So, kind of a generic question here. Best practices, maybe? I happen to be using Rails, and I built up a site for a buddy. http://ecorebox.com/ - see that banner we have there? It shows how many resources we've helped to save? That can get broken down for each of our clients too.
So, it's come to my attention, that our clients would like that 'banner' on their site to show how they've helped to impact the environment. What would be the best way to accomplish that? I was looking to yelp for inspiration:
process an image, and update the image every few days / weeks?
build a div, and let them put this in their site where they like?
an iframe? is that what it's called? a snippet (essentially) of .js code that creates the div I just mentioned.
Anyone know how yelp does it? What are these things actually called, so I can search the internet more effectively? Dynamic Banners?
There are dozens of different techniques you could use to create a banner with that functionality.
A lot depends on how much of it you want to be image-based, and how much of the information will come from your local data.
I would recommend you start with a rails "helper" method that returns simple data based on what you are measuring (e.g. "*" or "***" or "*****" depending on rows in your models). That should be pretty simple if you just build a rails method that returns this string, put that method in a helper, and call the helper from your view.
Then, when that is working, it should be easy to make it more icon-based. You could replace the "*" with images of stars, etc. Using the Rails "raw()" method wrapped around your output and change the "*" to "" tags.
If you combine that with some clever CSS styling, it will end up "looking like" an image, but will really be composed of data from your rails project plus nice styling.
Have fun
I recommend you to simply buy the banner. There are tons of websites that offer that.
However, I would recommend you a website I worked with in the past: http://www.servicecombo.com/professional-banner-design/
They are really professionals and their service is great. The price is not so bad either.
Related
Recently I've been playing around with different frameworks and libraries, looking for something that really suits my needs.
You see, my job mainly involves creating asp.net mvc applications and for most of them using Razor and a little bit of jQuery is enough. But in certain cases and only for a few pages,which are rarely more than one or two per app, I really need something extra that helps me avoid getting entangled in a bunch of jQuery code.
As I mentioned, I tried a couple of alternatives and from them, the one I liked the most is Aurelia, because of its simplicity and the fact that it embraces standards, BUT the more I dive into the framework, the more I think that it might not be what I'm looking for,as it seems more suitable for full spa applications and what I need is:
Something that helps me reduce the amount of DOM manipulation
A efficient templating engine
I know that Aurelia provides that and much more, but I don't want/need a SPA, I need those functionalities ONLY in some specific pages and not the whole application.
Can Aurelia help me achieve this? If so, how?
Sure, Aurelia can help you achieve that. You just won't use certain features like routing in on the pages you create with Aurelia.
That being said, it isn't a drop in replacement for jQuery, but none of the "modern" JS frameworks really are. And you're going to end up spending time learning whichever one you end up choosing.
Check out the aurelia.enhance functionality, it might be just what you're looking for!
I have used Aurelia in a non-SPA context, and it worked out well. I think this is exactly what you describe. For example:
http://legumeinfo.org/chado_phylotree/phytozome_10_2.59028020
https://github.com/legumeinfo/tripal_phylotree/tree/lis_master/theme/js/aurelia
I'm using aurelia for dynamic elements on some sites. Like comments for example. Page loads fast w/o comments.Then Aurelia kicks in and loads the comments below. Also with some signalR magic the discussion is updated in real time. It is awesome and insanely easy.
A little background first, recently began coding and I decided to take the "learn as you go" approach as this is solely a project. I have a pretty good handle of HTML and CSS, I have an understanding of Jquery, and haven't even begun to look at other languages.
So basically I'm making a suedo-e-commerce site, and I'm trying to create a page layout comprising of several divs stacked together (think standard catalog page) Creating the modules and every static with HTML and CSS, but I want to add the content, comprising of a banner and some text blocks, dynamically from a database. Now, I'm pretty sure that I will have to use SQL and reference each entry with the HTML, but I have no idea how to do that or where to even start. So I'm asking if someone could point me in the right direction with some reading material, or some examples would be awesome.
You need to use one of databases (MySQL, MSSQL etc.) to save data. In order to show data from database you need to use one of background/server side programming languages. For start I would suggest that you try with php.
W3schools is good starting point for you.
This is very simplified and I hope not condescending. Consider separating how you collect your data and you present your data (the 'view layer'). SQL will help you pull / organize your data, and you could just string functions to add formatting (e.g. div's) to it, but you are better off investigating templating HTML. What happens when you want to put this data into a ul list or something? You have to re-write your perfectly good SQL. Again, very broadly, pull data (with SQL, PHP, combination), ( or get it from a URL with javascript), into a data structure, then within a loop in your template, add the dives for each element.
Good reading really depends on which platform you'll be developing this in. There are a bazillion alternatives, including many in Javascript, PHP, Ruby, Python, Go, ASP. Since you mention SQL, you must have some data somewhere (rather than a data service) so you'll need a server-side language, and since you are a beginner, you may want to look into PHP which I think is approachable. Within that there are several PHP frameworks for data, and several for templating, and several with both. Many of the full frameworks (in any language) are geared for experienced web devs. That said, I like the twig templating language for PHP
This, I think, is a good place to start http://www.phptherightway.com along with the super popular but basic W3schools. The link above I think organizes the concept a little better.
You can install the stuff you need on your laptop for that standard (and old school) 'LAMP stack', or use one of the many hosting companies, nearly all of which provide everything you need. good luck learning!
