< Neo22s />

Demo | Download | For Open Classifieds

Since I’m not a web designer, make this templete it’s been a bit difficult for me.

Why I did it then? easy, I want to learn just a bit of CSS, in order of been able to make my own changes also I had an Idea for a template for Open Classifieds but since no one would help me I’ve decided to do it myself.

I will not normally release this short of things.

With Open Classifieds 1.6, that is coming really soon, I hope I will have this template ready by then ;) In the meantime please try 1.6 RC 2.

Just a list of things that you can’t forget in your web site:

Legal stuff (for Spain):

• LSSI, Ley de Servicios de la Sociedad de la Información, only if you have benefits form your site
  
• LOPD, Ley orgánica de protección de datos, if you store data from you clients, customers, visitors…
  
• Privacy Policy, about cookies, links to 3rd parts, terms and conditions…
  

Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

• Title, description and keywords dynamically generated depending on the content.
• Friendly URLS (human readable URI)
• Title and alternative text for all the images!
• Robots.txt: say to the bots what they can/can’t see or how often they can do it.
• Sitemap.xml: Say to the bots what’s updated and when

User/Browser:

• About: I think it is important to know a bit more about the site or what they are reading…
• FAQ: I’m sure there’s always questions and you have the right answers, important to keep it updated
• Cookies: Check if the browser of the user able you to read them…
• JavaScript: Check that JavaScript is enabled or they could not enjoy your beautiful ajax…
• Screen resolution: Don’t do a site with fixed width of 1600px…almost no one have that, my preference is a variable width.
• Sitemap: Make easier to the users to browse your site with a proper sitemap
• Contact: Just a contact form, makes you more reliable in front of the user and really useful. really important.
• Search: Is always welcome an small form to make a search
• Favicon: Something really simple to do but would make lot easier to see your site in a tabbed browsing
• NO pop ups: That’s terrible! please no Java Script pop up! at least use some modal box or something more friendly…
• RSS: This is mandatory…make to your regular readers live easier!

Make money  / ask for money:

• Paypal: I think nowadays is the best way to receive donations or to pay for something.
• Adsense: Use some adsense just if it’s not a professional site of course…you don’t want the people to leave your site without buying!

Statistics:

• Google analitycs: Really important to analyze your traffic!
• Site Up Time: also important to know if your site is down or not!

Finally:

• If our site it’s about downloads or videos, use external services such as megaupload daylimotion imageshack….
• It’s your site fast enough? is compatible with other browsers? many small details that are important

As you can see I don’t say anything about flash web sites, since you can do nothing of this almost xD

I’ve forgot something? Any ideas?

Finally today I’ve got enough time to start a draft about Open Classifieds 2.0.

Idea and Why?

It’s time for a change, there’s too many things that OC versions 1.x is not able to do.

For instance you can’t set location for your advertisements, there’s not a proper control panel (dashboard), no user registration, not possible to pay for ad, you can’t change language…

Also for an small project as OC, was ok to use procedure development, but now I’m finding really difficult to continue like this and I need to change the technology. Object Oriented is the most probably, using some sort of MVC (Model View Controler). As Framework I’m already working in one to manage DB, localization, cache ….

Open Classifieds it’s been downloaded 8.500 times, there’s lot of sites using OC, lot of people interested in the project and I feel for doing (with some help if it’s possible) something great.

Meet the Requirements

I did a bit of Requirement Engineering, to see what’s needed. But it’s difficult since the client can be anyone, not only me.

Please think that not any of this requirements are for sure. Your feedback in this is really important.

Functional requirements:

• Location:  Would be possible to browse advertisements by location and do something like this USA->California->San Francisco
• User: To post you must be registered. To make it easier to the end user, OpenID, Google or Facebook to login would be possible. In this way always we could see the posts from a single user.
• Localization: To make localization possible, now would be possible to choose the currency and language by location.  Also categories could be translated. Also each user could set this parameters in their own settings. For the translations probably I would use glotpress.org.
• Pay to post: Many people asked to be able to set a rate to pay if they want to post, this would be controlled by the category. This would use Paypal.
• Dashboard: right now all the options are stored as defines. The idea is to have it in a Table, to make lot easier to the admin to manage any configuration parameter.

