Personal Site Progress

I've spent about a week now working on my website for the end of November. I finally completed it yesterday and tested it out today for bugs but for some reason I wasn't happy with it. I scrapped the whole site and now I'm back to the drawing board. Maybe this time I should take more time and attention to detail of what I'm doing. I'm also making this 100% code no Dream-weaver or any other programmes. Just notepad ++ the way I like it.

This is the initial layout of how the sites going to look I hope. The menus at the top are drop down menus so when you hover over them more options appear to different sub-categories. This time I've structured how I'm going to do everything. Start with the front end stuff how it's all going to end up looking, then when all that is done I'll be working on the back end stuff starting with Javascript(jQuery) and PHP. As this project goes on I'd like to learn a new web programming language such as Ruby, Python or Perl but that'll come at a later date.

Spending the night on how I want my site to look I'm finally happy with the outcome and can move on to other parts of the site. Some bits have changed from my initial idea but that always happens, it's not the first time I've changed it and it won't be the last. This is what the final completed piece should look like with a few changes. Just need some help on some bits though like the footer.

Getting there slowly. This is how I want the product page to look when I'm finished making the site. The pictures at the bottom on the slider is going to be suggested items for the customers based on what they've viewed before. When the site initially launches though that part won't be included because I don't know how to do it yet. There will be better buttons as well for the add to cart.. Maybe I don't know it kind of looks better like that. Not too distracting so you know exactly what it is. The next thing I'm going to add to this under the suggestions box is probably a comment/review system with a 5 star rating. I'll make a programme to receive the amount of each star clicked and get the average from that. That'll be the overall rating of the product. As for the comments I may show the name, date posted and the comment. Eventually add a thumbs up/down and a reply feature to them. Moving on to JavaScript for this soon I hope.

This is my template that I'm using to design the rest of my website. The site is keeping the same layout for nearly most of the site but now I'm stuck as to what to do for the login page. If I just include it in the main content part it'll be too little on one page. I'm thinking maybe having a widget appearing when I click log in so that a box appears under the user links (Register | Login). Ehh I'll keep experimenting and think while doing other things.

Finally got the form field layout done to a point that I'm content with. When it is fully completed the text will be slightly lighter. Next thing I need to add to this form now is JavaScript validation to make sure that all the fields are filled in. I also need to change the property of password when it is clicked but I'm not sure how to go about that. If I set it as type="password" instead of showing Password or Verify Password it would just show me ******** so I need to sort that out. (Ignore the note that was for my friend who's helping me design it)

So this is the look I want to have for the login page. I know it's not what I said it was going to be at first but I think this works better. Only problem I have though is that it looks too empty? I don't want to make the form any bigger because that'll make it look out of proportions. Ehh I don't know I'll think of something I hope. I made the first PHP programme for the site too. The logout button, a simple 3 lines of code. Hoping I can get this site finished by mid October.

Well after doing some experimenting with how I would make the login page look a bit better I decided to see how it with an image on the page. I tried it to the left and right but didn't look right so I decided to put it at the bottom. The image is going to be the company logo. Unless by the time I think of a better way to have the page layout.

I just moved onto JavaScript to do some form validation, then all of a sudden it hit me why I hate JavaScript. Case sensitivity. I can write xmlHttpRequest but nope it won't work for me, it has to be XMLHttpRequest. Ehh roll on working on PHP. Things will then be a lot easier.

Yay! I'm finally getting into the programming part of the site. Form validations, dynamic pages among more things. This should now get a little bit more interesting. First thing I'm going to be working on is user registration, then I'll work on the login system, then the comment and review section of the comments. Then I'll work on the admin systems such as adding, deleting or editing items, as well as the order summary, mass mail feature (to send out) and a mail feature so we can read what people write to us through the site contact us.

So after having a couple of months from programming I finally got back to it and tried to learn JavaScript as well to see how that would go. Unfortunatly looking online there are only limited tutorials for what I wanted to learn so I resorted to using jQuery which I have already got past experience using. I've just completed the registration form to a standard I would be happy to launch with. The reason I had to use PHP and jQuery to do this is so that the page doesn't refresh when sending the data to the database. If I just used PHP it would've refreshed the page which can be quite annoying and time consuming for other people. My aim is to make my site as fast as possible with the knowledge that I have. Eventually I will add data compression to the images so the speed of the site will be even faster. Next I'm going to work on the Log In feature or contact us feature.

