Durban Website Designers

Right - I appear to be metabolising so therefore must have survived Christmas. On the downside, I am stuck at the machinery again.

I am putting together a tourism website (natal-tourism.co.za) that is largely a ‘what to do’ in KZN but with an accommodation directory. The aim is to make this as comprehensive as possible and use paid advertising to fund it. At the moment I am sitting on 3,300 establishments in KZN and busy data capturing.

I would rather not have survived Christmas. It’s absolutely mind numbing. Going through tourism directories and websites again and again and . . .

If you do this often enough, you see the same prose reappearing again and again . . . If I see the word ‘Nestled’ again (it’s always the first word on the home page) I’m throwing a brick at the screen.  ’Birders paradise’, ‘boasting . . .’. Don’t these people have any imagination? How about - even worse - ‘accomodation’, acommodation’, accommodaion’, ‘prefferred’, ‘en suit’  and other typos. I think I’ll start and make a collection.

These calumnies don’t only occur on ‘I did it all myself’ sites but also on the posh ones too. Who does the quality control? Are website designers that illiterate? Little mistakes get through, everyone knows but this is simply slipshod.

Search optimization - what’s that?

Most of these sites simply don’t have any - big ones too. In the most heavily searched sector of the Internet, this is a necessity and not an option. Crappy title tags, no other metatags, meaningless content, the list goes on.

Tourism databases: there’s one that is spread over more than a dozen domains, all poorly put together. Another is simply a list of establishment names with phone numbers. Nothing else. What on earth is the use of that? At the other extreme are the established directories that include every bit of information except the shape of mine host’s navel.

Has anyone ever done usability studies on what potential visitors want from these lists? Somewhere between the name/phone and the singing & dancing morass is a spread of data that would satisfy a potential visitor.

Last year, I thought that a cruise wold make a nice change from the southeast Asian countryside, albeit a short break. I was going to book at the end of the cruise season here in Durban (April) but things got in the way. There are a variety of discounts (partner, pensioner, honeymoon etc.) but the local office said that the best discount was the ‘earlybird’ six month before travel discount.

We booked a cabin with two extra berths which meant that for port tax of R500 each, the extra passengers could have a cheap all-in five day trip. Various kids were taking exams so we took the neighbours. The prospect of sharing a 13 sq m cabin for four nights was a little daunting and the chances were that we wouldn’t be talking to each other at the end of the trip.

Further, a new vessel was due to arrive, some 50% bigger than the old Melody/Rhapsody ships that have been working out of Durban for years. The Sinfonia is nearly 60,000 tons and a fairly meaty ship. It’s also relatively new (2002).

The ship is spotless, the service was impeccable and the staff duly deferential and courteous. The food was of the highest quality and I can recommend any trip on it. The pic is of Rod starting his trip whilst still in Durban Bay.

One area that needs attention however is the check in. I don’t think that the port authorities here can handle 2300 passengers. If ever you take a cruise and up at N Shed, leave someone in the queue with the cases and nip around the end of the shed through the car park with your ticket and get an embarkation number.

We spent over an hour before we joined the queue and our number was 366. Because everything happened so slowly, there was folk with 650 loitering about. With the exception of the lahnie cabins with balconies, all are the same miniscule size (13 sq m). However, they are beautifully fitted out and the bunks that come out over the main bed are full beds in their own right. No 4″ mattresses here! The service was first class from the Indonesian staff. Apart from the tiny ensuite, there is a minibar and TV.

We were away for 5 days and it rained on & off for 4 of those days including a cyclone on the way back. But that’s not the cruise’s fault. The pic is of the brekkie/lunch pigout.

The Food

They feed you and feed you and feed you - early coffee, breakfast buffet, sarmies in the lounge at 10, lunch buffet, afternoon tea, evening dinner and midnight buffet. All offering prodigious, quality choice.

