2 Fast/Tight budget website building strategies.

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bowlesj
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2 Fast/Tight budget website building strategies.

Post by bowlesj »

Hi I am about 2 weeks away from starting to create my first database driven website (probably my only website as far as my plans go at least since running it could be a full time job). I will be using PHP/MySql and probabably a bit of JavaScript. I have been programming 33 years in none database languages. I have been programming in MS-Access for my own personal use for 17 years during the 33 years. Since I know MS-Access fairly well, I spent 2 months putting together an off-line extension of my future website but I did it in such a way that it is actually a prototype of the final website (minus obvious things like ftp uploads/downloads, google maps, etc). Now that this is done and I have done a 1 month cram course in PHP/MySql/Html,CSS. I have two strategies to try and get this website up as fast as possible with a tight budget.

Strategy 1/
I would find chunks of code from web searches (for example a complete site registration example or a complete login example), read over the various ones I found, decide which one to drop in, comment every line so I understand it and then get it to work (quick and dirty or maybe it could be called the "pull my hair out and collect it off the floor technique" - LOL).

Strategy 2/
Seeing as I am use to MS-Access (which basically is largely a code builder - at least with queries) I got excited when I found "WYSIWYG Web Builder" for $50.00 + tax. It has a PHP/MySql checkbox option for when you want it to generate PHP code and MYsql databases (sounds good to me). I am a suspicious bugger however and It seems cheap to me. At first glance it looks good because it says I can (IN THEORY) produce a WYSIWYG form (exactly like in access) without having to play around with top/bottom/width/height settings (which I dread since sometimes I have to do this in MS-Access and it is such a pain because it is such a slow shoot in the dark process). Not only that it says I can drop in a variety of things like FaceBook login buttons, google maps, paypal pay buttons etc. These are things I need. It even says it to help me construct the tables (much like access does) (not sure if it can build queries and I have a fairly complex one in my prototype). Their website has a tone of tutorials and even has a forum. My idea is to let it generate code for me and I will 1/ go back and comment every line so I am sure I fully understand the code and 2/ fill in the code that it can not do 3/ maybe run the code through some checkers which I read about during my cram course.

I am guessing a lot of people are in my situation currently (maybe with less programming experience) and a lot have had these two strategies in mind. So I guess the questions are:
1/ "has anyone had any experience with this "WYSIWYG Web Builder"?
2/ Is there a better one but not with too much increase in cost?
3/ Does anyone have any suggestions regarding the two strategies?
4/ Is a combination of these two strategies the best way to go.

Thanks,
John
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Celauran
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Re: 2 Fast/Tight budget website building strategies.

Post by Celauran »

You say you're two weeks away from starting, but don't mention delivery date or complexity. These may change what I'm writing below.

On the whole, I don't know that either of the proposed solutions is a particularly good idea. There is a ton of terrible PHP code out there -- I'd go so far as to say there's orders of magnitude more bad code than good -- so Googling individual components is going to be an exercise in frustration at best. I'd be equally skeptical of anything that promises to generate code for you. Look at what Dreamweaver does when it creates markup for you and you'll understand what I mean. Seeing as you've been programming for ages, I expect you're familiar with OOP, MVC, etc and don't anticipate you'll have any trouble picking up PHP. Unless your deadline is exceedingly restrictive -- and possibly even if it is -- I'd recommend taking a look at a proper framework around which to build your app. Laravel is a good choice with a great community supporting it.
bowlesj
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Re: 2 Fast/Tight budget website building strategies.

Post by bowlesj »

Thanks Celauran, I am looking at the Laravel site now.
John
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Celauran
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Re: 2 Fast/Tight budget website building strategies.

Post by Celauran »

Dayle Rees' Code Bright is another good Laravel-related resource.
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Bill H
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Re: 2 Fast/Tight budget website building strategies.

