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My JavaScript crash courses over the past few weeks are paying off already. Tonight, I was asked to include a JSON calendar for a website I host for quite a while now.
I took the challenge and I was succesful with the script below:
<script>
var x;
var xmlhttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
xmlhttp.[onreadystatechange] = function() {
if (this.readyState == 4 && this.status == 200) {
var myObj = JSON.parse(this.responseText);
for(var i = 0; i < myObj.data.length; i++) {
var obj = myObj.data[i];
x=x+ "<tr>";
x=x+ "<td>" + obj.date.dayName + " " + obj.date.day + "/" + obj.date.month + "/" + obj.date.year + "</td>";
x=x+ "<td colspan=3><strong>" + obj.eventName + "</strong>";
if (obj.tickets != null ) {
x=x+ " - <strong><a target='_blank' style='color:#F49021' href='" + obj.tickets.url + "'>tickets</a></strong>"
};
x=x+ "</td></tr>"
x=x+ "<tr><td style='font-size:0.8em'>("+ obj.performanceTime + ")</td>";
x=x+ "<td>" + obj.venue.name + " - " + obj.venue.street + " - " + obj.venue.city + " (" + obj.venue.countryCode + ")</td></tr>";
x=x+ "<tr><td style='height:20px'> </td></tr>";
}
document.getElementById("demo").innerHTML = "<table cellpadding=5 border=0>" + x.replace("undefined","") + "</table>";
}
};
xmlhttp.open("GET", "/storeJSON.asp", true);
xmlhttp.send();
</script>
<div id="demo"> </div>
The most important line is xmlhttp.open("GET", "/storeJSON.asp", true);
The actual JSON is NOT located on that particular website. It rarely is. JSON is made to transfer data from site to site, server to server. But my storeJSON.asp looks like this:
<%
dim aj_XmlHttp,inputsource
Set aj_XmlHttp = CreateObject("Msxml2.ServerXMLHTTP")
aj_XmlHttp.open "GET", "https://XXXXXXXXXXXXX", False
aj_XmlHttp.setRequestHeader "Content-Type", "text/json"
aj_XmlHttp.setRequestHeader "CharSet", "UTF-8"
aj_XmlHttp.Send
inputsource = aj_XmlHttp.responseText
set aj_XmlHttp = Nothing
response.write inputsource
%>
where XXXXXXXXXXXXX is the actual URL with JSON data to be parsed. UC? Handy. And even though the big load is on the client here, the actual JSON-URL is not exposed in the browser. Oh btw, it's all about this page.
I was told Google ranks non-SSL sites lower and it's gonna mark them as unsafe pretty soon (May 2018). This year will be the point of no return. Every website needs an SSL certificate, Google says.
This is going to be a game changer. Take Godaddy. They offer dirt cheap hosting, somewhere between 3 and 4 $/month. But they charge 6$/month for a certificate alone. One.com is smarter. They include SSL in their cheapest solutions. It's not even an option there.
I'm not sure about this. I'm in this business for some decades now. Never ever a QS backsite password got burned due to unsafe networks. QS uses encrypted cookies by itself.
Also, validating an SSL often needs a lot of website-tweaking and fixing. I spent all night just to tweak this (rather small) website alone. Everywhere I used images and iframes pointing to "unsafe" http://-sources, my page was marked "unsafe" as well. I had to replace dozens of lines of html code. But I host 100's of websites. Go figure...
As much as I like Google - and who am I in the end - I think we're going a bit too fast here. There is not a single reason to secure 5 page business-card-kind-a-websites with little or no interaction with the visitor, other than clicking around a little. Not a single reason. There is no sensitive data whatsoever going back and forth. My 2 cents.
Anyway, www.quickersite.com is on SSL as from today. Please report any issue. Many thanks.
- nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (25/02/2018 23:31:28)(I am almost sure that) Google already marks the http websites already, they are just going to take this to another level. However, not all websites will be subjected to lower rankings and unsafe notices, only the ones that on the front end there is a login, or a payment gateway.
That said, if you have a straight html website, made by hand, or by Artisteer, Mobirise, etc..., there is nothing to be worried about, and with small websites likes 5-6 pages, that would be a good idea, as oppose to setting up databases and cms, etc...