The Drink

Well, this is where they make their money. Big signs and announcements before check in about how liquor is not allowed and will be confiscated if found in your bag. If I go again, I’m going to take a half jack of tea in a whisky bottle and after one of the announcements, pull a disappointed face, crack the top and finish the lot in front of the queue. So, no opportunity is wasted to sell you alcohol and drinks menus are on every table. A round for four is about R100 (with cocktails) - not worth carrying liquor on board for.

The Entertainment

Several lounges have live music every night and there is the theatre at the bow that has two shows a night.

The Passengers

Well, this is the real entertainment. I am not a lover of humanity but a fairly dispassionate observer of it - particularly its more gross manifestations. If you wanted to witness a more determined display of gluttony, then a cruise is probably your best bet. Huge backsides and huge beer boeps staggered to and fro under enormous piles of food. And what is it about women and those little tattoos on their shoulder? They get 20kgs overweight and into their 50s and what was a pretty butterfly is now a large blue smudge. They look like over the hill prostitutes.

On my map the only thing on that plot was the one place where you would expect the inhabitants to know where it actually was - the Mozambique Cartographic Institute - and three of them couldn’t find it. Oh well, the next time. The pic is of the railyard outside Maputo station.

Barra Lodge

The Barra peninsula is 230 miles north and we were due to spend the day there. However, we knew that as the passengers were to be taken ashore in rubber ducks, there was only a 1 in 3 chance that we would get in.

We stood off Barra Lodge at about three miles and eight rubber ducks milled about for an hour before we were told that due to ‘weather conditions’ we couldn’t get in.

Believe that if you will but consider this.

Each duck can take ten (generously) passengers, each of which has to get on it from a platform and don a lifejacket. The trip in is about ten minutes and the passengers get off in the water and remove said lifejackets. Ten minutes back to the boat. Say, a total of 30 minutes per ten passengers times eight. 80 passengers every 30 minutes. I would say that conservatively, 1,500 passengers from the 2,400 wanted to get off, armed with their flippers and snorkels.

This would take around ten hours to get them off, let alone get them back on again. I think the logistics defeated the boat. I didn’t want to stop at Barra but go the 22kms to Inhabane village as a lot did. The pic is the lodge from about three miles out.

Health

Well, we knew it was going to happen, and it did. The first to get seasick (not difficult on the seas around South Africa) was Sonali. The first night she managed starters before dashing out of the dining room. The second night, it got to mains before the hurried exit. The third night, she managed the whole meal with help from drugs from reception. The fourth night neither she nor Sharon showed up (and neither did one of the couples at our table. The pic shows the girls really getting into the cruise spirit.

On the last night, going through a cyclone, there were lots of empty seats at dinner.

Our Waitress

Called Tanya from Roma. Aged 21 she works from 6am to midnight seven days a week for nine months. She gets paid well by Italian standards but it takes something special to be cheerful and professional in the face of passengers that are determined to assert the fact that they are on holiday and consequently allowed to bully the help.

Right, that’s about it. Glad we went. We needed it at this time and was as they say a “refreshing break”. Sonali won’t go again because of the seasickness but only because of that. Who knows??

I have spent the best part of a week, on & off, playing with this to see whether it can be offered as a CMS to clients.

Having looked through the online instructions and battled with poor technical writing, I decided to buy the only book on MODx - and it was worth it, saving hours of frustration.

As I have said before, all these CMSs claim to be ‘user friendly’ - ‘get your website up & running in minutes’.

Ha! It’s like ‘Only metres from the beach’. Right.

Having said that, there are only a few concepts that need to be mastered. I decided that for the evaluation, I wouldn’t follow the online docs or the book example so used the template I often use from Dynamic Drive  - the CSS fixed 3 column template. Slotted in fine.

Then I added my little radiussed box that is all the rage. Also fine. I used the content from zulu-culture.co.za as a smallish website with a few subsections.

The attraction of MODx as a designer is that it claims that any valid HTML template can be used. There are several ‘template variables’ that need to be added to make it a MODx template. These ‘TVs’ are chunks of code - like Javascript scrollers or meta tags that the user can edit from the backend.