Post by Bill H »

"Look at what Dreamweaver does when it creates markup for you..."
8O
bowlesj
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Re: 2 Fast/Tight budget website building strategies.

Post by bowlesj »

yeah, I gather Dreamweaver is not so good.
However just because Dreamweaver is not good other programs may not be so bad. After all we all use programs that generate code (they are called compilers).
Logically a program should be able to line up code better than humans. I wrote Unix/Linux shell scripts to generate programs (code builders) and they generated nicely lined up code (it is very doable). They can also be efficient. MS-Access is a form of compiler in a ways since it takes what humans find easy and does the hard stuff perfectly (and hides the details from us which is smart). There is an underlying pattern to this. Get the programmers to stop doing the boring stuff and get them thinking out the difficult puzzle parts of programming. From my 33 years of programming in 10 languages and my overview of HTML and PHP there is very little puzzle in HTML but PHP has potential of course.
HTML is interesting for me now because it is new but I can see me getting real bored with it soon. It reminds me of my first year of learning programming when I was 26. It was a novelty so I did some machine language programming on purpose and I also wrote assembler code in the memory section of programs and moved it out to overlay code in the procedure section (just for fun). We called it peek-a-boo programming. I have long since lost this novelty fascination with coding. I am more interested in getting more done in less time. I am going to check out "90 Second Website Builder" and "WYSIWYG Web Builder" and report back on them. They both have 30 day free trials. I want to check them out because I saw some of the code for "WYSIWYG Web Builder" that is in the tutorials and the guy created PHP code which has much better lineup than anything I have seen on the web so far. The other program "90 Second Website Builder" reminds me of MS-Access which I have been using since 1987 I think when I printed 5 feet high of help pages to learn it - LOL. Microsoft hides the boring code that positions things on the screen (now that is smart). They do not want programmers wasting their time arguing about how well the boring repeat over and over and over stuff is written. Programmers can only see the VBA code which is the way it should be (just like we should not be writing assembler or machine language repeat stuff over and over and over again).

By Mid September I will try to remember to report back on what I find out about "90 Second Website Builder" and "WYSIWYG Web Builder". The plan is to take my MS-Access prototype and after I get the database tables defined with MySqlAdmin I will go screen by screen and compare the code generated by these two programs. If the code matches some of the tutorial stuff I have seen in "WYSIWYG Web Builder" I will probably be very happy. It is better than I could have come up with.
bowlesj
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Re: 2 Fast/Tight budget website building strategies.

Post by bowlesj »

Hi, I said in my last post I would report back on two products "WYSIWYG Web Builder" and "90 Second Web Builder". I could be wrong but these two products appear to be exactly the same. "90 Second Web Builder" is (not sure of the proper term) a re-seller selling it with improved marketing. However it has poor support so anyone deciding upon these two products (me) should choose "WYSIWYG Web Builder". Its support is exceptional from what I can see. Lets call it WWB to save typing. I have decided to buy WWB. It will cost me $44 + tax and currency conversions. Reasons below.

============================================================================
Even if it only does what I have seen it do so far in the demo it will 100% for sure have paid for itself within about 1 month. When I buy it I get more features.

I can use it to learn HTML and CSS faster.

I estimated my website would take 12 months to build. I estimate it will take 6 months with this product. Time will tell if I can get it done within 6 monhts. I will never know for sure about the 12 months without it because I can not relive the other decision and I don't want to.

The CSS code seems to be pretty well lined up right off the top and the HTML code is fairly well lined up with indenting if you turn on the build in beautifier found at: tools tab, options (far right), HTML (left column), "Enable HTML beautifier". If you have been coding HTML for years and have your favorite method I am sure it won't exactly match that I am new to HTML and have no such preferences so I find it fairly easy to read on first glance (in short "very easy to read").

I did a bit of reading on frameworks. I am a programmer with 33 years experience. I want to see the final code published out to learn html, css immediately. I fear from what I read that with a framework I won't be able to see the final code. Besides it will involve learning something that is essentially a new langauge. I don't want to do that.