Also note that with shared hosting, where you have no access tothe actual server, you are at the mercy of the hosting company. For example, Godaddy does not allow the Letsencrypt certificate to be installed on their shared accounts, which is free, but they insist of installing their own at $60/yr/site, and at a $75 yearly update fee. For multisites, it will be $280/year for all subdomains, and $350/yr to update after that. These are the costs besides the hosting costs.
I think I will have to move to Digital Ocean, Linux based only, starting at $5/month ($20/month would give you way more flexibility) for a descent and fast VPS where I can install anything I want. The only issue that I have is that I have no experience with setting up and maintaining a VPS server, I read I need to get and learn something called putty, etc..., which sounds a nightmare to me right now, but I would be able to install the free Letsencrypt certificate for free. Each certificate expires every 90 days, but most hosting companies, including Digital Ocean will automatically renew those certificates for you for free. Digital Ocean is very popular and very fast growing among WordPress users, and those who need Lynux servers in general. Last time I checked, they did not offer Windows servers, but that was about 2 years ago, so things might have changed.
Every time I think things under control, some idiot throws a curve ball and ruins everything, like Godaddy raising their hosting and domain registration prices quietly and without notifications, to the point that it is cheaper to get a VPS at Digital Ocean or similar VPS hosting companies, and learn new things.
- Pieter says: (25/02/2018 23:39:53)Nick, have you checked out https://cloud.google.com/? Pricing seems very similar to Digital Ocean (never heared of them). Google has Windows 2008/2012/2016 Servers. Cheapest solution is at around 60$/month. If you keep it Open Source, prices start at around 30$/month.
I read about Letsencrypt. It will sure get a serious boost in the coming months. I bet in a couple of months, a lot will happen in the SSL business. Prices will crash, let's hope. It's about time btw. - Pieter says: (25/02/2018 23:42:00)oh Nick btw, the only page that is still marked unsafe on this site is https://www.quickersite.com/r/free-templates
but it's sitting there for a decade now. and I refuse to remove it.
- nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (26/02/2018 00:02:20)Actually, it not mark anything, the templates page. If you had a password field, it would have said "Not Secure", next to the "i".
Anyway, after my post I watched this video, which is a platform ON TOP of some VPS Hosting companies, and the Google cloud is there. It will make things easier to setup and manage, for idiots like me I guess. The video is for WordPress installation, but you can see the Google cloud in the video as well, there is a free 14 day no credit card trial, so may be you guys can check it out. And yes, Letsencrypt certificates are a click away !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTW4cCcCYLA - nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (26/02/2018 00:15:40)I just checked: Cloudways is basically "managed" hosting, thus more expensive than let's say straight Digital Ocean, but exactly how much I pay for Godaddy shared hosting. The sad news is that it does notave Windows hosting, so no asp or asp .net, just php - sorry for wasting your time !
- Pieter says: (26/02/2018 07:55:56)Yes, but if you click the i icon, it tells that not all items on this page are safe....
Not even 3 years ago, Youtube - by default - generated http:// links for embedded videos. This must now be manually changed to https on each and every website on the internet. I would have hoped for a more elegant solution to be honest.
About hosting: if you only have up to 20 websites, you don't need a server, use shared hosting. The problem with any cloudserver is that it needs backups and updates, so you will always spend time babysitting it. Not sure that shared hosting always comes with guaranteed backups though... - nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (26/02/2018 17:46:42)As I said before, somebody has to come along and ruin everything, and make our lives more difficult. This time it's Google...
Back to hosting: To be honest, at least at Godaddy, shared hosting is much, MUCH faster what it used to be. With the new speed though, you also got new prices. Their Ultimate hosting starts at $8/month for the first year, and jumps to $17/month to update. Digital Ocean, starts at $5/month, but to be safe I would get the $10/month package and increase it as the traffic of the site gets larger, but as you said, I have to do the backups, maintenance, etc... A good VPS, is cheaper than Godaddy shared !!!
And this is where Cloudways comes in play. Cloudways is managed hosting. The costs are $17/month for the $10/month VPS hosting from Digital Ocean, so they make $7/month themselves. Where does this $7/month go? They take care of the maintenance, server security, backups, etc...
