Website Ideas

SlanGoFoil2011 wrote: »

Developer Programmer is what I need.

A good route would be someone doing a final project to give you a start. But you need some expertise in terms of frameworks, technologies, and deployment. Google do a boiler plate website service that might be worth having a look at. Maybe if you got a developer who backed your ideas you could do a partnership, then again you'd be doing none of the work!

BostonB wrote: »

I think you'd have to decide if you need a web designer, or a web developer first. TBH you could design it very roughly all on paper with a pencil, before you went near either.

Making a proper website requires quite a few skills, Javascript/ html/ css for the client side, and then you would combine it with the server side using Perl scripting within an ajax setup so both sides can talk to each other.
Database would be handled on the server side with the Perl .DBI module and SQL or atleast this is how I handle it.

Then ofcourse Photoshop comes into play for design, and some flash animation if needed but these are soft skills.

Then you can combine all these skills with extra skills, and integrate the website with local software apps, like drop box do. You might use socket programming here but theirs a few ways.

Then you could combine it even further with custom hardware, and have that hardware communicate with your computer via a usb to serial cable, and have that computer communicate via you're app using sockets as a client to a server.exe running on your virtual private server, which then writes the data to a database, for sql queries run from your fancy javascript/ perl website to to make use of the data in some novel way.

I know friends who are in 4th year doing multimedia and their only at the level of css + html and some nice photoshop, so you're best bet is going with the programmer and trying to choose a smart one. Design is over stated, majority of multimedia students *in my oppinion* have got almost no valuable skills.

Theirs a wealth of stuff you can do in javascript and elsewhere that they don't even try to touch. What you need is to find the all rounder guy whos a programmer but creative and basically is very very good at photoshop and dabbles in flash.

Luckily I'm that guy and I'm addicted to both the programming and design sides and very good in all this stuff, and would be interested in taking part (though I'm still a noob in my oppinion compared to what I wan't to be (maths and opengl graphics), and only in 2nd year in college).

If its a really good idea, doesint even have to be good with regard to money because I don't care about that stuff, but a nice project idea that would be challenging and end up with something impressive, I'd happily help for a majority share, but depends on how good an idea if really good 50-50. I've helped with numourous 4th year final projects for friends just to learn.

If its an ok idea but you offer a lot of money I'll help.

If its most likely a bad idea, which from my experience soft-core computer users generally think is a world beater I'll just laugh at you. Even the level of custom hardware supplying data for a site to make something novel with, even at that level all the good ideas are taken (if their were any!).


PM me anyway if you wish but theirs a guy every week posting that he has an unreal idea on a forum and it never is, but only takes one.

So far, you've only said "Website idea", you haven't mentioned whether it's an actual business idea or just an idea for a cool website you'd like to see done.

If it's a business idea, you might find that hiring a student could cause difficulties, the first one to mind is that they, not being paid, won't feel as passionate about it as you, and might not be to keen to maintain it after they've gotten their grade. Besides, aren't projects developed by students (for FYPs, etc.) property of the college? You'd want to check that out I'd say.

OTOH if it's just an idea you have that you think should be on the web, then students might be your ideal candidate.

stevenmu wrote: »

I think it's very easy to underestimate the importance of design. You or I may be perfectly happy to use a site/app which is graphically poor but functionally rich, but Joe Public won't be. Perhaps even more importantly venture capitalists won't be either, unless it's a mind-bogglingly good idea, investors will be very swayed by design and branding. Poor design looks and feels unprofessional and most non-techies will be very put off by that. Good design is as much a skill as good development, and like all skills costs to get it done right.

And I'm saying that as a pure developer with 0 design ability.


(in fact last week was probably the first time in 8+ years development that I got complimented on my UI design, and that was pure Jquery UI/themes )

Jquery themes nice :P.

Good design is as much a skill as good development

I mostly agree with you, except for that point.
Good design is mostly talent based, very little skill.
Photoshop, flash, css their all rather weak and easy to learn, while many computer science and software dev courses now
cover photoshop in some form during the early stages. If you can get one of the many not-square-nerd-all-rounder guys who dabble in it,
then I would not pay for the multimedia designer guy at all, unless their was major funding that I could blow on one.

I know it was either a third or fourth year final term team of FOUR project, where they made a simple css/html/photoshop website, it took them three months.
They posted the link on facebook, thought it was unbelievably amazing. It was just a crappy css website that looked like one of those 40 euro templates.
Their at a very low level from what I can see. Graphics sure they might be useful, but the top interactive websites are generally mostly white and clean with few graphics.

Enda_of_Eire wrote: »

Jquery themes nice :P.
the top interactive websites are generally mostly white and clean with few graphics.

Can you provide examples of the websites that your are talking about?

BostonB wrote: »

Apparently this was done by a C++ programmer on work experience from college.

ok, but who decided on the graphic, who decided on how it appeared, who was the hand model, who decided on the white space and who came up with the simple idea of showing it in the ltd space in such a way that the user will 'just get it'.

Deliverance wrote: »

ok, but who decided on the graphic, who decided on how it appeared, who was the hand model, who decided on the white space and who came up with the simple idea of showing it in the ltd space in such a way that the user will 'just get it'.

Sorry but that's very small minded thinking and I shall explain why.

First of all you do realise Computer Science students in most colleges and institutes of technologies cover
whitespace theory etc along with Photoshop/ HTML/ CSS/ Javascript during their web authoring modules.
They have a perfectly good foundation to add to here, these are soft skills to add to.
Photoshop is easy and fun, website design theory could be written on a few pages.

Ok well thats out of the way.

Do you honestly think websites will be as basic as they are now - in 5 years time, with the proliferation of
WebGL and HTML canvas support in all major browsers?

Both of these require strong Javascript programming to even use. Both of these (much more so the WebGL)
will eventually allow web Design that is a million times better than what is currently on offer (Think of the graphics
you're favourite console game has versus the webs current graphics, where maths becomes more
important for design than drag and drop graphic creation, we are moving beyound sprites ).

Half of a multimedia students course centers on the web, be it CSS/ HTML/ Javascript or Photoshop + Theory.
Who do you think could write much better CSS/ HTML/ Javascript? From my experience the CS student can
write fluently, while the Multimedia student can't. Infact these are SO easy for CS students
they mock these languages.

Why do I bring these up? Surely their Developer stuff not Designer stuff.
Nope, Developer stuff is Perl, PHP, SQL, server side stuff. Design stuff
is HTML/ CSS and Javascript which are all used to create everything you see
on a webpage and are client sided.

I remember how pissed off my multimedia student friends were when Steve Jobs
killed off flash from the IPhone and IPad. Flash is a propriety resource hog that
is being made redundent and they are forced to spend about a quarter of their
time studying it without realising how useless it will be to them soon.

WIth flash about to die, and the web moving towards next generation WebGL based
websites, multimedia students as we know them are going to be completely left behind
in their main money making field, we don't need millions and millions of
people to edit video and hold cameras.

At the best you could say their not one bit future proof, but even currently
as I'm arguing, Computer Science students can design websites better than
Multimedia students, bar graphics. But how many graphics do you see on the top
websites that are hard to do? Youtube, Google, this forum, even general nice graphics
on smaller business sites are very easy once you cover the basics.

The multimedia degree is a very soft degree and is the easy fun route in college generally taken
by the Ego maniacs (but also many creative nice people).
Its a very badly structured degree. They should be forced to atleast learn to write javascript
fluently, or rename the course Drag and Drop editing and arty fun Degree.