets face it that is my personal preference.
So whether you like light blue, dark blue, red, green, orange, gray, brown, light purple, dark purple you will have enough options to choose from for your own personal preference and if I have overlooked your personal preference just send a request to me and I will be more than happy to add it for you. The same holds true for anything on this website.
So if I do my job well enough using my personal goals, this website should be the ultimate place to hang out.
I am having so much fun just playing with some of the features I have created that I sometimes find myself wasting time playing around when I should be programing LOL. I can not wait for everyone to see what this baby can do but I am sticking to my original rollout date.
I can tell you from my point of view that what I have done here is truly incredible. I have many other websites to compare mine to and I also have many other people that have seen my new website and the reaction in their faces told the story.
Many of them asked why I did not do this before with Swappernet and my answer was it is a lot harder to re-work a running website that people have grown accustom to. When doing it from scratch, it is much easier to include some amazing tie-ins from the get go.
Also, I have much better tools available today. I guess the main difference with Swappernet and this new website is that Swappernet evolved over many years to be what it is today.
In its evolution, it never lost its original poorly designed database.
This new website has been designed from scratch to be able to easily grow with no scalability issues. The entire website has also been written using objects that can snap-in anywhere I need them. This reduces the amount of maintenance for all pages of the website.
Warning Technical Content Below!!!
A good example of this is my signup page is actually the profile view page as well. Setting a single property of this object will allow me to display data or allow you to enter data as in the signup page. This same object is used for editing your profile as well. Also, the same objects used in those pages are used within other pages tool.
Like anytime a user's age is shown it draws from the same object that is used in all the other pages of the website. So, if I want to change the font of a certain display item. I make one change and the entire website will reflect this change.
Also, all data is contain within objects as well. Every single data field for the entire website are drawn from well defined set classes. So lets say on a page a group of data items is collected. All of those items are defined within a single class that defines the entire object and its many properties.
A good way to describe this technique is to give you an example.
Lets take a TV as an example.
Lets keep it simple.
A TV has a diagonal dimension, width, height, depth, HD or not etc...
So to describe this data object we have a class that describes the object with its many properties.
Setting properties of the TVCLASS for a certain tv
TV.brand=Panasonic
TV.ModelNumber=xxx
TV.width=54
TV.height=33
TV.depth=4
TV.HD=NO
TV.diag=50
TV.DLP=NO
TV.plasma=YES
TV.LCD=YES
Now that we have a class, we add it to a collection of object so the above class is in a collection with thousands of other TV's . Now we have this object available anywhere we need it. It describes what a TV is to our application.
Now the industry comes out with something new that we had no idea would be available in the future.
Say something like OLED all we need to do is add it to this class and the entire application knows about it.
So if I need to change a field on all of those pages, I simply change a single line of code and it is reflected though the entire website.
Lets say that during the creation of the website I overlooked an item in one of the drop- down selections for the signup page.
On this new website. I make a change to a single object and it is done. Because anywhere that object is shown it will draw from the exact same GUI settings and data objects.
In addition, adding new features are a breeze as well.
Sorry to bore you with all the technical mumbo jumbo but I figure some people may be curious about how to put a website together. Well, you can probably tell that I am having trouble containing my excitement of this new website. Please understand this comes from the fact that I have been working on this for just about two years now and I know it is getting closer and closer to the rollout date. It is kind of neat to see where it all started and what it has become now over the two years. I am sure once you see it you will be hooked in no time at all and probably say this is the way it should be on all websites.
Well, enough for now. I need to get back to work on this baby.
- Paul