Again, Cloudways is managed hosting. There must be similar companies that offer managed VPS Windows hosting, to make things easier for you guys. - Pieter says: (26/02/2018 21:48:11)17$/month for shared hosting is pretty expensive, no matter what site-size or specs. It's what you pay for low cost VPS solutions these days. Most important question is: how is support? and how hard do you need them? I prefer not to need support but good tools that I can help myself in all situations. Google cloud is pretty close to just that....
- nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (26/02/2018 22:33:24)Ok, the $17 godaddy shared is their most expensive option, and i choose that because you get unlimited disk space, faster processors and more memory, thus you get speeds close to VPS. In fact, with a good cache plugin, you get almost the same speed as a VPS, and godaddy support is pretty excellent (phone too).
The thing is that:
- You have no access to their servers, so adding things like your own SSL certificates is not possible.
- They don't update their older servers, so mine purchased 3 years ago has php 5.4.19. Updating it to php 7.x is not possible. Their suggestion is get a VPS, which is $30-$40/month at least with them to begin with, or don't renew at the end of the year, and sign up for a new shared hosting. Well, I have abut 50 websites, and transferring them one by one will be a few days job, and probably I would have to repeat this entire process in the future, when php 8 comes around, or we get a newer version of MySql. Php is much faster that php 5, and most websites work better and faster with it. Even some plugins started writing code that only supports php 7+.
- If you get large amount of traffic in the future, you are basically screwed, because there is no scaling, which to be honest this was never an issue with my clients or mine websites.
I have not pulled the trigger on this yet, but it seems that for not experience users, a managed VPS is the way to go, where a lot of the technical issues are handled for you, the prices are very comparable to shared hosting (at least the fast shared hosting), and you don't have to worry about scaling either. If you want to add more plugins and by consuming more memory which will slow down your site, and you get more traffic, you are one button away of increasing the RAM of a faster processor, or even adding an additional processor, fora little bit more money of course.
What people don't realize though is that shared hosting does not have database balanced loading, and most VPS hosts come as standard. What is database load balancing? With shared hosting, you get one database per site and that's it. For example, with QuickerSite using Access, you get a maximum of 128 connections at the same time, and that's it. Once you reach capacity the site won't be available to other people visiting the site... - nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (26/02/2018 22:51:16)... Having a QuickerSite with Access for a busy community website, like large organizations, schools where here a typical high school has 1,000 - 2,000 students is a no-no, when at given night, they have to login to get their homework, and upload their work, the parents getting student reports, and teachers doing their work on the platform. At a max. number of 128 simultaneous connections this is a bad idea. QuickerSite with MSSQL would certainly do though.
Ok back to database load balancing: WordPress running on MySql has a 155 simul. connection limitation, where apparently that number in practice get down to about 120. By default to combat this, by default, WP releases the database connection if there is no page load within 10 seconds, so almost every time you ask to be served a new page, a new connection must be made to the database. So artificially they can increase the number of people that can view the site at the same time, BUT, connecting to the database needs time, so the site gets slower. With code you can remove this behavior, so until you leave the site, you never lose the database connection, thus never losing speed between page loads.
Finally, with load balancing, your database is spread up into multiple databases, so when you get the maximum number of 120+ connections at the same time, the next visitors get to use the next database, and the next... Actually I think in reality if you are spread across 3 databases for example, and you get 150 people, each database gets 50 connections, thus the term balanced loading.
I think with the VPS prices, especially for the managed VPS prices, with all the drawbacks of shared hosting, a managed VPS is a much better choice, a much better value, given that my only real worry for the future is if the hosting company is going to close their doors for business or not. Pieter many years ago had made arrangements to get me a VPS at Godaddy, and it was a nightmare. It used to crash once a week, on average, and I had to go in and manually restart the server and get things back up, with managed hosting, things like restarting, updating SSL certificates, backups, etc... are afterthoughts, in fact, there are no thoughts!
