YUI for that Web 2.0 interface

The big buzz these days is about AJAX. You constantly see press AJAX enabled site that does this and does that... but AJAX is really only a way of getting data back and forth between your browser and the web server without having to refresh the page every time... what really gets people excited is how that data is displayed with interactive controls. Just as I felt it necessary to spend "Big Bucks" on the design of my site it seems that having these interactive controls is the user perception threshold that is required to truly be a well regarded Web 2.0 site.

For "Company X" I looked at using ASP.NET AJAX (formerly codenamed Atlas), being a C# Microsoft .NET shop it was a pretty logical choice. It's free (as long as you've already dropped the bucks to have IIS servers, .NET development environment tools, etc.) and is, even in it's current 1.0 version, an extremely full featured library with lots and lots of controls. The main idea of ASP.NET AJAX is to hide the dirty details of hooking up AJAX, JavaScript, DOM (Document Object Model) on multiple browser types from the programmer and make it seem just like plain old ASP.NET programming. I expect to see ASP.NET AJAX embedded into the next version of Visual Studio. But we are on a budget here, so what a poor PHP programmer to do?

I went to my handy Google Search box and typed in "AJAX interface library" and the first item on the list was the Yahoo! UI Library (YUI). The kind folks at the Yahoo! Development Network have release this library of cross browser compatible JavaScript controls (many of which work with AJAX methodology) under a BSD license... which means gives them some credit, but otherwise it's all yours to do with as you please.

Along with a bunch of base utility functions there are some great controls such as AutoComplete (a favorite among AJAX aficionados), Calendar and, my personal favorite, TabView. They also have a neat little app / control called Logger that allows you to put debug statements in your JavaScript and then watch them fire off in a floating control panel. Should be extremely useful for tracking down those inevitable JavaScript bugs.

Just for giggles I figured that if Yahoo was giving this out, their natural enemy must also have an offering. After look around a bit (I typed "google javascript UI" into Google) I found the Google Web Toolkit. It has many of the same features as YUI except that the AJAX part is already built out, but only for the Java language. So if you're doing your project under a Java server this toolkit might be more appropriate that YUI.

JavaScript UI Controls (Yahoo! UI Library): $0

Total cost of project to date: $59.99

Taking advantage of the Feebies!

I'm getting to the point with my project where I need to start testing the ability of my code to send of emails. I tried using the SMTP/POP3 services associated with my Gmail account, but I found it to be incompatible with both the native mail function and PEAR mail objects in PHP. What I needed was a mail server for my domain.

I originally thought about using EC2 (the Elastic Computing Cloud) from Amazon for hosting and I may still do so in that my architecture is designed to load balance out to child servers once a user logs into a main web server, but what I need right now is a cheep Linux web and mail server.... and I found it!

As you recall, I bought a template from TemplateMonster.com for my project's look and feel. The email I received which explained how I could access the template I had purchased also listed some "bonus offers", including 1 year free hosting from Globat.com. After looking around the Globat site to get details on their capabilities I signed up using the coupon from Template Monster.

For security, in additional to a credit card, Globat uses a system where an automated system calls you up to confirm your phone number. You press a web form button and a voicemail robot calls you up 30 seconds later on the phone number you provided during registration and reads off a three digit code, you type that number in the web form and you are informed that your site will be provisioned very soon and that you'll be receiving an email with your new server information shortly. So I waited... and waited... and waited... finally I went to bed, assuming it would be provisioned overnight.

The next morning I woke up to find nothing. I opened a trouble ticket with Globat billing and soon received an email back saying that I would have to fax a copy of my credit card and drivers license to them. I thought my website was being provisioned, but I guess not. I faxed the front of my credit card and drivers license to the phone number provided. Meanwhile, I received a second email stating that in order to provision my website I would need to fax both the front AND BACK of my credit card and my drivers license to a completely different fax number. Now I was confused.... I was just about to fire off another email when, KABOOM, a email came in with my provisioning info (URLs, password, etc.).

