Hicham Maged's blog Inquisitive curiosity paves knowledge path

Curiosity & Knowledge enlighten our Minds!
Sep92009Off

Me, Myself and Websites

One of the nice coincidences for people who live at the beginning of any century is passing by unique Georgian dates like today’s 09-09-09, so I dedicate this post for technical reflection on three development phases during my journey in website designing, three geek tips on website maintenance and two geek events.

Website Designing: Development Phases

I started my journey many years ago in the world of website designing process. Nevertheless, I have not run into professional website developing as a career because it is not my scope of living, as I do so my own discovery in the technology world!

As of writing this blog entry in the year 2009, I passed by three main phases that shaped my journey while dealing with this website designing process:

  1. Phase I: Static Websites (amateur).
  2. Phase II: Dynamic Websites (amateur).
  3. Phase III: Dymanic Websites (semi-professional).
Me, Myself and Websites

Me, Myself and Websites

Phase I: Static Websites

I started to discover this world around the age of 17. I recall how I used to self-educate myself about such process via creating/editing HTML codes after spending many hours of my spare time just to figure out what is going on and working in creating virtual spaces for myself over free-hosting like “GeoCities” – remember?

Hereby, I enjoyed using the “man-made” style which means writing down the HTML code manually then testing on the legacy beloved Netscape Navigator which was my favorite browser during the 1990s, so you can categorize this under the concept of “Static Websites” depending on HTML coding only.

Phase II: Dynamic Websites as an Amateur

It started at the turning point of the new century by switching to PHP/MySQL duet which was fascinating for me indeed; the idea of having “Dynamic Websites” means another dimension of web-designing, so I used to check with software like PHPNuke, ArabPortal and others software. The theme of this phase was checking free hosting that supports this duet in order to work with my stuff.

Consequently, I went through the local server testing process to understand how stuff goes while designing my amateur trials for personal websites. Hereby I discovered both of WampServer and XAMPP Server as essential tools for creating beta testing environment, in parallel with Notepad++ (npp) for creating/editing files.

Phase III: Dymanic Websites as Semi-Professional

Later on, phase three started when I discovered WordPress in 2004. I love it as my blogging software but since I did not have my domain till 2006 so I used to try it on local server till I got it self-hosted in this beloved blog.In parallel, I started looking for a good “Content Management System (CMS)” to operate my official websites, so I ran into testing different Open Source software to choose among before officially launching the site. Hence, my watch list included Drupal, Mambo and Joomla! in 2005/2006.

I however found the later very promising so I picked the stable release at this time Joomla 1.0 to manage my websites since 2006 and have been impressed by the flexibility of the software. Additionally, it was nice that both “Nashiri” and “I-MAG Magazine” – where I publish my articles – are also implementing Joomla! as the default CMS.

Nowadays at the first quarter of the 21st century, I am wondering what other phases I might go through in the future while dealing with myself with websites phases.

Note: If you are interested, you can check the blog entry entitled Blue: A New Look to know more about my journey for customizing a WordPress theme for my blog!

Geek Events: Happy Birthday Joomla!

Joomla! turned 4 years old few days ago. I am neither developer nor software programmer yet it is like watching your baby grows and same goes too for WordPress as it is turning 6 years old. Hereby, during these geek events, I want to thank the core team developers for making life easier for end-users like us as both software are free under GPL license.

I however think that nothing is 100% free because developers spent time in creating, managing, developing this for us. Same goes for plugins, extensions add-ons, and themes developers.

Thank you guys! :)

Geek Tips on Website Maintenance

Creating, running and maintaining a successful website is a both time and effort consuming, hence I would like to share the following three geek tips for end-users like me to keep in mind regardless the CMS:

  1. Backup your files and database on regularly;
  2. Download your copies of core/plugings/themes from the official websites only;
  3. Keep your software updated to the most recent version to avoid hacking. Laziness might kill your site!

Before ending this post, I mention that despite I am enjoying the process of managing my websites + blog, it sometimes make me confused when I log into Joomla and wonder where the heck is the WordPress dashboard or vice-versa but this is the tax you pay for multi-tasking since nothing is 100% free anyway.

Finally, I would like to end with the following quote:

Related Quotes and Sayings

In any case, whenever technical progress opened a new window into the surrounding world, I felt the urge to look through this window, hoping to see something unexpected. — Bruno Rossi

« photo credit »

Tags: ,
Categories: Tech
Viewd: 1,671 views
Why?HummMaybe!Okay :)Salam :P (9 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading ... Loading ...

author/post info Published by Hicham Maged on September 9, 2009 - 3:00 PM
About Author: I am a Muslim-Arab-Egyptian person living on planet Earth; since I wonder and ponder therefore I am!

Enjoy this article?
You can subscribe to my RSS feed via reader, receive e-mail updates
and publicize the post over social networks that you like.

Comments (9) Trackbacks (2)
  1. a nice web experience Hicham ,Joomla is one of the most friendly CMSs and wordpress is a bless :)
    long live OpenSource :D
    Reem’s last blog ..Hadith of the Day 19 My ComLuv Profile

    • Welcome Reem to my blog, and you said it: WordPress is a bless :) As for Joomla! it’s awesome indeed with all respect to other frameworks for sure.

      Anyway If you are interested in Joomla!, follow up with the upcoming version since many things are being prepared, as I see on the community blog.

      Viva Open Source :D

  2. Good to know that Hicham, I have a similar experience but had been driven to the programming part with starting my business by 2006.

    Currently 80% of projects I see does have a solution using an Open Source application with some customization work. Choosing the appropriate framework for the project could be challenging sometimes.
    Abdo’s last blog ..Does disapproving work? My ComLuv Profile

    • Welcome Abdo in my blog. I am glad that people are heading more towards Open Source in their business as you did. I am aware about many NPOs and NGOs who are switching for this stuff in their work, especially websites.

      For me, I am not programmer, just a normal user however I recall that I felt confused about choosing the framework for my site as I explained in the post till I picked Joomla! Anway, regardless the name of software, I think ‘Open Source’ really matters and hope people to align themselves with in the near future, and not only in websites byt office applications, like OpenOffice for example. These stuff are good.

  3. It is a different way indeed or writing history.. a guru way :) )
    Glad to see a new post Hicham :)
    Mohaly’s last blog ..602) Fawazeer Ramadan ::: Felous El 7okoma! My ComLuv Profile

    • Thans so much, Mohaly, however I am just trying to expresse the trip into websites as normal user. I can’t not call myself guru by any mean :)

      I want to apolotise; I got too busy the past week so I didn’t have the chance to follow up with your blog. I’ll check it incha’allah soon, however it seems I shall be busy for sometime but incha’allah khair, so keep up on the great work :D

  4. I got too busy the past week so I didn’t have the chance to follow up with your blog
    oteltelefonlari’s last blog ..OTELLLER HAKKINDA My ComLuv Profile

  5. Since inception, CMS Rockstars has helped tons of budding internet entrepreneurs through affordable customer friendly services. Using start-of-the-art techniques, we have built a solid reputation based on trust, affordability, and continued support. Our customers are confident in us, as they know we are dedicated to quality service delivery at all times.

Sorry, comments for this entry are closed. You are welcomed to comment on from your blog/website.