No functional requirements:

• Object Oriented
• New DB model
• New framework

Possible deprecated:

• Post Type: there’s a need to set the type? like Need, Offer, Sell, Buy? it’s important? many Classifieds sites don’t use this
• Post Pictures: The path for the pictures, would be no longer stored in the DB, I don’t see it necessarily, since you can always read the content of the folder for each post and from there read the images.

With bubbl.us I did this brainstorming:

Any other ideas?

DB Model

This is an example for the requirements translated to DB:

Help is needed

List of things that I’m short of:

• Design: I need a logo, design for Open Classifieds,  Open Classifieds site, dashboard, installation, forums…..I know it’s a lot of work but later you would get your part of glory, been part of the team. I’m sorry I’m that bad designer….
• SEO: Some SEO help would be much appreciate it since this would really help the project to succeed.
• Sponsors: We need sponsors to support this project, money it’s a need for hosting and at least cover minimal expenses such as rentals, drinks, transport… for meetings. Also Investment would be really great to move forward and welcome.
• Translators: As you can see my English it’s not the best ever…I’m still learning how to write properly…but anyway any other language would be great! sure!
• Marketing: What about someone to deal with affiliates, adsense and get new ways of making money or to advertise our software? if it’s you don’t wait!

Join the team

The perfect scenario would be to make an small team (3 people), to split work and do a meeting sometimes in Barcelona. I have a friend’s place (restaurant) that they will let us be there for free and they will provide us with some beverage.

Also this will may be good for you to know other people with your own interests, have some fun, drink some beers and who knows even make some money in the future (there’s already some income).

As part of the team you would be involved at any decision. There’s some market ideas I need to develop but they can be really good.

Please if you are interested send an email to chema (at) garridodiaz.com, of course never mind to talk Spanish ;)

Notes

This is just a draft. I have no idea when this would be possible, it depends of how much free time I  have, how much help I get on developing and not any stopper (as another project).

But I really would like to have it done by/or during summer.

Any comment or feedback or help, everything it’s really welcome.

I have read this article from Barbara Paech, where explain to us the where abouts of the Certified Professional for Requirements Engineering and I would like to share my thoughts about it.

First of all, maybe it is helpful to know what I’m talking about with this introduction on wikipedia Requirements Engineering , that since now on  I will abbreviate as RE.

I’m not a big fan for certified, but I must admit that now a days they seem to be pretty useful when you seek for work.

When you are certified and for my experience (Master in Java architecture), you have already an advantage over the rest of the candidates, Why? normally Human Resources are not qualified IT people, been certified makes for them easier this “first” selection  over other selective points.

We should not forget that once you are certified means that you past a test that you studied for it, you will share common language and is supposed you have same knowledge as any other.

I never liked exams at all. I’ve been a good student always and I had great scores, but come on, because you have good scores doesn’t mean that much, I explain: I rather do an small “work” where I can use what I’m learning and that may be useful in the future than doing an exam where you study, normally without understanding, you do the exam and you may forget. If you did a “work/project” you will always have it and the research you may do, brings to you much more.

Other point why been certified is not fair at all comes when you have an innate talent, there’s this people that seems to be so good at RE, but they have the same certified as one that really have no idea. Your innate talent may be communication skills, good speaker for example, or good at understanding problems and listening. This things hardly you will learn them.

Same happens if you have been working for 10 years or a newbie, you have the same certified.

Finishing my point is: It’s up to you to be certified or not, but I’ve been involved in few work position selections and there’s things that are more important, experience, talent, work dedication… that are far more important than been certified.

As a resume from my perspective:

Pros:

• Certifies your knowledge about RE.
• Usage of common syllabus.
• It may be useful for seeking work.

Cons:

• Knowledge can be forget.
• Doesn’t demonstrate work experience.
• Not value for innate talent.
• Not certified for your communicative skills.

I’ve been long time working from home, first I was living in Holland and afterwards I moved to Thailand for a while.

To keep communication between the development team was really important and to have the right tools for these even more.

I will not talk about the good things of working from home or the bad things, at the end what I choose is to work from home and often in the client. I like it more.

About the tools that I use, they needed to have few things in common, for free, powerful and we based.

Sharing document: GoogleDocs

Right now almost every body knows about Google Docs, but did you ever use it as a tool of sharing document for editing them? is wonderful

Upload files from other suites, edit them online, save them, see who edit them, historical revisions….and many more…

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