So, besides the provisioning hoops they make you jump through, I have been pretty happy with their service. I don't have terminal access to the web server, but I can FTP and use their control panel to control my server (MySQL, email accounts, etc.) My only hiccup so far was finding out that they use port 587 instead of the standard port 25 for SMTP... I had to use their online chat system to speak to a help desk person to figure this out as this information is not mentioned anywhere in their FAQs or online help.

Web Hosting (1 year from Globat.com): $95.40 + $19.99 setup - TemplateMonster.com coupon = $0

Total cost of project to date: $59.99

Who and how many are visiting from where?

Back in the good old days I bought a few Urchin licenses. It was fairly easy to setup and gave reports that you had to massage a bit to get the answers you needed. Urchin was purchased by Google in April of 2005 and was soon turned into Google Analytics. Google turned it into a free product (up to 5 million pageviews unless you have an active Google Adwords account, then it's unlimited pageviews).

The interface is now simple to use and you have to append just a few lines of JavaScript code to your webpages to get it started. I created two profiles, one for this blog and one for my project.

I highly recommend this to anyone who needs to know where their visitors are coming from and how many visitors your actually have... in other words, everybody should have this installed on their website.


Website Analytics (Google Analytics):$0

Total cost of project to date: $59.99

Big bucks on design!

You can have the most useful product in the world, but if your website looks like crap, people will devalue your service. That's why I decided to spend some big bucks on website design.

I've worked with a lot of design people over the years. It takes a special relationship to communicate what you want to a designer. No one comes to you with a blank slate and no one can read your mind. I've often found it useful to work with designers using the following steps:


1. Tell them about your product/service using lots of emotional terms

2. Show them a site that has the look and/or feel you're looking for

3. Once they deliver something, make sure your get all the source files

4. Redo the whole thing yourself


Now step 4 may seem a bit cynical, but in this high speed, immediate gratification world we live in, it is a total pain to call a design guy up and wait two days for a delivery just to make the smallest changes to your site. You should know how to graphically edit your site just like you can programmicly edit your source code. Why not just do it myself from the beginning if I'm going to redo everything? I've often found it easier to edit than create. I'm a whiz a photoshopping photos, but I couldn't draw a stick figure to save my life.

Which brings me to my latest find, Template Monster! I was reading TechCrunch and their little square sponsor banner caught my attention. I clicked through and signed up for a nice 15% discount due to it being their 5th year anniversary. Template Monsters has hundreds of pre-designed websites from dozens of professional designers. Many of the templates are ready to go for certain businesses (I saw a lot of nightclub and nail studio website templates for instance) with just changing the text... but I wanted one that I could manipulate for my idea.

I found it! Nice color scheme, sort of that Web 2.0 "jelly" look and lots and lots of white space for me to put my interface into. I threw it into my electronic shopping cart, but when I went to check out their system said my coupon was not longer good! I had just received it!

I went back into my email and, sure enough, the fine print said that the coupon was good from May 22nd to June 4th. Why in the world were they giving out coupons, especially through an expensive placement like TechCrunch, that are expired?

I'm not giving up my 15% discount, no sir-ee! I tried to use their chat system to speak with a support person... this went nowhere quick. The support chat operator threw me over to the billing chat operator who informed me that my coupon had expired (duh!) and then threw me back to the support operator who just ignored me. I decided that an email to billing and support at Template Monster with cc's to a couple of emails I had at TechCrunch (after all they were the ones advertising this discount which didn't exist anymore) was in order. A few hours later I received a now valid coupon from Ben Lee at Monster Templates. Thank you Ben!

Now I'll get to see how fun it is to try and get this material into Smarty templates.


Visual Design (Monster Templates): $52 ($61 - 15% Discount coupon)

Total cost of project to date: $59.99

Why are the simple things so hard?

