Durban Website Designers

I think that most men adopt a policy of ‘A place for everything and everything in its place’. Yes, I do stand in my garage with a vacant look on my face knowing that the gizmo I need I saw just a couple of weeks ago and put away very carefully for just this eventuality. But where?

So, I’m off to the shop to buy another and then trip over the bloody thing next time I walk into the garage. The saddest thing is, of course, that where it was found is absolutely the ideal place for it to be and if I was to put it away again - very carefully - I would put it exactly where I found it.

And forget again.

A staple in this house is baked beans - used in all sorts of things from the  . . on toast variety to chili. For years I have had a single spot for these cans and can tell immediately if I am running short. The other day I found that we were out of cans and told my wife that.

‘No we’re not - we have some in the cupboard in the yard’. Huh? This is akin to swapping the clutch and brake pedals in a car. Now, suddenly, right out of the blue, I have to rifle every cupboard for a can of beans. So, one day, I’m going into the cupboards and organize them just the way I want - like the garage.

I digress - a little.

You know these green plastic scourers - sold in packs of three? Course you do. I like ‘em and use them for all sorts of cleaning jobs.

Now it’s my job to do the shopping for the basic stuff (beans are definitely on the list from now on I can tell you) which includes cleaning material. One thing I always buy are a couple of packs of scourers, not because we use the things, but because at some point prior to the shopping and when I need them, I cant’t find any.

So, I buy more and they disappear. I didn’t know my wife uses these things so much. So I buy some more.

This goes on for about a year and finally I ask with in exasperation ‘ Where do all the flaming scourers go? You must be using dozens!’

‘I never use them and we have loads’ - do we now? And where might they be?

And there, with a patronizing flourish, I get shown some forgotten little corner under the sink where there is a pile over a foot high. We have enough for years.

At the risk of sounding tedious, I put them in my little spot where they have resided conveniently for decades and some sort of shift in the earth’s magnetic field occurs and they end up tucked away under the sink in a spot that transposes three of my lumbar vertebrae trying to get them out.

In Durban here we have a ‘municipal magazine’ that was foisted on the ratepayers a few years ago. The crowd downtown couldn’t even get the launch right. It was “FREE!!” but our electric accounts were debited an extra $1 for it and of course you couldn’t unsubscribe from this thing.

The most interesting pages of course were (note: were) the letters sent in by the punters. Most were critical to varying degrees of everything from dog crap to potholes. Each was followed by a reply from those responsible - all well and good.

For a very long time now those with the temerity to put pen to paper are totally ignored in favour of ‘What a wonderful bobby at the junction of Bellair Road’ signed Mavis Arkwright, 106.

Now, for the same length of time, as both readers of these columns will know, something called an ‘airport’ has been built in north Durban. Eight billion rands worth of new airport. Bigger than Heathrow.

It opens tomorrow.

The papers are full of it. We’re very proud. It was even on Sky News bless it. TV has extensive coverage.

Although I am now off the ‘preferred ratepayers’ list and do not get the Metro magazine I have been told that there is not a single mention of the biggest, longest, most prestigious project that has ever befell Durban.

Not a  single bloody word. Now isn’t that strange?

I also understand that Municipal Manager Comrade Michael Sutcliffe has never set foot on the new airport during the five years it has taken to be built. Now, the new FIFA 2010 soccer stadium (above) - you can’t keep the man out of it. He even bungee jumped off the span - I would have taken my knife if I had been there. His backside protruding out of the centre spot could be used as a kicking tee. I would have had to stand in line behind most of Durban with their knives.

The producer of the MetroBeat is a Peter Bendheim who apparently spends most of his waking hours with his camera in his hand. You’d think that the building of your new airport would make an interesting project wouldn’t you?

Incidentally, any of the locals who have the misfortune of using the Bellair Road / Edwin Swales Road (or whatever unpronouncable its’ called now)  intersection will know that the sight of a Metro traffic cop is about as likely as the sight of one of the dwarf chameleons that live nearby. In the long, frequent interludes between the short, infrequent interludes when the lights are working the junction is manned by the hawkers that ply their trade at the junction. And they do a bloody sight better than the incompetents in blue.

I’ve gone on about this at some length but I am mildly (only mildly) surprised that within a day of the transfer to the new airport, there’s whingeing from various quarters as to the need for the thing. This after it was mooted in 1973 and after a construction period of several years.

