Tag Archives: worked
Web Portal Development: 5 Things You Need To Ask Your Potential Web Portal Designer
It is not difficult to find web portal designers: post your project requirements on any freelance site and dozens of freelancers will contact you within 24 hours. However, choosing the right designer for your web portal development project is not easy. Unless you have hands-on experience with web development or web design, you will not be able to separate the wheat from the chaff.
You must look for experienced designers an inexperienced web designer will not be able to take complete responsibility of your project. Also, it is important that your web portal designer is creative: you wont do yourself any favors by hiring an experienced designer whose only ability is using ready-made templates to create boring, flavorless sites. Once you shortlist 5-6 of the best resumes, you need to dig a little deeper. To find out if they are worthy of working on your project, ask the following questions to your potential web portal designers:
Are your previous clients happy with your work?
Your best bet is to talk to your friends and colleagues. If they praise a designer who has worked with them in the past, you have found a reliable designer. But if you cant find the right person that way, the next best thing is to ask for references. Talk to 3-4 companies the designer has previously worked with, and ask them if they are happy with his work. If a number of people say that he is good, chances are he is good.
Have you worked on similar projects before?
If you want to design an ecommerce site, or if you are looking for someone to design a community portal for you, you need someone who has done similar work. If you want an ecommerce site, you need a web portal designer who is aware of all the elements that go into making such a site. You will increase your chances of getting a good website by entrusting your web portal development project to someone who has worked on a similar project.
Do you have creative ideas to engage the audience?
If you are selling something, providing a particular service or you want the people who visit your site to react in a particular way, you need a creative and interactive format that inspires the users to take action. Ask your potential web portal designer about his approach. Find out if he can accomplish this task by using creative design elements.
Do you use Flash and Java?
There are three types of designers out there. One uses a lot of Flash and Java elements, making it difficult for the reader to focus on any particular part of your website. The second type of designer shuns all Flash and Java as window dressing. The third type of web portal designer uses it in moderation. Ask your candidate about his ideas regarding the use of animation; also, ask him how he intends to use such elements to make your website more attractive.
Do you adhere to standard web development practices?
Considering the fact that you do not have an in-house team of designers working on your web portal development project, many different designers may work on your website from time to time. Ask your candidate if he adheres to standard Web 2.0 standards. If your website is built using standard practices, it is easier for other developers and designers to make changes to it.
Web Portal Development: 5 Things You Need To Ask Your Potential Web Portal Designer
It is not difficult to find web portal designers: post your project requirements on any freelance site and dozens of freelancers will contact you within 24 hours. However, choosing the right designer for your web portal development project is not easy. Unless you have hands-on experience with web development or web design, you will not be able to separate the wheat from the chaff.
You must look for experienced designers an inexperienced web designer will not be able to take complete responsibility of your project. Also, it is important that your web portal designer is creative: you wont do yourself any favors by hiring an experienced designer whose only ability is using ready-made templates to create boring, flavorless sites. Once you shortlist 5-6 of the best resumes, you need to dig a little deeper. To find out if they are worthy of working on your project, ask the following questions to your potential web portal designers:
Are your previous clients happy with your work?
Your best bet is to talk to your friends and colleagues. If they praise a designer who has worked with them in the past, you have found a reliable designer. But if you cant find the right person that way, the next best thing is to ask for references. Talk to 3-4 companies the designer has previously worked with, and ask them if they are happy with his work. If a number of people say that he is good, chances are he is good.
Have you worked on similar projects before?
If you want to design an ecommerce site, or if you are looking for someone to design a community portal for you, you need someone who has done similar work. If you want an ecommerce site, you need a web portal designer who is aware of all the elements that go into making such a site. You will increase your chances of getting a good website by entrusting your web portal development project to someone who has worked on a similar project.
Do you have creative ideas to engage the audience?
If you are selling something, providing a particular service or you want the people who visit your site to react in a particular way, you need a creative and interactive format that inspires the users to take action. Ask your potential web portal designer about his approach. Find out if he can accomplish this task by using creative design elements.
Do you use Flash and Java?
There are three types of designers out there. One uses a lot of Flash and Java elements, making it difficult for the reader to focus on any particular part of your website. The second type of designer shuns all Flash and Java as window dressing. The third type of web portal designer uses it in moderation. Ask your candidate about his ideas regarding the use of animation; also, ask him how he intends to use such elements to make your website more attractive.
Do you adhere to standard web development practices?
Considering the fact that you do not have an in-house team of designers working on your web portal development project, many different designers may work on your website from time to time. Ask your candidate if he adheres to standard Web 2.0 standards. If your website is built using standard practices, it is easier for other developers and designers to make changes to it.
Could Not Open Socket reCAPTCHA Error
After months of receiving spam through my contact forms I decided it was time to add reCAPTCHA to them in the hope of stemming the tide of garbage. This now under the control of Google I thought there wasn’t going to be an issue with this. Having just installed reCAPTCHA on my works websites I knew what to do and all went well on those sites. On the Friday I did 3 forms on my own sites and all worked as expected, on the Saturday I did the last form I had, but that one didn’t work. All I kept getting was a ‘could not open socket’ error.
Initially I thought I must have made some error in the code but after checking the code against that which I had done the day before I could see no error. And more over the 3 forms I did the day before that worked, now no longer worked and displayed the same error message, what the hell?? Most frustrating was the fact that this was all the message said and gave no clue as to what was causing it. I made a number of attempts to find which section of code that was at fault by adding echo’s throughout the php code but none of them showed, only that damned error message. I thought there must be something wrong with the server.
Someone must have had this issue before so I turned my attention to Google for an answer. As I started to type ‘could not open socket’ the autocomplete came up with ‘could not open socket recaptcha’, ah ha! But I couldn’t think why it could have worked yesterday and not today? After reading many unhelpful posts’ I found this: http://code.google.com/p/recaptcha/issues/detail?id=26 which although didn’t have the exact answer it did help me to realise the answers to my own issues.
After reading through this thread I came to the conclusion that my problem was 2 fold and explained why it had worked yesterday and not today. The main problem was my web host, in their attempt to be helpful they introduced (a long time back) blocking of outgoing connections to remote IPs from within my sites. This is one to be aware of if you are auto blogging using wp-o-matic, any feed you add will most likely be blocked by this until you add the IP to the allowed list from within your control panel.
I assume there is a good reason for them doing this but it can imagine it has caused nightmares for the inexperienced. Obviously it had worked yesterday because it was new, once the server knew the connection was being made it blocked it. It was probably the number of tests I did that made the connection get noticed and was possibly a good job it was noticed so quickly or I might not have noticed it for some time.
So which IP was I to add to the allowed list? The line of code in recaptchalib.php identified as the problem in the above thread was:
define(“RECAPTCHA_VERIFY_SERVER”, www.google.com);
So what I needed was the IP of google.com.