I spent the last six days putting together my application for the TechCrunch20 conference.... massaging ever word to properly convey (in 500 words or less) my "Pitch"

Damn that's hard! As I have stated before, I'm not a writer, but I have found that once I get into the groove it's way too easy to keep going and going and going.... you get the idea. Trimming words to meet a 500 word maximum is really difficult to do, especially when it took such effort to get them out of me in the first place.

Is my idea terribly complex? No, not really. Is my idea revolutionary? I haven't seen anyone attempt it before and the few people I've shared it with seem impressed. Can I explain it in 500 words? Sure... but explaining something and truly conveying every special nuance are two different things: especially an idea you've had brewing around in your brain for the last five years.

The business model explanation section was easy. Competitive landscape too. "The one liner" kept throwing me for a loop because I kept coming up with one good "one liner" after another as I wrote the 500 word pitch. I'm definately going to need a good PR firm once this thing gets out of beta.

It's 11pm eastern on Friday night, the final due date for the application is at midnight (I assume pacific time, but I could not be sure). After having my loving wife (let's call here Kitten... I do!) gave it a once over, I draft a nice cover letter email, attach the application in word document form and send it off from my gmail account.

Ah, what a relief. A week of work accomplished and sent off to the benevolent folks at TechCrunch to consider... then, 30 seconds later, I get the following automated email response back from the TechCrunch email server:

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status
Notification

Delivery to the following recipient failed
permanently:

20@techcrunch20.com

Technical details of permanent failure:
PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 16): 554 The message was
rejected because it contains prohibited virus or spam content

What the hell!!!! Maybe their mail filter doesn't like .doc files generated by Google Docs? So I export the application document as a PDF, recreate my cover email and send it off. A minute later, BOOM, I get the same message back from their server. Could it be that they don't like attachments at all? I quickly copy the material from my document, paste it into yet another copy of my email cover letter and send that off. You guessed it, a minute latter I received the same error message.

Now I'm a be panicked / perturbed... so I write an email to 20@techcrunch20.com that explains what I'm experiencing and asks for HELP!!!! I start scanning the TechCrunch blog to see if anyone else was experiencing the same issue when I get a letter from Heather Harde, the CEO of TechCrunch. She says that they haven't detected any errors with their email account, but since I was having issues I could send my entry directly to her email and she would be happy to confirm receipt. I'm saved!

I email the PDF version off to her... wait a white (biting my nails off) and then receive a email from her saying that she has received not just one, but three copies of my submission. Now, I can go to sleep.

Thank you Heather for diligently manning your post late on a Friday night.... This Unknown Founder is truly grateful.


Word Processing (Google Docs): $0
Email Service (gMail): $0

Total cost of project to date: $7.99

The tools

I've been using Microsoft's programing and platform tools for many years. My previous start up (I'll refer to as "Company X") is completely based Microsoft technology (with the exception of some Flash on the front end). A small farm of Windows 2003 servers, running IIS .NET applications written in C# with a gigantic Microsoft SQL server behind the whole thing. This, along with bandwidth, costs us a small fortune in licenses. I've been thinking about getting my Microsoft Certified Professional Developer certification for years... I just wish I could get a bit of a kickback from them on the certification costs considering how many zillions of dollars I've made them over the years (Bill, are you listening!!!)

I'm not a stick in the mud, but I have to admit I have been a bit wary of "Open Source" tools over the years. I remember the good old days of trying to get a few programmers to work together without management. You got an interface only a geek could love written in code no one could read and God help you if you found a bug.

But since Microsoft ain't givin' it away, open source is the way to go. Let's just see how far I can stretch my Microsoft based technical skills before they snap.

I've chosen to write my application in PHP on an Apache web server with a MySQL back end. PHP seems very similar to "classic" Microsoft ASP pages and I've started to read about the Zend Framework that should remove spaghetti code from the start. I'm familiar enough with Apache to be able to configure it and get it up and running and MySQL has gone from a neat little toy to quite a powerful database. MySQL adding stored procedures as a feature on the 5.x pushed me over the edge on doubting this platform (sure the other fancy features like clusters, large scale database, monitoring tools, etc. are important... but if your database can't even create stored procedures then you are not a REAL development platform in my humble opinion).