The two other concepts are ‘chunks’, which are basically ‘includes’ and ’snippets’ which are bits of PHP code that do something. Most templates can be reduced to a bunch of includes, a menu area and a content area. The latter uses the TinyMCE editor which works fine although I prefer to get stuck into the code as it’s quicker.

The menu is easy enough but I thought I would use their builtin Wayfinder menu system together with JQuery to set up a CSS accordion menu. It worked too and users can add and delete pages! Other examples of snippets are logins and breadcrumbs. Any piece of valid PHP is fine. I thought I might chance my arm and add FormtoemailPro PHP formmail script as a snippet, all 80kb of it and it was accepted and the form worked fine.

Another exercise was to get database output to the pages. For simple SELECT and WHERE listings, all that is required is 4 lines of code as a snippet. I tried to use code from PHPMaker but as expected, that was kicked out with a flurry of errors.

The login presented a problem. I overreached myself and went for the WebloginPE addon which I couldn’t get to work. The builtin login works fine - but you need the book to work out how to do it. I got it to protect two sets of pages for two sets of users.

I tried a Stu Nicholls CSS image gallery - fine.

The search widget worked and I was able to set up a simple commenting system, either on a blog type page or on any page.

Joomla has 4,000 addons whilst MODx has a few hundred, spread over two versions of MODx. The Newsletter addon worked OK with a subscribe/user management system. The last thing to test - and it’s no big deal if it don’t work - is a forum. I cannot find anything in the plugins.

Summary

I think I’ll use it. The site (search-optimizers.co.za/modx) has all the basics that would be required by the average website. Next step is to use a totally different design (tvae.co.za would be a candidate) to see whether it could be accommodated.

It’s not difficult to set up manager-users and I think that they would be quite happy to edit, publish and delete pages.

Time to go I’m afraid. Three cars and only two parking spaces.

This is a great little car I’ve had for seven years. Not too many of them around, these ‘87 16V GTI Executives. It’s in good nick with a bunch of stuff replaced over the years. I’ve probably spent as much on the vehicle as I am selling the car for. Details are up at www.warthog.co.za/gti.

The buyers were happy to take the car without a test drive but, honest John that I am, I said I would take them. Right, big mistake. The car broke down.

I managed to get back - just but no spark. The local auto elec came around the next morning and got it going but the lack of spark was the least of the problems. It needed a new fuel divider for the injection system - and then a replacement lift fuel pump. I’ll let you know what the bill is - I’m guessing I’ll be lucky to get away with R2,500.

The buyers were happy to wait the 5 days to get the car. Pity, because I had a couple of buyers lined up and which I could bump the price up for to compensate for the repair. Still, a deal is a deal and they had put down a deposit.

An Unwelcome Guest

A rat - I think. Sonali found food moved from the waste bin to the veg rack. Today I found a pile of what looked like dried mud next to the yard door. It turned out that something had tried to eat its way through the door jamb so it’s off to get some Rattex this morning.

The warthog.co.za website has done well for ‘website designers durban’ on Google for many years. It was the #1 website for a long time but has recently been displaced and now sits at about #5.

So, last year, durban-website-designers.co.za was put up and has been #1 on the local Google for those keywords for several months. I don’t keep an eye on ‘website designers’ on the local Google because its usually occupied by Mr sawebsitedesigner.co.za who has been on the top for years. I quite like the website for its chattiness and I’m sure he does a good job.

I noticed a few months ago that the dwd website was loitering on that list at about #9 so I was surprised yesterday when I wandered over to that part of Google and saw that it was #1 for website designers countrywide. SA is not my market but its nice to see that with not too much effort, you can get to the top of a heap of your peers - most now claiming to be ‘SEO Specialists’.

The true test of whether I like a website of mine is to come back to it after a few days and every time I return to that website I like what I’ve done with it. The home page premise was to get as much useful information on the page without making the page look cramped.

It won’t stay there of course but it’s nice to pat yourself on the back.

