Me, Myself and Websites

9Sep/098

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 to some techi reflections that shall deal with creating websites.

Development Phases

As of writing this, I passed by 3 main phases that shaped my journey while dealing with this process for my own discovery however I wonder what other phases I might go through in the future? Anyway let us deal with what we have.

Phase I

I started to discover this world around the age of 17. I recall how I used to self-educate myself about such process via legacy ‘HTML’ pages 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?

Thinking about Websites/Blogs 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 favourite browser druing the 1990s. You can categorise this under the concept of ‘Static Websites’ depending on HTML coding only.

Phase II

It started at the turning point of the new century by switching to PHP/MySQL duet which was fascinating for me; the idea of having ‘Dynamic Website’ was very interesting, so I used to check with software like PHPNuke, ArabPortal and others. The theme of this phase was checking free hosting that supports this duet in order to work with my stuff.

Phase III

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 website(s), so I ran into testing different Open Source software to choose among before officially launching the site.

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 ‘J1.0’ to manage my website(s) since 2006 and have been impressed by the flexibility of the software. Consequently it was nice that ‘Nashiri’ and I-MAG Magazine’ where I publish articles also implementing Joomla! as the default CMS.

Happy Birthday

Joomla! turned 4 years old few days ago. I am neither developer nor software programmer yet it is like watching your baby grow up. Same goes too for WordPress as it is turning 6 years old. Hereby, 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! [ ]

Tech Notes

I want to end this post with mentioning 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. [ ] Anyway, this is the tax you pay for multi-tasking since nothing is free as I mentioned up. [ ]

Nevertheless, I have one final note for end-users like me: keep in your mind the following regardless the CMS:

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

“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]

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Published by Hicham
on September 9, 2009 | 3:00 PM

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Comments (8) Trackbacks (1) [ follow-up comments on this post ]

Reem
September 9th, 2009 @ 17:17

a nice web experience Hicham ,Joomla is one of the most friendly CMSs and wordpress is a bless
long live OpenSource
Reem´s last blog ..Hadith of the Day 19

( REPLY )
- Hicham
  September 11th, 2009 @ 01:45
  
  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
  
  ( REPLY )
Abdo
September 10th, 2009 @ 15:46

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?

( REPLY )
- Hicham
  September 11th, 2009 @ 01:38
  
  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.
  
  ( REPLY )
Mohaly
September 10th, 2009 @ 20:50

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!

( REPLY )
- Hicham
  September 11th, 2009 @ 01:41
  
  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
  
  ( REPLY )
oteltelefonlari
September 16th, 2009 @ 15:24

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

( REPLY )
- Hicham
  September 18th, 2009 @ 15:14
  
  Thanks for following up and your kind visit, oteltelefonlari!
  
  ( REPLY )

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Me, Myself and Websites

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