I have no idea if you have the luxury of having managed Windows hosting, if there are some, not only for the non experienced, but also like Pieter would be the way to go, at the very least it might save you tons of time, and frustrations, for a little more money. - Pieter says: (27/02/2018 19:28:14)Nick, you're mixing up things about the maximum concurrent users for Access databases. I still have a handful of customers (not even QuickerSite users) who are on a >200MB Access database feeding their websites and applications. Some of them have up to 8000 unique visitors/day, meaning 10's of 1000's of clicks and connections/day. The difference between a so called client/server application developed for (or even worse, IN) Access (client/server applications are always old, as they were built before webdevelopment actually existed - read: in the 90's) is that those apps used continuous Access connections. In QuickerSite (and all other web apps I built over the years), connections are dealed with completely different. They open and close again in about 15-40 milliseconds, ie: the time an ASP page takes to get fully rendered on a server. Over the years, those times only got down with the faster hardware, especially the use of fast SSD drives. I have NEVER ran into connection problems with an Access database. You never have 1000 users simultaneously (I mean: the same millisecond) clicking buttons and links on your site, unless your name is Google or Facebook.
And even if that would be the case, people would simply have to wait for a few milliseconds before an open connection is released again. In well-built web apps, you will never run into connection problems when using Access.
One of those VERY bad practices at the time, was storing database connection-objects in session variables. Sessions last for 20 minutes by default, which was how you ran into problems in no time.
The real bottleneck with high traffic sites is IIS itself. IIS is not built for high traffic websites. And then I mean REALLY hight traffic, like Google and Facebook type of websites. They never used Microsoft servers for a reason.... and they never will. - nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (27/02/2018 19:30:42)Well, I learn new things every day. I have no experience with concurrent connections to Access, but I experience the latency with WP and MySql, and that was the explanation given to me, so each page load kept loading fast, as oppose to much slower if you waited 10+ seconds in between the page fetching. I was also given the code to put it in the config files of the cms to keep the connections open.
Nevertheless, the broader point is that Managed VPS is probably the best value and choice nowadays. - Pieter says: (27/02/2018 19:38:42)I'm on a cloud server with managed backups and maintenance for about 5 years now. I wrote this little post the day I migrated to the cloud: https://www.quickersite.com/r/default.asp?pageAction=showPost&iPostID=EHILMLH
Few years later I have dumped this server in our local recycling center, even though it was still a 100% operational Windows 2000 Advanced Server.
- nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (27/02/2018 20:24:10)I remember that post... couldn't you put that on ebay, or you Belgian's grow money on trees?
And now I'm going to kill you... You let me go on, on and ON, about managed hosting, to convince you that's the best choice, and after all that, you tell you are using one for 5 years.
Ok, well played my friend..., game on !
- Pieter says: (28/02/2018 08:37:17)Just out of curiosity, I signed up for a free trial at Azure, Microsoft's own cloud hosting solution. No surprises here... Their web interface is buggy, slow, and at some point I even had to refresh pages and scroll to the right to read important info... I had not done that ever since 1995, when websites were made with FrontPage
No.... once more Google proves to be the better option here. - David says: (28/02/2018 10:38:04)I think your right Pieter, I signed up for Google Cloud a couple days ago and found the whole process nice and easy. And, as you say they should be stable going forward. I tried a Bitnami LAMP stack on AWS last year for my static sites and to run an instance of own cloud (for my own use) but found it quite difficult to configure. The pricing was a tad on the vague side also, it looked as though there was a decent term free trial but turned out to be a cut down version with server locations limited to the US. Need something closer to home (Aus or even Singapore) as we're so far away.
- David says: (16/03/2018 06:29:20)How did you setup the redirect for visitors who type http:// or www into their browsers?
- Pieter says: (16/03/2018 08:01:51)David, good question. It took me a while to figure out. And I'm still not sure my "workaround" is the proper way of doing it, but at least it works. I create 2 sites in IIS. One site has all the http-bindings. But all it does is pointing (redirect) to the one and only https://www.quickersite.com site. That second site binds to the IP address and it uses the SSL id. And that's the one I install QS for. But it has no real bindings. That's how it works in IIS7. SSL id's bind to an IP address rather than a domain in IIS. This has changed as from Windows 2012 servers though. There you can have multi-domein SSL binding to the same IP address.
