MegaSack DRAW - 6pm Christmas Eve - LIVE on our YouTube Channel
Hello everyone ... now, Mrs s8tannorm has a question. It means nothing to me but I'm hoping it will to some of you, so I'll hand you over now.
Just so you know, I am a graphic designer not a programmer. I am having to work with an overseas company to create a dynamic website for a client - his choice, not mine! I have designed the site and have the job of populating the database. The other company are building the site using asp. I want some of the text to have bullet points but they say it isn't easy. They say the problem is because we are importing all the records and putting them into a database. There are then placeholders in the data for the relevant areas. They want to use the cms where they can format the code using wysiwyg. A slightly more knowledgeable colleague is wondering if this is feasible with 10,000 products. I have in the past had unordered lists in dynamic php sites without any problems. Would it be better for them to use php instead? Any solutions will be gratefully received.
Cheers
Stuart
I'm slightly confused, how do you want the data in the database displayed on the webpage?
Do you want ALL 10,000 records displayed on one webpage?
Where does the 'bullet point' format come in?
I don't think it's down to a graphic designer to spec the back end technology for a web site, no offence an' all. The problem you've got there seems to be that you've got a third party development company who couldn't find the hole in their arse using a map and compass.
I don't see any problem with accessing a 10,000 record database; that's comparitively small compared to some. You're presumably not presenting all ten thousand records to the end user in one hit, are you? Cos that's going to be more problematic!
Whether ASP is better / worse than PHP is academic; changing languages (to one they potentially understand even less) isn't going to magically improve their development skills.
(Disclaimer: this is assuming I'm understanding the question correctly; I am not a professional programmer or web developer)
I guess that, if you're the designer, you should be telling them how you want the site to look. How they achieve the look is up to them but, if you want bullet points then I guess you want them for a reason, semantically.
How are the both of you working together? It might be worth making a mockup of product list pages in Photoshop and then agreeing what is feasible from that. Then, both of you know the artistic direction you want to go in.
One advantage of being the designer AND the code monkey is I have all these "discussions" in my own head and no-one else gets to know about them...
Rachel
One advantage of being the designer AND the code monkey is I have all these "discussions" in my own head and no-one else gets to know about them...
😀 Which can be good and bad.. in my head anyway. Thankfully I can turn to my programmer in crime who can usually make pretty much any random designer request a reality.
Yes, you're right maxray - because I do a "bit of both", I'm not amazing at either.
It does work out quite nicely, though, in that you tend to attempt things that are actually going to work well in the CMS you choose (in my case, mostly Drupal). For example, I would know kinda generally how things work out of the box in Drupal and adjust my artistic side to suit.
Rachel
Oooh do you do a lot of Drupal? We have been using it alot more for smaller sites (most of the big stuff we do we have to use .net)
I really like it though sometimes I find myself banging my head off a brick wall to chieve certain things.
Thanks for the replies, you're right, the other company should be able to follow my supplied Photoshop docs. The layout was agreed to be workable but now we've come to the build...??
The site will not require to display all 10,000 products at once. It's not too different to Chain Reaction Cycles, in the way it will work and display (they have bulleted text). I don't think I'm asking for the moon just some text to display in an orderly fashion - so why is it called an unordered list? That question is rhetorical 🙂
I've looked at learning code, it just doesn't work for me. It's like putting pickle onions and strawberry jam on the same pizza, the two don't mix!
Mrs s8tannorm
Yes - we're using it more and more these days. It's been a epic battle at work to have it accepted (we're a Microsoft cult normally) but finally there - now seen as #1 option for external sites. (mainly because of experiences with Sharepoint)
Once you have your head around Views, everything becomes much easier. I like it mainly because I end up writing very little actual code to get what I want - I recently built www.paincommunitycentre.org for Cardiff University and only had to write a couple of modules to provide the mechanism to check validity of healthcare professional's registration details, implement that sliding doors menu thing etc - about 40 lines of PHP I think...
(oh, and before anyone says anything, I didn't choose the theme colours!!! 🙄 )
I'd say the initial learning curve is steep. The rewards are high, though. Happy to discuss more - always good to know fellow designers.
Rachel
I don't know if you're still reading, but what you describe is possible - but it might not have been budgeted for in the original spec.
When you say you want to put in bullet points - do you mean in the body of the text that is edited within the wysiwyg editor? That text is stored in the database, after being imported by your techy guys. If there are something simliar to bulletpoints in the original data that you import, you might be able to persuade the techies to use a search and replace type thing on the data before it gets put into the database - or you could even do this after it's been put into the database. With 10,000 I'd definitely recommend automating it. It should be a simple enough script - 3hrs work, including testing maybe?