Now I have to promote my other two website design websites: webpage-designers.co.za and website-designers.co.za. I have also just registered search-optimizers.co.za and will stick something there at some point.

A short post this time.

Anyone who has had experience with content management systems has also had the experience of frustration in all its manifold disguises. The fact that there are more than one thousand CMSs doesn’t help.

I have developed a couple of Joomla websites and while Joomla is well supported it is incredibly slow to develop. Edits take absolutely forever - whether on Windows or on Linux. The one site had to have a cron job to flush the cache every two hours or the site would constipate terminally.

The most irritating thing for a web developer looking for a CMS is that they all claim to be user friendly, intuitive, up & running in 5 minutes. The smaller CMSs like Toko are fairly easy to set up but limited in functionality. I was looking for something that could be employed on every site if necessary so I took a swing through the Net Tuts article on ‘ten top CMSs for Usability’.

The article itself is very illuminating even though every man and his dog knows that ranking CMSs is impossible. Its like saying - ‘We choose the best car for the average man’ - impossible.

What is really good about the article is the response it generated. All sorts of opinions - WP, Drupal and Joomla all had their adherents and evangelists. But, there were a whole bunch more that dropped through the ceiling - Expression Engine, Concrete 5, Chyrp and a bunch of others.

The CMS that got the most widespread support was MODx so I wandered in and took a look. And again - the ‘CMS for designers’, ‘just pop any webpage into the template’, ‘ if it works on its own, it will work in MODx’.

Now, having played with it for a day, getting a basic site up, even with an accordion menu, I wanted to explore a login system that’s sure to be asked for. This is where the problems with open source manifest themselves and the real beast is revealed.

The forums are the first place to go and one sees - with other CMSs too - a continual complaint from designers about the CMS being a CMS built by Geeks for Geeks. The help pages confirm this. There are wide assumptions made that you know something about PHP. I understand the ’snippets’ that call functions and I understand ‘chunks’ which are really ‘includes’ but I am a website designer trying to use a cobbled-together collection of PHP scripts that you should at least be able to hack.

The latest problem came with a one-size-fits-all login system. It looks fantastic - WebloginPE - and I followed the instructions and got a bunch of parse errors. Followed them again with the same result. So, now I go looking for help, and look, and look. All I see confirms that I must be the thickest bloke on the planet.

I will persevere because once I get past around three hurdles I will be able to drive the beast. Stay tuned for more.

Well, Saturday’s paper confirmed what many have been thinking for a long time even given journalistic licence.

‘Tourists Avoid the Crime and Grime’. Anyone involved in overseas tourism to this province knows that. There’s a route from Joburg to the Kruger to Zululand to the Cape to Joburg and off back home (and vice versa).

The fact of the matter is that most of these tourists don’t stop in Durban. The airport happens to be here, that’s all. At least if they need to overnight, they might stay in town but with the new airport in La Mercy, they will stay in Ballito or Umhlanga and miss Durban altogether.

Some local tourism worthy adds ‘What us Worry? - we have local tourism. Anyway when the marketing of Durban for 2010 kicks off in a month or two, we’ll really get going and pull them in’.

Firstly, doesn’t this character realize that even the locals are getting peed off with the crime here when they can stay in other coastal resorts with less of the violent crime for which Durban is infamous? Minitown is being downgraded (to kraals and shacks I believe), the Snake Park is history and now the Bird Park is going. The Lido and the Little Top have gone. Waterworld is a pale imitation of what was. And I nearly forgot the Animal Farm (now the casino) that provided endless enjoyment for loads of kids.

The other complaint is the street renaming - hopefully to be kicked out. In which case, Sutcliffe should bear the cost himself. I gather, even outside the flawed selection process, he stuck his finger up some orifice and came up with a few hundred additional names to quietly append. When we finally get rid of this egregious individual I suggest that we rename the toilets next to the Post Office as the ‘Sutcliffe Memorial Latrine’ as a fitting legacy. I bet not a single individual in Durban would oppose that.