The existing Durban airport was commissioned in the 1950s and in the 60s, the Nats (unlike the current bunch) knew that they had to plan for the future and knew that that airport had a lifespan of 50 years. So, they expropriated cane fields north of Durban and levelled it. And that’s where it stood since.

Since the 1950s aircraft have got a LOT bigger and the fact of the matter is that it is impossible for a fully loaded jumbo to take off from Durban. The runway cannot be extended because at the one end is a petrol refinery and the at the other, a huge industrial estate. Jumbos can land but not take off more than half full. This has meant that a lot of charter traffic never arrives at Durban. The new airport site is 20% larger than Heathrow.

‘Why don’t we keep the old airport open for local flights?’

Right, that’s going to please all those who come in on international flights and need to connect with local puddle jumpers. That’s all they need after a long flight, a 50km transfer - probably with their luggage still stuck at the new airport.

‘Its costing a lot more’.

Its costing some more, true, but the facilities are ten times better and the airport is an impressive introduction to Durban.

And finally, despite the extra travelling to get to the airport (and toll), the skies above this house will be free of the din of aircraft and we don’t have to arrest a conversation until the 5.50 to Joburg goes past - all the green roofs with their little Tuscan ceilings can have the noise.

I have a client for whom, many years ago, I put a site together very cheaply as a favour. It did well on Google and was updated regularly. Unfortunately, the client now expects to have everything done at ‘el cheapo’ rates. He went off and had the site redesigned a couple of times and the latest attempt is quite good.

He contacted me after hours recently out of the blue and asked me to look at another website of his and what would I charge to do it properly this time. Here is therefore another problem. He has spent some cash on this thing and either is not satisfied with it and/or b) the designer has got fed up with his demands but consequently, in addition to having everything done cheaply, he is reluctant to spend a single cent on this thing.

‘How much would you charge to finish this off?’ - it’s only three pages but needs a setup etc. ‘Oh and by the way, I need Flash’ - well, how much and where? Would it be just a slideshow? - Yes but go to this site to see. So I visit the site and there’s a full blown Flash animation on the header. ‘But this is not a slideshow” - ‘Yes, but I want something like that’.

So, you want a nice site? ‘No, I want a perfect website’.

Well, that’ll cost more for the extra work.

‘Oh, and I need the logo redesigned’.

That’s more work.

“Oh and finally, I need a business card’.

You see the tactic here? It’s to trivialize what is a fair sized job and then argue the toss about the quote for such a piffling job. This character is the only one who tries to beat me down and he does that because I did him a favour years ago.

“You see my other site? It only cost RX,000′.

Well why don’t you go back there then I think, the site’s not too bad. So, I think what has happened there is that they underquoted, got beaten down and then peppered with requests so that now they have quoted some huge figure.

I’ll send him a quote and then within ten minutes there will be a call to try and beat me down. He may succeed but the quote will be adjusted upwards accordingly before he gets it. Incidentally, he is the only client who, the day after his site was put up, complained that he couldn’t see the thing on Google.

The moral to this tale is ‘Don’t underquote’. What you do has value which is translated into the quotation and the client needs to understand that. If it is too much for them, they must go elsewhere.

Years and years ago, I started to develop a website for a fellow who - like hundreds of others in this country - wanted to make a buck out of FIFA. I forget what the domain name was but I think it was fifa2010.co.za. He didn’t get very far and, also like hundreds of others, was told that he was infringing the ‘reserved phrases’ rule (you should have seen all the cancelled fifa2010 domains on coza) .

I had something about 2010 on one of my websites years ago and got ‘the phone call’ from the FIFA attorney in Joburg, pointing out to me very politely that I was a naughty lad and I must remove the reference. I told him that he was going to have his work cut out - as would seem to be the case given the multitude of references to 2010. I digress . . .

This fellow that wanted the site got as far as a parked domain so I thought I would put together a piccie as a ‘parked’ page so I combined a football with a spherized South African flag.

I have see this wretched graphic of mine on I don’t know how many websites. The first was on an immigration website for New Zealand and then on several SA2010-oriented websites. The other day, I was idling watching one of the local channels for a change and what do I see flash on the screen - my graphic on some cellphone - ‘download FIFA ringtones’ or somesuch ad.

I’ve just seen it on www.accommodationsinsouthafrica.com reeeaaallly mangled and obviously a copy of a copy etc. So, if you’re in charge of this domain, contact me and I’ll GIVE you a decent (1000px) copy.

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.