I'm not quite ready to jump ship from my trusty Windows operating system quite yet. I have installed Apache, MySQL and PHP on my woefully underpowered home computer. Linux will have to wait until my brain stops throbbing.


Web Server (Apache): $0

Programing Language (PHP): $0

Database (MySQL - Community Version with GUI tools): $0


Total cost of project to date: $7.99

What's in a URL?

Okay, step one... choose a domain name. First of all let me say, I loath those swine who are sitting on millions of domain names that go to websites that show nothing but advertisements for other websites! (Of course, if you are one of those swine who happens to have a job opening for an entrepreneurial technologist drop me an email. You're probably making money hand over fist and can pay a nice salary for talent such as mine!)

After burning up thesaurus.com and the WHOIS function at GoDaddy for a few hours, I finally came up with a name that sort of, in a Web 2.0 way, gives the feeling of what my service will offer.... of course I hate it, but all of the good names were taken. The .US domain names are good right? Worked for del.icio.us, right?

Domain name: $7.99

Total cost of project to date: $7.99

Okay, here are rules.

A few weeks ago I was reading a blog post by Guy Kawasaki entitled "By the Numbers: How I built a Web 2.0, User-Generated Content, Citizen Journalism, Long-Tail, Social Media Site for $12,107.09" and it really got me thinking.

If you read the article, a great deal of Guys expense was on "outside" profession services. $4,500 for software development, $4,824.14 in legal fees, $399 for a Logo and $1,115.05 in legal fees. I've had the honor of meeting Mr. Kawasaki a few times (though I'm sure my face is as recognizable to Guy as the paper bag my nome de plum wears) and his book "The Art of Start" is a must read for all you entrepreneurs out there. He dropped $12K on this little project of his, let's see if we can bring down the price tag even further.

So here are my rules.

1. Only work on this project during "off" hours - I'm currently gainfully employed by a company I co-founded in 1999. Over the years I have heard the horror stories of hardworking entrepreneurs who have had all kinds of legal trouble from former employers who claim that the intellectual property of the company that the entrepreneur created was on the former employers dime. A great article on this subject is "The Dangers of Moonlighting" at Found+Read. My current colleagues are the nicest of guys, but let's just say that every time we go out to lunch calculators are involved in divvying up the check. So rule number one means no working on this project for 9am to 5pm Monday through Friday... weekends, holidays and the wee hours of the morning are mine.

2. Only work with my own resources - Like only working on "off" hours, I will only work on equipment, services and licenses that I pay for out of my own pocket. That means working on my home computer (the under powered one that my wife uses for email and family photos and my daughter uses to watch Homestar Runner) instead of the fancy laptop that my work provides. I will not use my cell or office phone for calls related to this project. I will use the DSL line off my home phone line instead of the high speed cable modem that work reimburses me for.

3. I will Blog my progress - Every day that I work on this project, I will report my progress on this blog. This is a tough one! I don't consider myself a writer.... I've written a few patents (not exactly riveting material), technical specs and the occasional love letter to my dear wife, but nothing that has forced me to write every day. Please be kind to my ramblings!

4. I will report every time I incur (or didn't incur) an expense - For example, my domain (which will for now remain secret), was purchased from GoDaddy and cost me $7.99. This blog was free from the wonderful folks at Blogger (or should I be thanking Google? It gets so confusing on the 2.0 version of the web). As a guy who doesn't have thousands of dollars to spend, I'll be attempting to squeeze every bit of value out of open source tools, low cost hosting and good old reliable begging and bartering.


So thems the rules, let the games begin! Nothing worth doing is ever easy... though some day I'd like to give it a try!