Checking possibility of CMS

I checked the possibility of making a CMS (content management system) and I made a poster to summarize my findings. I can say that I am 70% sure I can make the CMS with a lot of research

The links on the poster are http://www.elated.com/articles/cms-in-an-afternoon-php-mysql/

http://www.mysqlfaqs.net/mysql-faqs/Client-Server-Commands/What-is-mysql-client-program-and-how-to-run-it

http://www.cushycms.com/en

Backgrounds

http://www.myjanee.com/tuts/tilings/tilings.htm

Today I saw this website which told me about tiling backgrounds, I made a few on photoshop and decided that I was terrible at backgrounds, here are the two I made

I have decided that I am terrible with backgrounds, which is why I did some research.
I looked at these websites to get some ideas as well as inspiration
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/03/31/backgrounds-in-web-design-examples-and-best-practices-2/
http://www.noupe.com/design/website-backgrounds-70-impressive-trends-how-tos-best-practices.html

and then I decided I would look at the Apple website, to see what professionals would do with layouts.
http://www.apple.com/mac/

I was very surprised. It is very plain, very white. But Apple products always tend to be so. So what should a history professor's website look like? Parchment didnt seem very original...quills, pens littering the background is an idea.

I really liked this website background, so I may go with something like this, using some of my father's photos

http://www.viget.com/inspire/

Videos

Again, this lesson I watched the videos. I have decided that I shall no longer right "Lesson 12 or Lesson 5"or anything like that in the title. It is just too time consuming and there is no point to it. I learnt something new in this video.

I have never heard of breaks or switches and this was an interesting new concept for me.

Plans

Well I was thinking...I was basically have until march. It is almost november. November, December, January, February. That's 4 months.

I want to...

1. Get all PHP,MySQL and JQuery down by mid november
2. Get a rough layout by the end of december
3. Touching up the website in January and February
4. Finding webhosts and cms in February

Before next lesson (Thursday) I should

• Get started learning JQuery-need to be able to form basic site layout with JQuery
• Finish watching videos up to chapter 9

Then, between next lesson and the lesson after that

• Get used to JQuery, be able to work with it with only some references, not too much difficulty
• Finish watching videos up to chapter 15

Client Interview

I forgot to mention that I interviewed my client for approval of the specifications. It was 8 minutes long but I cut all the unimportant stuff out, so it was 7 minutes and I managed to translate it (from cantonese to english) and transcribe it. Here is the transcribed version of the interview. Many things were clarified after the interview and I was able to get a clear picture of what the website will look like. I even sketched out some ideas in my notebook

Unfortunately, due to all the crossing out and italics, my teacher thought it looked too unpresentable and messy, so i have 10 days to fix it and do 2 versions. What i assumed and what i learnt.

Okay the first thing is the audience. I would like to check a few things with you. First, the audience is university students right?

Yes

Are they only undergraduates or do the audience also include those studying the masters degree?

Mostly undergraduates. A few masters students.

A few. Does that mean under 10 students?

Around 5 postgraduates

What would the age range be? Would it be really wide?

Not that wide because undergraduates only study for a few years.

So the age range would be early 20s?

20-25

Not that many elderly right?

Not many

So mostly they all know how to use a computer?

They all know how to use a computer

A lot of the content is from the old site. Would you like to put a lot of emphasis on course lecturer, teaching assistant and contact details?

Not a lot of emphasis is necessary

I have thought about page layouts. Would you like your contact details be in a box on every page?

Only one appearance is necessary, they all know their teacher

There’s also lesson periods, when it is, where it is and this…

The language is English

Yes, this all the old content from the old website. There’s dates…

By dates, do you mean field trip dates or lecture dates?

I mean things like terms, the date of the current day

They need something like lecture dates and field trip dates because they don’t have lectures every week.

Then maybe they need a page with calendar

Yes

Do you need the term written on the website then?

It would be fine if the calendar is there. The term doesn’t really matter. This course only runs on the first term

Would you like to associate yourself with Chinese University and the Department of History? Like have the words somewhere on the website?

Yes

Then the colours…purple and yellow right?

It doesn’t matter

Then I would like to introduce a few new things. Search engines, site maps, comments section on photos. I’m still wondering whether or not to include the comments section

It could be a lot of a hassle management wise

How so?

There could be a lot of criticism on photos. Don’t allow them to comment anonymously

Then about sign ups for an account on the website would you like them to give you their emails to identify them?

I cant trace them if they sign up anyway, it doesn’t matter. But maybe…could I only let certain people in?

Possibly, I could make something that blocks people

But could I give membership could only some people? Could you create a password for all of them?

Yes that could work

And for comments, they have to write their names, otherwise their comments will be deleted

For photo galleries, how many photos do you want in each section? 10-20?

Not more than 20.

Have you got videos?

No

Is there anything else apart from copyrighted images and footage that shouldn’t be there?

No.

Thank you.

Specifications handed in

I handed in my specifications yesterday (several hours late due to a slight misunderstanding).
Also, after 1 week in Australia due to CAS week and another week of hardly doing anything, I am back. During that half term break, I managed to go through 5 more tutorials and I actually started learning new things. A lot of the previous stuff was just the basics which were very similar to other programming languages i have learnt such as C++, basic javascripting and actionscript. This made it very easy for me, however now, i am starting to learn new things. For example, I never knew what typecasting was or what exactly a constant was. I had never come across constants before.

Also, out of personal interest, I am currently researching the possibility of creating multiple pop ups with only one button in javascript. This may help my javascripting.

Lesson 10 and 11-PHP Tutorials and Stage 2

These two lessons, I played around with Notepad++, following through with tutorials. So far I have not learnt anything new from the video tutorials...I'm still on the tutorials for variables. Nothing new yet due to previous experience in web programming and other programming languages such as actionscript and c++.

Oops forgot to mention something.

Whilst listening to the PHP tutorials, i succesfully multi tasked and found some websites to create the PHP and MySQL login system.

I will try these later
http://tutorialzine.com/2009/10/cool-login-system-php-jquery/
http://inpics.net/tutorials/mysql/started27.html
http://www.knowledgesutra.com/discuss/tptpmm-simple-php-login-registration-system.om