Finally got the PHP script working to be able to sign a user in. Although it says in the picture there are only 26 lines of code that I had to do I have to go create another 2 functions to make sure the login system actually worked correctly. Another problem I had was redirecting the user after they have successfully logged in. If I used the PHP header function it would have loaded the page I wanted the user to go to in the status div that should say the errors. To get around this problem I used to JavaScript inside PHP and the user after successfully logging in is redirected to the home page. The top links also change when you're logged in to 'My Account | Log Out'. Eventually there will be 'Cart()' there too with the number of items you have in the brackets.

Probably had the worst day ever today but oh well, my site's coming along slowly. I just finished the add items part and I'm now currently working on the display items part. I found out how it should work I think. I'll put this to the test soon to see how it goes. Probably going to be up working on this now for a few more hours I don't particularly fancy sleeping so I use this to distract myself. Next I think I'll work on the edit items and delete items code, I'll do all the styling (CSS) another day.

I've had a short absence of working on my site but I'm getting back to it now. For this week I think I'm going to spend more attention on the styling of how the site looks. I'm still keeping to the basic layout but spicing it up a bit. This is what I came up. All the gradients are very browser compatible too. But no surprise. IE has some bugs. I'll get onto that soon.

The final layout for my site that I have chosen is that of the image below. It's not a permanent layout but for now it'll be okay. I will add some tweaks before the initial launch to make it look better. Eventually I want there to be no body scrolling for the site, you'll only be able to scroll inside the site. Not sure as to why I want it like this but I like the idea of it. I'll need to improve my CSS for this. I'll get there eventually though.

Future Businesses and Companies to start.

By the end of this academic year I want to start my first ever business to help me generate money. I don't know if this seems too stuck up of me or whatever people want to think but I don't like the idea of working for someone else so I want to start up my own companies.

The first company I want to start up with my friend will be an online shop where people will be able to by clothing accessories and eventually be able to buy clothes from the site also personalise the clothes that they're receiving. The first 5 years of having this company I want the business to stay within the UK so I can gain experience of running and owning a business. After this 5 years of experience I will slowly expand the business so it will be able to go out to the rest of the world.

The second company I wish to start eventually will be a personal IT company creating customized software for people to fit their exact needs of what they want. This company though will require me to have a lot of money to hire people, a lot of experience in how to keep a business going and myself having a lot of computer programming experience. If I was to make this business I think I would have to wait until I was in my 30's.

The last company I want to start that I know of at the moment is a social network. I don't know how or what the social network will provide to keep people coming back to the site but it's just an idea I've got. I was thinking maybe grouping different types of people together just how it is in real life but not sure how I'd go about that...

SWOT Analysis

So I guess I probably should write a SWOT analysis now and be more honest about it and ask other peoples opinions too. This is what I got from myself being more honest and other peoples opinions.

Strengths

Motivated

Good at producing ideas I like

Strong work ethic

Opinionated

Good team member

Able to look at things from more than one point of view

Passionate

Loyal and supportive

Understand complex/complicated concepts that others may not

Thoughtful

Understanding

Very determined to succeed in things I'm good at

Modest

Weaknesses

Easily distracted

Lack of willingness to work on a project if it doesn't interest me

Lazy

Depression

Not very creative

Not very pleased with myself when something's completed. I think I could've done better

Lack of skills

Not a good team leader

Don't like being told what to do

Opportunities

Experience

Learn new skills

Looking at things from all points of view

Study or work in a new country

More money

Overcome my depression

Gain a Bsc

Work for myself or in an environment I would enjoy

Threats

Depression sometimes may get the better of me

Lack of skills

Easily distracted

Not doing what I get told and losing my job

Not being able to think outside the box

Money restrictions to get the newest technology

This was honestly one of the hardest things I've done I've never thought highly of myself, it's just me so I had to include 'modest' in the list. Not sure whether or not it's really a strength or weakness so I put it in 'Strengths' unless someone says otherwise

But to make it more personal if anyone can think of any of my strengths or weaknesses comment below please? Thank you.

Contradicted myself?

On a previous blog I talked about predicting the future for technology. Well I've now just watched a video which is predicting the next 5,000 days of the web. So far we're in the third stage he's on about.

After watching the whole video though I think Kevin may have predicted too LITTLE in this amount of time. The web is already becoming a part of us with physical objects now. For example the Blackberry code thing. You scan it, then it connects to the internet to let you know what it is. The speed of which the internet is growing is just too much to take. Will it ever stop growing? What's the next stage after web 4.0(Internet being physical)?

