The Overview page, now shinier than ever

Following on from our initial announcement, I’m happy to announce we have a new version! We’ve listened to feedback and made many improvements. We’re also making expanding the closed beta! One of the points mentioned in feedback was the potential for extending the plugin, examples including Google Analytics traffic widgets on the overview page etc.

The second iteration now comes with more developer documentation explaining how to:

• Add your own events
• Use multiple event logs
• Custom logging outputs
• Custom html for logtable events
• Hook debugging tools

Social Structure

Social forums, news, mapping... this site has it all.

The site uses bbPress and ties together a number of custom functions. We’ll be following up with a full write-up in due course for our Portfolio, but for now, why not take a look at what’s on offer? We didn’t do the full design this time – we followed the Capita supplied designer’s lead, completed the WP and bbPress specific elements, then got coding.

Permission Levels

One key part of the job was to create a properly hierarchical file store and workflow.  Different types of users can see different areas of the websites, and these had to be easy to manage for relatively non-technical users.  Each user can be assigned to a group on subscription, and then simple radio buttons in the forums and content administration allow for easy setting of permissions.  For a site that often deals in confidential matters, this was important functionality.

And Welcome

We hope that this marks the start of other projects for NHS related bodies. Along with our work for the Greenwich Healthy Living Service we now have a number of clients in the sector and look forward to expanding in this exciting area in the future, no doubt aided by our cost-effective and reliable use of WordPress as a platform.

Steve McConnell in Code Complete (a book which criticizes the widespread use of the waterfall model) refers to design as a “wicked problem” – a problem whose requirements and limitations cannot be entirely known before completion. The implication is that it is impossible to get one phase of software development “perfected” before time is spent in “reconnaissance” working out exactly where and what the big problems are.

It’s worth following the link.

I think software and design processes often end up trapped within this circle where nothing’s ever perfect. The iPhone isn’t perfect, for example – it may be ever so pretty, but it’s quite rubbish at Bluetooth connectivity, for example, or sending texts. In fact, it’s rubbish at a lot of things. One of its smartphone rivals, the N95, has a habit of crashing in certain situations, and flattening its battery in two hours because it’s furiously running an application in the background.

Same with websites. Our company site, Interconnect IT, will never ever, in my opinion, be perfect. Unless we simply devoted all our energies to that site – but then we’d have no time to work on client projects. We’re still a three man company, so we can’t have a £200k site. But we can be clever and cover 95% of the requirements.

With client sites it’s even trickier – we have to interpret a clients’ requirements, write them down, and send them back in a proposal with a rough mock-up, pricing and structure. They’ll read it quickly and usually accept. But once started they’ll look at the design, try it out, and realise that actually, the front page should have a simpler message. That may mean a restructuring. A week later, someone may point out that the colours they preferred have negative connotations in certain cultures.

All these require changes, sometimes at a late stage, and sometimes involving a lot of work. At some point, someone has to simply say – “OK, that’s good enough!”

Other clients, however, quite like the waterfall method. We have forms for certain business sectors, with consistent requirements, where they simply tick off what they want and like, choose an off-the-shelf design, and a couple of weeks later we deliver the website – all loaded up and everything. They then sign-off, or they ask for some revisions – images changed, copy edited and so on. It’s particularly suited where a small and busy firm needs a website, but it’s not really crucial to their business – it simply provides a service to people who already know them. Dentists, for example.