Netphotography Journal

That’s me ( far left ) in the Techvibes Christmas Party holding a Chocolate Martini. Dude in black next to me is Elliot and the cute young lady is Christine. We partied all the way till midnight. What a great evening!

They other guy is not really Santa!

Rastin

Software Engineering is a love affair to me and I admit sometimes I get defensive and emotional over my projects specially if they have taken few hundred hours.

Straight from John’s blog. Today we had a 90 Minute high temperature discussion about some usability aspects of a current project with Bernie our department Manager and John K my former Boss. In the end we reached a common ground yet it left me feeling uncomfortable and ashamed for the rest of the day ( right before Christmas ).

I apologized both Bernie, and John. They are 2 people that I truly respect in the company.

Feeling horrible for the day taught me to act more professional in the future. Well there comes the experience and each day I become more seasoned and mature.

Bernie is one of the nicest people I know in premier and the first thing one would notice about him is his Patience and great Sense of humor. John has always been very appreciative and respectful for the work I’ve been doing in Premier, and now he is one of my best friends at work place.

Everybody is asking for Java these days. I have done lots of Java back in school, but all the commercial projects that I’ve done during the last few years where LAMP ( Linux, Apache, MySql, PHP or Perl ). Java is a wonderful language and I am determined to include some Java into my Web Application projects for 2006.

So tonight I have decided to install Tomcat on my Powerbook. I went through 2 Tutorials ( Java and Tomcat on OS X) and ( Installing Tomcat on Mac OS X ) on the web and none of them really worked, until I found this wonderful link. An actual OS X Tomcat installer, by this wonderful company called ( Server Logistics )

There you go, I’ve got Tomcat working on my machine in few seconds.

Message from a dear Techvibes Member:

Hello,

In a nutshell:

OsCommerce
Pros:

1. Has a lot more features for reporting, shipment, etc. …
2. It is ready made and easy to install.
3. It’s been around for a while, there is a good community behind it to support it, there are many developers around to do OsCommerce development. There are thousands of stores done in OsCommerce already.

Cons:

1. Software Architecture is very Poor, It is written in a very integrated Spaghetti and meatball fashion.
2. Relatively difficult to customize compare to more modern web applications.

VirtuMart ( Formerly known as Mambo-phpShop )
Pros:

1. lean, clean modular object oriented software architecture inherited from Joomla ( formerly known as Mambo ).
2. Joomla also comes with a state of art content management which is very hard to beat.
3. Administration interface is very easy to use for everyday users again inherited from Joomla
4. Better performance because of better software architecture
5. Very easy to be customized for reason number 1. Developing for Joomla is a much better experience compare to the one for OsCommerce
6. There is a strong community behind Joomla

Cons:

1. Virtumart is not as feature rich like OsCommerce, because it is a newer application ( component ).
2. There are only few hundred stores out there which is significantly less than OsCommerce stores. Finding a Joomla developer is probably more difficult than finding a OsCommerce developer. In other words Virtumart is not yet as mature as OsCommerce.

Conclusion:

1.If you need customization ( templates, modules, components, mambots, … ) I would pick Virtumart.
2. If you need more specific eCommerce features, a reliable ready to go package OsCommerce can only grow as well as its architecture allows, but it seems to be more reliable today. Next year I’d probably go with Virtumart again because its superior software architecture allows more room for progress.

More than 3 months of intense work has paid off, we have launched the Premier Corporate website, and it is not just one portal; we have now 5 major portals for Corporate, K12 Canada, K12 US, Higher Education, and Home & Family. Corporate website is one the major tools used by the Marketing and Sales department, and the Technology used had to be flexible, expandable, and maintainable by our Technology Department.

I have implemented the Portals using Joomla Content Management Software. Premier e-Catalog component is my creation which is custom made based on their unique business model. Premier has a large array of Modular products and services ( Planners, Agendas, and Programs ) that are grouped and marketed to different market segments; Data Modeling, User Interface design, and implementing the Joomla e-Catalog Component were the most adventurous stages of this project. This is basically a reincarnation of an Open Source e-Portfolio architecture that I created last year.

Honestly even today I don’t exactly know all the products that premier is offering, yet all I needed to know was the pattern that Premier has developed its line of products and services in an organic fashion over the last 10 years. System is flexible enough that they could easily add the contents to it within few weeks. Training the Data Entry team took little more than 20 Minutes over the phone.

Another major challenge in this project was designing the design template and the look and feel of the Portals. Premier is a Marketing oriented company with very traditional strict approach to their identity guideline. I am still not very happy with the images provided by the marketing team. Nothing is ever perfect is it?

Previous Premier Corporate Website

I still think I managed to push the envelope far enough by introducing Premier to a collaborative style online content management, and taking away the clutter from their online presence. And I hope premier would develop the suitable culture and workgroups to use their new marketing tools for a much more dynamic and active online presence.

I would also like to thank the following people who participated in this project with me:

Technology Solutions Department: Bernie VS, John K
Marketing: Trish N, Jason D, Susan B
Product Development: Larry R, Suzzane P, Wim K, Harold L
Art Prep: Jessica M, Tarin E, Ryan R

and Premier’s Sales team who participated in my interviews

Thank you Premier, I am so proud of this project

Rastin

Related Link: Good work comes out of work

That is the eLearning Application that I wrote people. I love it when it gets busy like that.

Related Link: Welcome, you have visitors

There are articles all over the web about Table vs. CSS web layouts. This is one of the best I’ve found so far. It is very convincing, and it’s been prepared in a presentation style. So go get your Boss …

Rastin