- David says: (16/03/2018 12:21:18)Cool, nice fix... I'm on shared hosting and have an option to set a permanent 301 in plesk, but before I discovered this setting I did the usual googling and found a stackoverflow article on adding a redirect in web.config: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/42808668/redirect-http-to-https-automatically-web-config-plesk-12-0-18-for-windows Might be a better option if you have your own server?
- Pieter says: (16/03/2018 17:32:50)That is a perfect solution David. It works! I already used it for www.ortholubbeek.be today. Many thanks. This saves me an entry in IIS.
You know, I'm a Google fan. I really like many of their products, like gmail, calendar, drive, docs, etc.
A little hour ago, I setup a Google Cloud Server (https://cloud.google.com) and I'm already hosting a QS demo site on a Windows 2016 Data Center Edition. There was not 1 issue, and I have the feeling the entire process is automated with no human interventions whatsoever. And I have a FULL YEAR to test this thing, for FREE. And even if I would signup for the paid version, I would pay not even 25% of what I pay now.
I like that.
Btw, not only you can deploy all sorts of servers, you can also deploy 100's of applications (CMS, e-Commerce) via the Cloud Launcher, each time calculating their price. I wonder what it would take to get QS on their list !
- David says: (23/02/2018 13:53:01)So for $56 month you get the latest MS server and 50Gb disk space, that's pretty good. Didn't see how much RAM you get with that or if you can scale it. They have a truckload of solutions, more than AWS, Azure I think?
- Pieter says: (23/02/2018 15:04:00)Exactly David. But the most important thing: you're dealing with Google, not with some low (or high!) cost hosting company that can disappear with every blow in the wrong direction.
It has 3,75 GB of RAM, but that can also be scaled indeed. - Bob says: (24/02/2018 17:11:23)<ahem> Who does backups?
- Pieter says: (24/02/2018 17:58:53)Bob, you can easily create additional disks for basic file backup, and/or snapshots for full backups. It's all in the control panel.
I recently discovered an HTML5 element I had never heared of: the HTML Canvas. I dived into this because I'm a teacher in web programming nowadays and I needed a fun way to learn coding. The HTML Canvas element is perfect for the job. I'm working on a new website about the topic. Make sure to check it out. Hope you get as excited as I am about this.
Below one of my scripts. There is no video, jpg or gif involved here. It's 100% pure JavaScript and HTML. Check out the html/javascript source!
Forget EVERYTHING you've ever learned about SEO. It's over.
Create a Google Business. It's all you need to show up first in the Google results.
After my pessimistic post about Microsoft's dumping Webmatrix few days ago, I needed some positive vibes. And what happens? Mobirise releases v3!
I admit. I am a fan of this thing from day 1. If you want to impress customers with a stunning - mobile first - web design, use Mobirise. Get a grip on it. It's not even that complicated. As a matter of fact, it's ridiculously simple.
Slides, galleries, background videos, sticky header, mobile menus, numerous predefined text blocks and image/video positions, social media integration... You name it, you got it. And it's all free.
It's still possible to use QuickerSite in combination with Mobirise. But in all honesty, the added value of QS is being reduced with every new version they release. The things I would typically keep on using QS for is the intranet (multi-user), the forms, the web based approach (rather than using a PC tool). But ... to be very honest, I am no longer convinced that web based content management is the only way to go. Many of the QuickerSites I host can easily be managed with a tool like Mobirise. Many of my customers do not change their site very often anyway. Why not use Mobirise for these sites? On top of that, Mobirise exports html files only. They do not require any resources on the server.
I shoot myself in the foot again. I know. But that is because if I don't, somebody will shoot me in the back anyway. As sad as I was because of Microsoft dumping Webmatrix, as excited I am now about Mobirise. Give this tool a try. It's groundbreaking.
Webmatrix is dead. Development of Webmatrix, the all-in-one web development IDE has stopped. That is after the Visual Studio Express editions got buried as well. MS now suggests to use "VS Code" instead. I downloaded it. Gave it a try. I don't get it. Notepad++ is a much better code editor. And it is Open Source as well. Microsoft has lost the war on web development many years ago. Nobody cares about what MS is developing or suggesting anymore. That is painfully clear, except to the Microsoft developers themselves.
