glennweb.net

Living in the sticks has it’s advantages, but broadband coveage isn’t one of them. After giving up waiting for Verizon to launch DSL over fiber here (fiber is just .5 miles away), I finally bit the bullet and bought a Direcway dw6000 system. Due to our tree-filled existance I also had to bite it over the aesthetics of a large (-er than I expected) dish squatting on my garage roof. It’s beginning to look like a CNN downlink site around here, but the broadband-ish speeds are definitely welcome (over the bad phone line dialup, best connection in the 40’s somewhere).

As long as I can keep the trees at bay (note the hole to allow the low azimuth dish to get a signal) all should be well. So far the link is fine but the actual connection (dependent on Direcway NOC) can be a bit dodgy, going up and down randomly during the day (for short periods). Download speeds have been pretty good overall but uploading is a trip (modem can be faster more often than not). So it goes.

I successfully launched the new Champaign City Site last Friday (6/11). The Phase II site redesign features a new look for all the secondary site pages (90+). The site also now features:

• no frames throughout
• a browser-based custom CMS to manage all site content
• a browser-based custom CMS to manage all News, Calendar, and Employment entries
• site-wide, user toggle-able, Text-Only display
• CSS positioning is used for the bulk of the site
• tables used only for tabular data and minor site structure(home, header, footer)

Glennweb.net work on the site included:

• development of the CMS database(MySql)
• development of the browser-based CMS (PHP/MySql)
• development of CSS positioning, layout, and display
• templating of the new site design (PHP, phpTemplates)
• development of the Text-Only site wide feature
• conversion and integration of all content to the new CMS (90+ pages)
• testing and deployment of the final site

The site was designed by John Bonadies.

 

The UIUC School of Music site has received three awards recently: the UIUC Webmaster’s 2004 “People’s Choice” award, a CHAAMPS Gold web site award, and a CHAAMPS Jury web site award. It’s great to have the site recognized by other parties.

The site has a very eye-catching design thanks to John Bonadies and was very interesting to implement (hybrid CSS site, very few tables). The true test though is the client’s experience. All signs point to a very successful site, the Music School’s enrollments are up (partly thanks to new online enrollments) and after looking at comparable schools online efforts I believe the new site puts the UIUC at the forefront.

Better we should reinvent the wheel everytime? In an industry where (nearly) every element is built on the shoulders of others work, this is a bit ironic really.

I don’t have a good answer for intellectual property protection but I do know it isn’t realistic to expect creative people to quit using proven techniques because they have used them at a previous place of employment.

Are developers stealing code? - ZDNet UK News