The internet

The internet is amazing. The amount of content that is on the internet is just unbelievable and utterly amazing. But the thing is we're not amazed?

Even more amazing is the physical internet. The bits that we don't see but without it won't work. In the oceans there are cables thousands of miles long sitting on the ocean floor to keep the world connected with the internet. I'll put a video below this of how it all works but wow. Just really interesting how it all works. I thought the internet worked by sending a signal to a space satellite and that comes back to where you want it to go. How wrong was I?

Future Predictions.

So I've often wondered what everything we know will be like in 10 - 20 years time? If I could travel in time now and go to the year 2027 would I recognise what I see around me? I guess in a way I'm lucky that I was born when I was born because all I've known is how to adapt to different technology. In the 21st century technology has evolved so much people who aren't used to this quick I change might get left behind.

It's amazing though how people predict things for dates and when that date comes nothing really happens. For example in 2005 Ray Kurzweil believed that:

"By 2010 computers will disappear. They’ll be so small, they’ll be embedded in our clothing, in our environment. Images will be written directly to our retina, providing full-immersion virtual reality, augmented real reality. We’ll be interacting with virtual personalities."

How wrong was he? We're nowhere near that but he's a person that is very smart with technology and the future of how technology may turn out. Just goes to show no-one can truly predict the future.

Misuse of technology.

Personally, I believe that the technology that we have today is so misused by the consumers because they simply don't understand the power of the device that they actually have. For example in 1969 NASA managed to send man up to the moon. The computer that they used was one of the best of its time. The mission had a 2.048 MHz CPU computer. We can now find calculators that have better CPU than this

The first the first generation iPhone had 620MHz(which got under clocked to about 412MHz.) And the CPU in the iPhones gradually increased to 600MHz for the iPhone 3G S and 800MHz for the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4 S. So why is it with this increased amount of power that we have in all of our devices this technology is so poorly used?

By saying poorly used I mean not many people actually pay attention to what they have and what it can do, I done a bit of research earlier for the most popular iPhone apps and the top 5 were:

1. Angry Birds
2. Fruit Ninja
3. Doodle Jump
4. Cut the Rope
5. Angry Birds Seasons

So why is it that with all this power we have now in our daily lives do we prefer to throw birds at bricks with pigs in the middle? It beggars believe I find although that could be a person trait that's just me but still. Also the amount of money people spend on phones too. I asked some people the other day: "What do you use your phone for?" the response I got really proves my point that people don't realise the technology that they have on them, they simply replied with:"To ring and text people." If you want to ring and text you can buy a phone for about £30 like myself then you won't be wasting money that you don't have for something that you can't use properly.

That though is just mobile devices that are being misused it happens with nearly device that you can work on. For example I know someone who spent about £1,000 on a Mac, I asked him what he actually does with the Mac he told me he browses the internet and occasionally writes essays on there when he has coursework due. But why, why spend that much on a Mac when that's all you're going to do? You could spend a quarter of that amount on a normal PC and still do exactly the same as you do at home.

Electronic companies aren't making this misuse of technology any better though. If anything they're pushing it so they can earn themselves more money. Every year electronic companies are bringing out items that are faster than their last item they bought out. Then the next year do the same again and again. I suppose this isn't such a bad idea but if a computer company at this very moment said: "We're going to stop making new machines for 4 years, we're only going to sell machines that we've already released." In 4 years time the computer would run at an average speed. This is because the software doesn't have a big enough impact on the machines as of yet. The machines are allowing themselves to run a million things at once when no-one actually does it. My friend for example has a computer and he's a gamer, he can play WoW, Skyrim and another game of his choice all at the same time if he wanted to and his computer would still run. His computer isn't even customized just bought it off the shelf.

Electronic companies should actually make every device personal. People should be able to go to the shop and explain why they want the device and what they'll be using the device for. This way technology won't be as misused, earths materials won't be continuously wasted even more than it already is and people will be able to safe a lot of money this way.

Although I've just done a massive post about people who misuse technology. There are still the people who understand the technology and know how to use it to it's fullest potential. I was speaking to someone the other day who worked on the movie 'Avatar' and was told that the computer that he uses to work on the movie cost him £35,000. I was quite taken back by this but also had some hope. Not everyone misuses the technology that they have in front of them, but unfortunately the vast majority of people do.