As the tourops say - ‘We will have to tell tourists - “This is where that was” and “This is where this was”.

Whoopee. I think we should demolish Sutcliffe’s flat on the Point and tell the tourists that was where the architect of the degradation of a once beautiful city once lived.

Great works? Philanthropic largesse? Charitable foundations? A ‘good man and a fine human being’? Hardly.

Many years ago, I came across a newspaper report that crystallized everything for me. It was 30 years ago and occupied no more than a couple of column inches in the Witness.

It was a report of a Court case that involved a man and a woman. The woman had charged the man with attempted rape - nothing new here I hear you say. The difference was that the woman was 98 years old. The attempted rapist was 103 years old!

Brilliant! That’s what I would like to be remembered for - attempted rape at age 103.

‘Where’s great great great grandad?’

‘He’s in Court’.

‘In Court? What for?’.

‘Um, attempted rape’.

‘Attempted rape? I thought the only thing stiff about him was his Zimmer frame and his cocoa. Who’d he try and rape - the night nurse?’

‘No, the lady in the next room.’

Can you imagine the wonderful scene …

‘Come on Maude - you know you want to.’

Sounds of scrabbling at nightie and popping buttons.

‘No, Arthur, keep away from me. Now I know what the strange look you’ve been giving me all week has been for. All this time I thought it was trouble with your colostomy bag. Now I know it’s nothing more than lust, pure lust. Until I lost Sidney, I was happily married for 63 years.’

‘Aw, Maude, don’t you ever wonder what it would be like to have hot sex with another man?’

Sounds of popping knee joints and shuffling about.

‘What on earth is that? Good grief, I thought it was your walking stick. Just keep it in the bedpan where it belongs.’

‘Maude, baby I’ve had the hots for you since last week’s Bingo. The way you clicked your dentures over your card had my hormone racing - well, walking.’

‘What on earth has come over you Arthur? I know - you’ve been mixing your nitroglycerine with laburnum leaves again haven’t you?’

Sounds of stitches rupturing and dentures hitting the tiles.

‘Ooh, your cleavage sends my pacemaker into overdrive, Maude.’

‘That’s it Arthur - I’m calling the orderly - Nurse! Nurse! I’m being attacked!’

‘Maude, baby gums, we’re nearly there if I can get my leg onto the bed - c’mon now, don’t be a pooper - Aaaagh! NnNnNnnnnnnnnnng! I’ve put my bloody back out!

Maude? Maude? Hey Maude, where’ve you gone Maude?’

Think of the respect he’d get in prison amongst all the other rapists. A 103 year old rapist - brilliant.

Going through the garage of a friend, guess what I came across. Subtle clue on right.

Now, these must be thirty years old, and, not a bad beer if I remember correctly. The question is of course, what do I do with them. They’re pristine and unopened but will probably taste (& smell) awful. Maybe I should auction them to somebody who remembers the old days when there was real competition in the beer business in South Africa. Now, as we all know, the behemoth of South African Breweries has no competition and is free to foist the most disgraceful concoctions on the public and have the nerve to call these chemical Frankensteins ‘beer’.

I’m happy to entertain suggestions just as long as they don’t involve any anatomical terms.

This is not so much a renaming as a Durbanization of it. Comrade Sutcliffe never ceases to justify his excesses without mentioning the word ‘African . . . ‘. So I shall do the same.

The Airport Decor

I think razor wire would make an appropriate South African statement. Any thoroughfare can be decorously supplied with copious amounts of it. Let’s not spare expense here - none of this cheap and nasty, namby pamby  flatwrap stuff - only the coated, double spiked variety. We know how insecure and unsafe visitors feel when they anticipate, with only a little degree of glee, their impending sojourn here, so, reassure them as they step with trembling foot off the plane with a stunning panorama of glistening razor wire.

