Web Dev Notes

The majority of defects in a software system are introduced in the earlier stages of development. Requirements are the top factor in a projects success or failure. It is therefore very important to spend a lot of time prior to development discovering the needs of the users and the requirements the system will need to satisfy in order to avoid large time consuming problems in the future.

Another important thing to note is that the cost of fixing defects or problems discovered is significantly less the earlier they are discovered. The saying time is money is no stranger to software development. Web development is no exception to these rules!

Here is a list of nine common causes of software errors that you should look out for and try to avoid!

Nine Causes of Software Errors
• Faulty requirements definition
• Documentation errors
• Client-developer communication failures
• Deliberate deviations from software requirements
• Logical design errors
• Coding errors
• Non-compliance with documentation and coding instructions
• Short-comings of the testing process
• User interface and procedure errors

The following are three general principles of quality assurance which I learned about at University and which I have found to be very important to keep in mind. Every now and then, you should take a moment to sit back and ask yourself the following:

• Do you know what you are doing?
• Do you know what you should be doing?
• Do you know what the difference is between both?

The first question is pretty straight forward. Of course, you know what you are doing, because you are in the process of doing it! The point here is to actually take a minute to think about what you are doing right now so that you can then better determine if you should keep doing it. Remember, you should be doing something to satisfy the requirements as specified by your users!

Once you have identified what you are currently doing, take a moment to look back over your requirements and see exactly what you should be doing. Its amazing how easily we can steer ourselves off in the wrong direction. This is often the result of some geeky desire to make something incredibly cool and awesome, which can be fun but potentially disastrous to a project.

Finally, now that you know what you are doing and what you should be doing, you can identify where you are heading in the wrong direction and fix the problem as soon as possible.

I know I know, it sounds like common sense, but it’s not as simple as you may think. How do you actually measure the difference between both? It’s not always going to be a clear cut situation! You will need to use certain methods which may be mathematical formulas, testing, inspection or metrics.

When in doubt, always go back to your users. Software development is all about the users. You can be the greatest programmer in the world, but your knowledge will be useless in practice unless people use the resources you develop!

Yahoo has a great article in their developer section which lists 14 different tips for speeding up your website.

1. Make Fewer HTTP Requests
2. Use a Content Delivery Network
3. Add an Expires Header
4. Gzip Components
5. Put Stylesheets at the Top
6. Put Scripts at the Bottom
7. Avoid CSS Expressions
8. Make JavaScript and CSS External
9. Reduce DNS Lookups
10. Minify JavaScript
11. Avoid Redirects
12. Remove Duplicate Scripts
13. Configure ETags
14. Make Ajax Cacheable

You can find more information about each of these by reading the original article on Yahoo.

We’ve told you How to Start that Big Development Project, but we haven’t told you how to go and find all that information we say you need!

The two main ways you can collect the information you need is through observation or elicitation both of which can be either direct or indirect.

Observation

Direct - Go to the work site and watch people doing their jobs! Try and not be too creepy about it so you don’t make people feel uncomfortable.

Indirect - Set up audio and video recording devices in the work place and set up software to record keystrokes and log information. Obviously it is unethical to spy on people, so please make sure you tell your users when they are being watched and have them sign a consent form.

Elicitation

Direct - Conduct interviews or organize focus groups.

Indirect - Consult corporate documentation and have users respond to questionnaires. Don’t make big long boring questionnaires because people will hurt themselves smacking their head against a wall out of frustration.

Are there other ways to collect information? Definitely! Please let us know how you go about doing it and we will link up to your article!

Did you know that by moving around your ad placement from time to time or changing the background or border colors of your ads, you will help yourself get more clicks?! If a lot of your traffic is from return visitors, after a while they will subconsciously block the ads out from their mind. By moving them around or changing their appearance, people will suddenly notice them again for a while, increasing the chances of potential clicks!

Give your site a breath mint from time to time by freshening things up with some changes! You’ll see people won’t hide from your ads quite as much!

Looking for Web Development Software or Books? Visit my Web Development Software and Books Store!

Want to Increase your Websites Page Rank and Incoming Traffic? Submit your Articles to WriterDatabase.com. It’s Free!

If you haven’t been paying attention, the internet is an incredibly huge place these days. Millions of people browse the net every day and more and more people are becoming comfortable with shopping online. With the vast amount of customers at your finger tips world-wide, running an internet shop is a good way to make some extra money!

The first thing you need to consider before you jump right into setting up a shopping cart is first deciding if you will be renting a shopping cart system hosted by another company or if you will be purchasing software to set-up your shop yourself.

What are the advantages to renting a shopping cart system with a hosting company? The first obvious advantage is that it is much simpler for those who are not as tech-savvy but who still have a product they think they can sell successfully online. Also, by going with a hosted solution, you will often already have a payment gateway available to you so that you can immediately accept credit card payments on your site.

So why host your shopping cart yourself if the rented solution seems to offer a very easy to use solution? Because hosting the shopping cart yourself is less expensive! Since many shopping cart software systems are available absolutely free, the only cost you will need to worry about is the cost of having your own website! Below are three shopping cart systems recommended by the Web Development Blog as well as two hosted solutions that I like that are actually free!