Im sure this has been asked before, but as far as I can see no one seems to mention the best practice for this case.
I have a body-placeholder that basically wraps everything of my page.. with in this placeholder the user is allowed to add "Section Renderings" each section rendering contains two additional Placeholders...
When adding two or more Section rendering however.. they seem to share the content that gets added in their two placeholders... and I guess this is since the placeholders are all sharing the same name..
Whats the best practice for this?.. I have read about people creating extensions of Html.Sitecore() and adding a what they refer to as a "Dynamic Placeholder"..
But well my question remains :).. whats the best practice for solving this issue?
#jammykam is correct. Sitecore does not support dynamic placeholders out of the box and you will need to implement an extension built by a third-party, or build your own version that meets your needs.
Personally, having had to dig into this a little in the past, I do not recommend starting from scratch and trying to figure it out. The available resources from other folks who have done the hard work will get you much further.
We all know that showing inexistent stuff to Google bots is not allowed and will hurt the search positioning but what about the other way around; showing stuff to visitors that are not displayed for Google bots?
I need to do this because I have photo pages each with the short title and the photo along with textarea containing the embed HTML code. googlebot is taking the embed code and putting it at the page description on its search results which is very ugly.
Please advise.
When you start playing with tricks like that, you need to consider several things.
... showing stuff to visitors that are not displayed for Google bots.
That approach is a bit tricky.
You can certainly check User-agents to see if a visitor is Googlebot, but Google can add any number of new spiders with different User-agents, which will index your images in the end. You will have to constantly monitor that.
Testing of each code release your website will have to check "images and Googlebot" scenario. That will extend testing phase and testing cost.
That can also affect future development - all changes will have to be done with "images and Googlebot" scenario in mind which can introduce additional constraints to your system.
Personally I would choose a bit different approach:
First of all review if you can use any methods recommended by Google. Google provides a few nice pages describing that problem e.g. Blocking Google or Block or remove pages using a robots.txt file.
If that is not enough, maybe restructuring of you HTML would help. Consider using JavaScript to build some customer facing interfaces.
And whatever you do, try to keep it as simple as possible, otherwise very complex solutions can turn around and bite you.
It is very difficult to give you very good advise without knowledge of your system, constraints and strategy. But I hope my answer will help you out to choose good architecture / solution for your system.
Boy, you want more.
Google does not because of a respect therefore judge you cheat, he needs a review, as long as your purpose to the user experience, the common cheating tactics, Google does not think you cheating.
just block these pages with robots.txt and you`ll be fine, it is not cheating - that's why they came with solution like that in the first place
I was making a website for a music band, and i was wondering the best way to play background music on the website without interrupting the flow of the music (even for a split second).
At the moment, i am considering using frames, but this is not supposed to be good practice. Please someone tell me how i can do this. I would prefer to use HTML to code the website as i have not yet mastered coding in flash.
This might sound controversial, but here's an idea: Don't play music on your website. Seriously, don't. I think everyone knows how incredibly annoying that is, and asking a group of software developers to help you out with that is going to be like asking a group of sheep the best way to make a lambskin coat.
If you really have to do it, frames would be the simplest way, so I'd do that. But you're not going to do it anyway, right?
I can think of four ways:
Frames, as you said.
Make your entire website in Flash and have only one page. You need to know Flash to be able to do this, which could make this difficult.
Pop-out your music player. This is probably the easiest approach, but the downside is this could be annoying, and a lot of web browsers these days would block it.
Use AJAX and dynamically load all your site content within one page, like Gmail. Users will need to have newer browsers, and this will take quite a bit of coding on both the client and the server side.
The only way to prevent the music from stopping is to not let the page your music component is on reload. Currently the only way to do this is to use frames, unfortunately.
The only alternative is to develop the whole site in Flash or another technology that doesn't rely on changing pages as navigation.
It wouldn't be pretty but you could do it using AJAX. Have the master page with the header/footer/navigation controls with a big empty content div, and instead of regular links you have calls to AJAX functions that return HTML to be injected in the content div.
I tend to agree with the others who recommend frames. It may be considered "bad practice", but so is playing background music in the first place.
As was said, to do that you have to prevent your website from relaoding.
An option to achieve this might be to use asynchronous requests to modify your website content without reloading the whole page, that's basically what Ajax is about.
That being said, I sort of agree with Alex here : dont' play music.
This may be a topic for another post, but why would you cosnider IFrames to be good practice? you could out the content you want to change into an IFrame and have your code running your music player ouside it. When you load a page it woul load on the IFrame. Just a thought...
You would most likely need flash or a new window (pop-up) outside of the window.
Don't use frames. Ever.
EDIT: To all the people downmodding and commenting on this, not a single person has given a valid reason why you SHOULD use frames.
Just to clarify my position, please read ANY article on usability, the web, and frames.
For those still learning (and to those old people to dumb to update)
Frames break the unified model of the web.
Frames cause problems for search engine robots.
Frames make URLs stop working.
Frames break bookmarking.
Frames make printing more difficult.
Frames hurt accessibility.
Frames increase technical complexity.
and the #1 reason to not use frames......
USERS HATE THEM!
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200411/who_framed_the_web_frames_and_usability/
Are there seriously this many people out there suggesting frames are a valid solution in 2009? How disappointing.