Websites really do not matter.
Who ever is going to visit your site? Why would they? There are billions of web pages out there, why would someone just stumble upon your page?
You actually paid someone to design a website for you? Did not your 15 year old nephew offer to do it for a ride on a motorbike or something?
Who really reads a blog? There could possibly be no use of someone no one has ever heard of saying whatever he or she wishes to say…
The User Interface for the new Wordpress deserves to be noticed, not because it is good, which it might turn out to be, but because it is done-up by the people behind Happy Cog, a user-interface-design firm.
Wordpress has certainly come a long way, and the massive popularity of this blogging platform owes its credit not to the fact that it is opensource, but to the fact that it is so darn good-to-go and intuitive!
It plays nice with the search engines, the adminitration side was already well above average (even before being done up in the new 2.5 version), the themes that were available were so well thought out and well documented that learning web development itself became a charm!
I always have had a leaning towards ‘legally free’ software, and this platform has been my ‘weapon of choice’ to give to Treetech’s website clients. We actually write a theme for Wordpress, make some (a lot, in fact) tweaks with the WP core, and viola; search engine friendly and functionally sound website is ready!
I did a post eons ago, it seems.
That post was well received.
While moving servers, that I did, again it seems, eons ago, the comments to that post were stuck in the middle. Thanks to God, the comments (which really are the heart of any website journal or blog) were only stuck and not lost.
Finally, I found the time (it’s Sunday today, please! 
), to actually port the comments from my backup database to this website. It took a good one hour of my time, going to phpMyAdmin to access the “backed-up” SQL dbase
and then porting them to wordpress, comment by comment. Then moderating the comments’ timestamps (thank you Wordpress!) to get the chronology of the comments in order.
Finally, the post is ‘back in business’. If you do feel inclined, check it out here.
Thank you all who have commented and made that post a good discussion on Marketing and the Internet.
The page has been there for some time now.
Unfortunately, it has not been done up properly. In fact, it has not been done up at all!
A lot of the website visitors are going to the website packages, only to be perhaps see just one ‘package’ (where the offering is so vauge that it may make your head hurt).
This has happened to others as well; paying attention to others’ websites will make you neglect your own. And this will go against practically everything that you preach.
The user experience needs to be improved. God willing. Here we go…
One of our clients is a Engineering Consultant, working from the heart of industry in Lahore; Kot Lakhpat. After intense draft reviews, his website is finally taking shape and looks good. (The website is actually a wordpress theme developed in house, which after heavy changes, will be released here… but more on that later). The website is currently in its final stages and will soon be made live at http://team.com.pk.
Another client is in the business of cars. Based in Japan, Aichi Motors exports cars of all types and sizes. Although their website draft is constantly getting delayed for reasons beyond the control of the client, the overall service delivered includes some great use of Google Apps for business. With a members’ section to match, I wish I had this website for my own use when I imported a car from Japan a year or so ago.
And finally, something in-house:
Property business is a hard business for many reasons, stiff competition being one of them.
In competition, ’standing out from the crowd’ plays an even greater role and more often than not, is the deciding factor between a closed sale and a lost lead.
Websites for the property industry were the answer 5 to 10 years ago; now everyone has a website (if your business doesn’t, then you really should get a website) and now ’standing out from the crowd’ becomes harder. Apart from standing out, the property business owner needs to find channels to his or her market.
Although quite common around the world, industry magazines for property are next to absent in Pakistan, so reaching the target market becomes difficult. Treetech is currently working on one of the first (if not the first) property magazine, all set to launch inshAllah, within a few days. The website and online branding is complete and can be seen at the Property Standard website (http://www.propertystandard.com.pk/).
The guys at Property Standard have also signed up for our yearly website and hosting package of USD100 per year (Translating into PKR 500 per month!), and get unlimited emails and database on a Windows enterprise-level hosting environment.
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Footnote-of-sorts: Starting a business and running a business, two completely different beasts, are only easy if you know what you are doing. And when it comes to ’starting in business’, almost as a rule, you only know what you were doing, not what you are.
A lot is happening, thanks to God.
The concept of scheduling - hard core, right-to-the-last-minute scheduling - is an alien concept to almost everyone I have talked to. Website development in Pakistan faces the same crises as many businesses face here; lack of professionalism. Now I know that professionalism is a relative term but I still maintain what I have said; most people just don’t take things in a way they should be taken (that’s the layman definition for professionalism right there!).
When it comes to rolling out a website or a web application, scheduling can mean the difference between a great product with a content client and a great product with a not-so-happy client.
A not-so-happy client is, and should be, unacceptable. Simple mathematics will tell you that the last line equates to keeping a tight schedule. It does not necessarily mean maintaining a check-in/check-out system for website developers nor a fancy Application Service with all the gantt charts you can fill a wall with. What it does mean is that you are meeting set deadlines and getting the project along, in an overall acceptable way.
But for now, Treetech (and affiliated enterprises) are contemplating a fundamental project; moving office. The current one is just too small (you have no idea how good saying the last line felt ). Pray and keep getting websites and web apps made from us, and we will keep delivering great products. God be willing of course, God be willing.
Now this should be nice. I am currently trying the programmer’s cap on for size, after a long time. And I also recently finally managed to get some of the posts imported over from my previous servers, but the comments are yet to be ported.
And on top of it all, I read Joelonsoftware’s take on how it is management’s job to provide a layer of abstraction. It is plain business common sense of course, but he is talking from a programmers frame-of-reference which it makes all the more interesting for me (refer to the programmer’s cap, the wearing, the me etc. )
Anyways, nice to be back.
I am sure this was missed (sic) :S
Sorry for the inconvenience.
Updates to this blog are in progress. (New Wordpress Theme Development)
I am looking for you, if you happen to be a web designer. I understand that this term is unclear at best, so let me spell it out for you:
You should be able to
That is the basic stuff, so if you are up for it, drop us a line.
What really would be nice, if you’d be able to tweak and change the Wordpress blogging platform’s code (it is in PHP) as required by me (on behalf of our clients, mostly). That basically means you would know the structure of the platform as well as code in PHP.
Some form of a ‘portfolio’ can be submitted for a fair judgement on your skill level in design and/or programming. People without any experience of working must have a portfolio, and a lower expectation for the pay.
I will pay by the project, which means you’ll be on contract.
Good luck.