Three Free Shopping Cart Systems Recommended by Web Development Blog

Zen-Cart
Zen Cart is a well-known provider of a free shopping cart system. While the administration back-end can be confusing because of the amount of options available, once you get the hang of things, Zen Cart can be an asset to your company because of its feature rich interface.

OsCommerce
Much like Zen Cart, Os Commerce is a feature rich shopping cart that also happens to be free. Released as Open Source software, Os Commerce has a solid community of supporters that help with the creation of plugins and modules, making this a feature rich shopping cart solution as well.

Cube Cart
Cube Cart is another free, yet versatile shopping cart system. Requiring only PHP and access to one MySQL database, the minimal requirements for this shopping cart solution are easily met by most paid web hosting accounts online today.

Two Free Hosted Shopping Cart Systems

Amazon Store
Amazon is a great way to setup an online shop at absolutely no cost. Of course, this option has one important restriction that you need to be aware of. By setting up an Amazon store you will be able to sell any of the products on Amazon.com and earn a commission on sales. If you want to sell your own products, this option is not for you. Even if your products are listed in Amazon, you could make more selling them directly than by doing so through Amazon. However, for those who’d just like to sell products related to the topic of their website, an Amazon store is an excellent option.

Paypal
Paypal is another great way to set up a free shopping cart. With Paypal you will be able to sell the products you like securely at no initial up front cost. You will be charged a fee for each transaction, but you do not have to invest any money up front. With Paypal’s shopping cart, you can define items and their prices then simply add an “Add to cart” button on your website. You can see an example at the BattleCity Classic website.

Once you’ve setup your shopping cart, you’ll need to market it! The best way to get free advertising is to take advantage of article directories like Writer Database where you can submit an article about your cart and the products available. This will help send visitors to your site at not cost whom will hopefully be interested in purchasing your product!

Are chihuahua’s holding you back? Don’t let those little buggers grab you by the tail and slow down the success of your website!

If you read this website or others like Problogger, then you know there are people out there who make a great living from the internet. What’s holding you back from accomplishing the same? Who is your chihuahua? Is is lack of time? Are you too lazy? Maybe you are afraid of failure, or are unwilling to commit to something that is guaranteed to generate close to zero income for the first year!

If you want to be successful, you need to identify your chihuahua and toss it a bone. Do what you need to do to get that bugger off your tail so you can take the steps necessary to become successful. You don’t really want to be the one afraid of such a tiny little dog do you?

Becoming successful running a website all by your lonesome is as likely as a turtle flying a spaceship to the moon. Why? Because the turtle can’t reach the pedals LOL! I made that one up all by myself! Hmmm.. ok back to the website thing. You can work on a website alone definitely, but without incoming links, your page rank will stink, nobody will visit, and you will be doomed like the passengers on the turtles spaceship.

So… how do you get links? Find the perfect partners! Find other websites similar to yours and build relationships with them to help both your sites succeed. Sometimes, the purrfect partner can be found in the most unlikely of places… For example, I have recently begun working with a group of cats and kittens in order to deliver the best web development news possible. The only difficulty with these partners is their need for frequent napping which ends a lot of meetings early…

Why have these furry partners helped increase traffic to Web Dev Notes? Probably because they add a little fun and mischief to an otherwise somewhat less exciting subject matter…! And how is this helping another website? Every one of these pictures is a link to the website from which they originate, thus thanking the creators and sending them back some traffic!

While cats may not always be able to offer the best web development advice, this week they have definitely helped prove that a picture can make an article much more valuable, entertaining and meaningful than the text itself could standing alone.

Don’t let uncertainty hold you back from achieving success. You might not know exactly what lies ahead, but you’ll never find out if you don’t leap forward! If you’re blogging or starting up a website, hosting prices have become so affordable that there is no longer even much risk involved. In fact, you can even host a blog for free using Blogger or Wordpress if you are not ready to get your own hosting account.

How you define success will have a lot to do with whether or not you feel your website has become successful. If you define success as making millions of dollars, chances are you will fail. Before you decide your criteria for success, first ask yourself how much time you are willing to invest in your website. Now, taking this into consideration, determine how successful you believe you can be in that time-frame.

If jumping off the sofa is too high of a jump, leap onto a coffee table first! Define success as something within your reach, so you aren’t setting yourself up to fail. If you are not satisfied with the amount of success you believe you can achieve within your current limits, find a different project to work on or be prepared to invest more time in the project!

If you run a website or a blog you will soon realize that there will be good times and there will be bad times. The key to success is of course to survive the bad times and do your best to maximize the good times. Don’t let bad times drag you down even further by getting depressed as this will only cause you to slow down on your work pace. If you write a blog, you need to keep posting! Lack of readers could be a good reason to post more, definitely not less!

There are so many blogs and websites out there that chances are you will have competitors. No matter what, the internet is so very vast in size that people will find other content to view if you stop updating yours! If you let up for a second, you will fall behind. You blink, you lose! Keep plugging away at it and never give up. You can achieve anything you set your mind too if you put in enough effort!