6 years ago I was very excited about Webmatrix though. It was available for a wide variety of Windows versions, including all Vista and 7 edtions (I think it was even available for all XP editions, up to Webmatrix v2).
Webmatrix is a very elegant solution to make non-coders and non-techies familiar with the basics of web-technology (cut-down local web server serving a wide variety of popular extensions). I never used it that way, but in theory it could be used as a standalone local app-server for all sorts of things like CRM, Invoicing systems, document management tools, etc, QuickerSite always ran perfectly well on Webmatrix. It has helped me to locally test-drive and develop things without the need for the heavier IIS Management Console (not available in many Windows versions anyway).
Microsoft has - in the past 15 years - changed strategy a little to often in my opinion. Look at PHP. PHP has not really changed over the past 15 years. There has been a lot of new libraries for PHP, yes, but the core PHP code syntax did not change much. Because of that, PHP gained in popularity year after year. PHP never lost users, only won new ones.
MS should have done the exact same with classic ASP (their answer to PHP in the mid 90's), rather than develop their ASP.NET 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 monsters. Similar to PHP, ASP could have gradually been upgraded with new functions, like dealing with zip-, pdf- and image-files.
Just my 2 cents.
- nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (19/07/2016 07:33:55)If you look carefully at the bottom ofthe page (just above the footer), there is a link to download Webmatrix.
- Pieter says: (19/07/2016 07:47:37)Yeah Nick, I know. But it's cumbersome. Why does MS change tools (and coding philosophy) every other year? Webmatrix was a very easy all-in-one solution to locally run QuickerSite, amongst many other popular apps I have successfully installed my first WP, Drupal, Joomla and Umbraco with it. I had never been able to before Webmatrix.
- nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (19/07/2016 22:16:14)I realized that as soon as I posted it... ( that I misunderstood the real reason of your post).
Microsoft never cared, never cares, and will never care about their customers and users. Anything they do is out of pure greed, maximizing their profits and illegally gaining monopoly status, as they were punished for those actions in the past. Who knows why they are pushing this new technology... but I guarantee you that the reason is money driven somehow, if not now, down the line.
They have become a very pathetic and unethical company, especially with their windows 10 tactics. - JohnW says: (27/12/2016 12:47:01)Re Visual Studio Express editions, I think it's worth pointing that MS Visual Studio Community edition is now available free. Community edition offers what the Express editions offered but unlike the express editions it allows you install support for non Microsoft languages, (so if you want to try your hand with Django you now have a realistic free alternative to Eclipse)
Community uses IIS Express rather than Cassini as its built in dev server, which is good news as Cassini doesn't support Classic ASP, and like the Express editions, Community has intellisense for Classic ASP. (One thing which always baffles me is that intellisense for ADODB objects doesn't work in any VS version on Win 7 but it does on Win 8).
Obviously it's not exactly a lightweight programme - the install took about two and a half hours on my laptop, but once you've been through that it's nice. I agree that Webmatrix offers a better user experience than VSCode.
I don't think MS was wrong to develop ASP.net, but I don't see why they couldn't have continued with Classic ASP in parallel, rather than actively trying to kill it off. They could also have given it a completely different name. Loads of people on Stack Overflow seem to think that "Classic ASP" means webforms rather than MVC. I got into Classic ASP coding in the late 90s when I had a Win 97 machine, which came with Personal Web Server, and it was easy to get up and running. When XP superseded it there was no dev server in the Home edition, one needed Pro, which included IIS. I think this the biggest reasons why Classic ASP lost a lot of users.
Yesterday I released QuickerSite v43. QuickerSite v42 was the longest living version of QuickerSite ever. And actually, QuickerSite v43 is mainly a service release - fixing some small issues (most of them were never reported). There is no reason to upgrade a site to v43.... except...
...if you are into Bootstrap!
QuickerSite v43 ships with a new menu-variable: [QS_BOOTSTRAPMENU_3] This variable flushes out the QuickerSite menu in a Bootstrap 3 compatible syntax. You can see it in action over here: http://pingendo.quickersite.com. I used Pingendo - http://pingendo.com/ for this QuickerSite. Pingendo is an excellent app used for rapid Bootstrap prototyping.