Both behind and in front of the razor wire are dozens of full size portraits of Michael Sutcliffe in an ANC T Shirt and hat, arm erect and fist clenched, a defiant bulldog expression contorting his features. A triumphant mien. African despots in less worthy parts of Africa would be jealous.

Wait!

What is it he’s holding in his fist?

It’s a road sign. It’s an old road sign. It reads ‘Manning Road’ with a red stripe across it.

Having been suitably reassured, our pax march with new found confidence towards the immigration counter - careful to keep to the travelators in case they touch the African 12,000 volt wires accompanying them at waist level. With minimal attrition, the planeload arrives at immigration.

Immigration

Now, as I understand it, when a visitor arrived at a Zulu kraal, there was a whole performance to welcome him. Here, the ceremony is called the ‘Marie Celeste Welcome’.

Not a soul in sight. Chicken Licken half eaten on the desks. Huge mugs of tea slowly cooling. Pencils half chewed. Monitors blinking aimlessly.

This African ceremony starts with a slowly increasing clamour from the passengers - those who are not on their first visit will know that the arrival of any plane coincides miraculously with the disappearance of the immigration staff. It’s the sort of thing that Arthur C. Clarke would talk about.

As the decibel level increases, a cleaner is spied on the other side, pushing a bucket. Noticing the agitated rabble she shouts in Zulu towards a distant door whereupon, after a suitable period, a lone, half-uniformed individual slowly makes his way to a desk.

Each passenger is interrogated at length.

‘What’s the purpose of your visit?’

‘Where’s your visa?’

‘Do you have any valuables about your person - especially jewellery, DVDs of Isidingo, dollars and cellphones? Which pockets are they in?’

(Pause to make quick cellphone call).

‘Where’s your Permanent Residence Permit? - do you know my grandfather was part of the Mau Mau?’

‘Where will you be staying?’ . . . ‘My brother will take you there - very reliable’.

etc. etc.

After 90 minutes, the planeload arrive in some numbers at Baggage Claim.

Baggage Claim

Well, not really.

It’s more like ‘You Think You’re Going to Have Baggage to Claim?’.

Like immigration, it’s deserted, just the low rumblings heard in similar baggage claims around the world. Except in this case it may well be nausea from the 30 metre leap after hitting the Michael Sutcliffe Commemorative Pothole in the runway.

There are anxious looks between passengers. The anxiety level increases. Mutterings turn to loud exclamations of concern. Looks turn to the window onto the apron in hesitant expectation. Cries of ‘Welcome to Durbs’ ring loud.

After 20 minutes, a solitary individual is seen approaching the apron side of Baggage Claim, on a solitary tractor towing a solitary trailer of luggage. Well, it appears to be luggage from the trail of assorted cases and bags in its wake.

He parks next to the carousel. Hope springs in 400 breasts.

He gets off and takes the bags off, one at a time, very deliberately to put on the carousel. Anxious eyes are cast to the end of the belt.

As the luggage makes an appearance, there is a degree of screaming, scrabbling and jostling only seen when an aid truck visits some famine stricken part of the planet.

What’s this? Every bag is labelled ‘SA286 HKG’. Hang on. This is not our luggage (meanwhile another single trolley with 30 bags has arrived).

Further investigation reveals that it’s not even the luggage from an arrived flight from Hong Kong but an outgoing flight.

Depression, melancholy and then anger surface as passengers realize that their luggage is on its final journey - to China. Miraculously however, fifty or so passengers have found their bags. Not on the carousel but behind janitory equipment next to the toilet.

Each one has a new security label not noticed when the bags were checked in. It reads ‘Inspected by Thatha Baggage Services (Pty. Ltd)‘ and marked carefully with a date stamp not an hour ago. In very large print at the bottom is written ‘Proud Supplier to SAA’.

Each bag is unexpectedly lighter than they remember at check in. Perhaps it’s the effect of the compulsory Valium given to passengers before arrival in Durban. Other airlines spray the cabin - inbound to Durban means sedatives and a funeral policy to go with the customs declaration.

Next blog: Customs