WWB allows me to publish to local host or any web host (no restrictions).

WWB has a forum for support but you need to buy it before you can get access to the forum (reason is there are people using pirate software trying to use the forum - I agree with his reasonons). So I asked the owner of the WWB a few questions and he answered.

I can publish to a local directory of my choice and use NetBeans to debug it (I still have a lot to learn about NetBeans. I don't know how to debug PHP with it yet. I am a little lost with NetBeans currently. They have a forum which I guess I should join.).

WWB allows me to insert my PHP code into select locations within the HTML (Start of page, Between <head></head>, Inside <body tag>, After <body> tag, Before </body> tag, End of page). I have used two of them (after <Body> and before </Body>). It properly placed the second set of my PHP code after the first one.

It also allows PHP code insertions into and arround specif objects as well. For example, comboboxes, tables, checkboxes. Unfortunately you have to turn off the HTML code beautifier since some of these do not parse code properly when it is turned on. It was working well until I Put code in between the checkbox tags. You can see the resulting code after insertion in an upper portion of a split screen.

Support on their forum is very fast. I have zero complaints there. They will not help you with your PHP code syntax or debugging but they will tell you tricks on how to insert PHP code properly. Some object insertions need the > closing tag inserted and others do not. However you can see the result at the top as far as I can tell so that should help with the insertions.

It keeps my PHP code formatting which I am formatting manually with notepad++ or NetBeans because of those handy vertical dotted lines.

WWB also formats the HTML and CSS really well. I was pleasantly surprised. Yes everyone has their favorite way of formatting code. So what. I am easy. Its fine. I can learn to read anyone's formatting and read it fast as long as the line-up makes at least a little bit of sense. WWB formatting is good IMHO.

When I first tried the PHP option WWB kept putting in code to build a new MySql database. I almost decided not to buy it because of this. I figured out that I had to shut this off. Once I did that it became buyable for me. I just have to make sure that all my pages after the index.html home page end with .php.

With WWB I publish the page to a work directory in Windows and then copy it to the WAMPP htdocs directory to test it.

To use WWB to create a form and have it get data and display it for update I had to put the Input's Name="" Value="" code directly in WWB so it would retain it along with my inserted PHP code after the html <body> statement and also the table code I put in before the </Body> Statement (two insertions).

I can not comment every line of code of HTML and CSS that the WWB builds because the next local host publish would clobber my comments. I have decided I don't want to do that after all. I could create a special protected copy if I wanted to do this however.

WWB can drag lots of things onto the page (forms, buttons, text, etc). You can get at the properties to set things up for proper code generation. I have not worked with it long enough to find any problems yet. I don't expect any. It took me a while to figure out putting the <?php echo($firstname); ?> into the form's input field to get the user first name in. So I expect most problems will be resolved by a question on the WWB forum.

WWB can drag PayPal e-commerce buttons onto the screen. I do not know if it builds code or not yet or if I have to go hunting for this info on the web. I will know this week probably. It can put , Google maps and captcha on the screen too. Lots more.
============================================================================

Summary,
for a person like myself who is a programmer, picks up on PHP quickly, wants to avoid the work of all that HTML code and CSS code drudgery, WWB is a no brainer decision. As I learn more about it I may report more back if it seems appropriate. I am sure there will be some things I am disappointed in such as it can't build queries like MS-Access (which is just amazing for building queries and dragging the fields on to the WYSIWYG form builder it has) but for $44 I can't complain. If anyone knows of a product that can do what I explained that WWB can do and this product can also build queries like MS-Access can and I can drag the fields into the form like MS-Access can please let me know. I would pay up to $300 for such a product. On the Utter Access forum I asked if there was a product that can do what MS-Access does for HTML/CSS/PHP and someone reported back a product with a price tag upward of $2,000 (can not remember that exact figure and it may have changed). That was too much for me.
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