At this very moment however, I am upgrading some websites with the help of Mobirise. Check out some examples:
I also put up a video explaining the basics on how to convert a Mobirise website to a QuickerSite template. Check it out! This is not gonna be as easy as uploading an Artisteer template. Despite the fact that Bootstrap templates look like they keep it "small and simple", .... they're not. The possibilities are endless and at this point, I still have to learn a lot before making up my mind how to further automate things in QuickerSite. And also... Bootstrap 4 is around the corner, so there as well I expect some important changes.
That's it for now!
- Bob says: (15/03/2016 13:31:02)It would have been easier to start getting my head around Mobirise if the included project file was the template you used.
Looks interesting though. - Pieter says: (15/03/2016 13:36:11)Bob, I think only the main image is different... apart from that, it's the exact same template... Thanks for reporting this... I will have to update that in the download file.
- David says: (15/03/2016 13:47:14)Hi Pieter, while your in the code base can you update the version constant, the copy I downloaded last night is showing 4.2 - Cheers
- Pieter says: (15/03/2016 13:49:20)I will David. Thanks!
- David says: (15/03/2016 13:52:26)Forgot to mention, thanks so much for the updates and the work you've done adding Mobirise support. It's good that you're keeping the old dog alive
- Pieter says: (15/03/2016 14:02:22)@David & Bob, both issues are fixed in the current downloads.
Well... we have already had more buzz, more bugs and more animo than we had in the past 18 months with v42.
ok, i'm my cynical self again - forgive me
- Karl says: (28/03/2016 21:10:54)Mobirise. I have been struggling with Mobrise functionalities. To me it is not intuitive. Your video for converting to QS was helpful. I am now going through a youtube series (27 videos by Brian Haferkamp) explaining Mobirise. Here is first video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_pO6xTRZVA&ebc=ANyPxKqMpgWRbTphFc-l0OzA21vOxW9glzQ8BK23pVmvB06Lk-Q7QPagfyuhvGzYJe1FOTm5BEt_j7ua3TlIlHJoKSIBpDESVQ.
Mobirise is clearly not as sophisticated as Artisteer. - Pieter says: (05/04/2016 21:24:05)Mobirise is not as sophisticated as Artisteer indeed. You're absolutely right about that Karl. The main difference with Artisteer is that Mobirise is not focussing on content management. Most Mobirise websites I have seen so far do not have much content (up to 5 pages mostly filled with pictures).
But there is a need for an app like Mobirise. Their (new) forums are very busy: http://forums.mobirise.com/
I'm not pushing anyone towards Mobirise, don't get me wrong. What I'm saying is: we - as QS users - can look at Mobirise as yet another resource for creating modern templates. That is how I use it anyway. I have used Mobirise for about 6 QuickerSite so far. And customers really like it. But it requires some planning on how to deal with the navigation, the one-page design, the various sections, etc. - Mik says: (26/05/2016 18:24:41)The examples you have made Pieter, are the made with v4.3? I mean the scrolling effect. Also the "Accordeon effect". I have marked the "Accordeon effect", but it seems not to Work.
- Pieter says: (26/05/2016 22:11:21)Mik, make sure you add the JAVASCRIPT variable at the bottom of the template. Also check if you do not face jQuery issues (use F12 in your browser)
I do not often share personal and family things, but for the image below I am happy to make an exception. Few weeks ago, my wife took this picture of our 5 year old daughter. She looks like she really is: a real PITA! But one that you cannot refuse anything to :)
- doc says: (07/01/2015 07:30:16)what's mean "PITA" ?
- Pieter says: (08/01/2015 20:03:03)
- nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (09/01/2015 00:22:51)I saved this post. When she grows up, and actually when you grow old, and she has to make a decision to take you in, or put you in a home (more like a mental hospital), I will show her this post.
Her decision will only take about 3 seconds then... even though looking at her face, she looks like a real PITA !!! (I guess after this, we will be roommates in the mental hospital now). - Karl says: (16/03/2015 18:05:22)You think you have problems? Wait until she has a boy friend. The poor guy won't know what hit him :)
For the first time in my entire career, I am asked to build a mobile website for a long time customer. And I am already stuck, before I got even started.
The question that keeps me busy for the moment is: shall we create a new responsive design for the existing website, or shall we setup a separate mobile site, under a new (sub) domain (e.g. http://m.mysite.com)?
My customer is a car-dealer. Their guidelines for dealer-websites push towards creating a separate website for mobile devices. As a webdesigner, I think this is an outdated approach. I would rather use a responsive design. But who am I?
I did some research. Most car-sites I visit are not responsive. Same for many other sites, like news-sites, newspapers, etc. The vast majority of (bigger) sites are simply not responsive. They have seperate websites for mobile devices.
Artisteer choose to add responsive behaviour to their webdesigner tool as from v4.x. So does www.jstemplates.com. But was that the best approach? We could have created a seperate tool to create mobile websites instead. Given the actual situation, this might have made more sense. I believe it has kept Artisteer from growing as a designer software. At some point, it got stuck in the mud with this responsive thing.
A final thought: How can you design a web template that shows "more or less" the same content, images (and other media) on both 800px and 2560px screens? Simple: you can't. The "more or less" is important though. If your website has a lot of content, you will most likely be better off using a seperate design for mobile devices. If your website is relatively small, and it does not contain too much media, you can try a responsive design. Well, that's how I see it - for now...
Any suggestion?
- nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (17/09/2014 10:52:36)My thoughts on your final thought (by now you all know where I stand on responsive design) -
Quote: "How can you design a web template that shows "more or less" the same content, images (and other media) on both a 800px and 2560px screens? Simple: you can't."
I totally disagree, because you simply can !
You can designate the content for each device with media queries.
Create divs for your content, and add the appropriate classes to reflect for each device, of course you don't have to worry about the desktop view, since all the content will always be visible there. For the smaller screens, you can decide which text to be shown on tablets and/or phones, and you can do the same with all elements, from sidebars, to images, to videos, and even footer or header if you wanted to.
So you can configure any page to have all the content shown for desktops, less content for tablets, and even less content for phones.
I'll have a demo tomorrow.
The other alternative is to have a second mobile web site, and your workload will be doubled. I am not going to even mention how google could shred you to pieces, since now you have duplicate content. As I said, hello 2009. - Pieter says: (17/09/2014 11:12:14)Thanks Nick. Yes I know where you stand for :)
The point is: if you have a dozen of areas in your design, and you have to decide on their position and visibility for 3 mainstream resolutions (<640,<1024), you end up with a VERY complex setup, for both the designer and the end-user.
And it does not solve another important issue: some images will easily download on a laptop connected to wifi, but not with a phone's GPRS signal. So you might need at least 2 versions of each and every image, a hi-res and a low-res. That is how many sites do it!
2009? Yeah right! You know... quite a few things were much better in 2009 (and before). It isn't always changing for the good you know... - doc says: (19/09/2014 12:20:38)I am in agreement with pieter. is already difficult for a user to understand simple concepts such as the proportions of the images, think what he can ay about prepare different versions of the same image!
I personally prefer the responsive design, it is certainly not the ideal solution but doing her job, especially with the customer. or better with low-medium customers type
the idea of having a specific site for mobile, terrifies me. Customers (or their staff) being crazy to the idea of having to manage the news 2 times a week.
if they then think of having to manage even a separate version, perhaps with different texts (for google) in a multilingual site .... i can't thinking about.... - dynamic says: (13/10/2014 16:45:33)Hi, both works for me. You dont need 2 sites. Responsive design works for small and medium sites, but if you want a big site is better a mobile site. Why?. Because with responsive design you can hide areas o divs using css, but when you have a lot of content loading css could be a nightmare, your css file will be big and the final user will feel the slowness of the website.
With a mobile site, using constants you can load what you need, you can use the same database.
I added a Facebook "like box" to this website. It took me a while to figure out the bits and bytes. See video below for some tips & tricks.
Yahoo has adopted a new security policy. Search Google for "yahoo dmarc changes".
This has an important consequence in case you use a Yahoo-email as the sending address for email messages. It simply does no longer work (in most cases). It depends on the SMTP server settings though.
The workaround would be to use custom SMTP server settings in your QuickerSite admin panel (available from QuickerSite 4.0).
