The i3pep.org website is now on the Wordpress system. The different essays and articles have been transferred on to this. This has been done keeping with the policy of best practices, and I must say that Wordpress is the solution to much of the data management problems of the website. Also, this has been possible because my webserver now supports the mod-rewrite that makes for an easier and real user friendly URLs.

Also, now the website has a nice and clean interface, a nice search facility, a beautiful sitemap - all this thanks to the authors of the various plugins of the wordpress community. And apart from this, the website continues to have its old (and robust) email contact form. All this means that the main technical frontend tools are in place. These are in addition to the very useful features that come along with wordpress - calendar, archives, categories - and the facility to use templates and stylesheets (the latter has not been implemented). Templates and stylesheets are quite useful for those websites whose focus is design.

One more thing is that along with the nice design the webpages are completely printer friendly.

I hope that the visitors and members would find the new way and design of this website to be interesting. The articles shall continue to be as useful as ever.

Some background and some nostalgia

The idea for the i3pep.org website started sometimes in April 2003. Searching through the internet for the different options, the hosting choice was narrowed on two freewebservers at Geocities and Freewebs. Both these sites are not maintained any more, and only serve as link to i3pep.org. At that time I was not even aware of the coding part, and started with simple html tags - no idea of css etc.

Meanwhile the blogging system of the Blogger was also tried out. However that was not used much or used very occasionally. Some of the blogs related to i3pep.org on Blogger are like South Asia, eJournal of Anup Mukherjee, etc. These blogs were started in the period of Blogspot. Now they have been re-christened as Blogger and is managed by Google.

[Now, off-course, there is no need of experimenting with such free-servers or blog-servers. Also currently there are no other websites that mirrors i3pep.org.]

The idea continued to grow and finally i3pep.org came into existence in the first week of the month of September 2003 during the auspicious period of festival of Ganesh Chaturthi. The objective of the website remains the same as when originally conceptualised - continuously endeavour to provide quality information on the various dimensions of its chosen areas.

Now i3pep.org has completed over one year of its existence. In this one year, much content have been added, and the website underwent certain changes (at least four) for better design and stability. It was initially coded in simple html with simple interface. However as needs seemed to increase, certain javascripts were used for better management of links. Again HTML itself did not seem to address the requirement of quick posting of articles. This was because any new article had to hard-coded and thereafter links upgraded in various files, and thereafter doing ftp of them all - adding new files and replacing the old ones.

Consequently couple of months back, it was decided to use php based blog system. Many different scripts were tested. The choice stopped at cutenews. This was a small and simple to use script. However within a week of using it, a better option seemed that was a variant of cutenews. This was in the form of AJ-Fork. This was definitely a much better improvement on the basic cutenews script. However again there were certain issues - one related to design, as the links (like new categories) were not updated, and one had to hardcode them. But more than that, it did not have clean URL, nor did it have the permanent links. As soon as an article would be archived, the links would change. Both there scripts used a simple text database structure.

Such technical issues were a problem. Usually in developing a full fledged website, it is better to first resolve the technical issues and then add content. This is important because if we keep adding content, without making the website technically sound, it becomes difficult to make changes later on. Also, some of the security aspects have also to be taken care of when designing a website. Technical issues become prominent because there is in a way a lock-in with the software/script that one is using.

For i3pep.org it has been the policy that one should use nothing, but the best. As one went up the learning curve like the way to use SQL databases, the focus shifted to using a full fledged CMS (content management system) like solution. The choice obviously was Wordpress. This website would have implemented wordpress system earlier, however as the new ver 1.3 was under development, it was thought better to wait for sometime. However when the ver 1.21 was released, the process was hastened.

This website has now been completely revamped. It is now on Wordpress. The previous design and the structure of contents have been modified to make it more easier to browse. It can be said that the design and structure of the website has finally reached stability. Now, that the design and other technical issues have been resolved, the articles would be put up on the website on a regular basis. You can access the articles from the www.i3pep.org Homepage.

The website now has a definite ‘professional’ look. This also accompanies the ability of the user to Send eMail directly to i3pep.org. But more important is the ability of the user to communicate with the website itself. A provision has been made in the form of Comment system. Visitors and users of this website are encouraged to express themselves and put it their comments. The website now also has a nice Sitemap. All this comes along with an easy to use Search option. The shift over to the PHP (hypertext preprocessor) based blog system is more targeted towards content management. The best way to find any article is the search page.

It was also thought to have a bulletin board of some sort. However the idea of a bulletin board has been junked for now, as the users have the ability to directly comment on different issues in the blog. Also, any feedback could be sent using the web-interface. Even though a bulletin board would have been a good feature, it was felt that the necessity of such a bulletin board has not yet arisen. At least currently, the website does not seem to require a bulletin board.

Another thing that is contemplated is a mailing list. This would most probably be only for members. The software of choice in this regard is the mailman. Another thing that was tried out was the chat system. However it was found to be totally unessential for the website at its current stage of existence. The chat system was consequently removed. Also, the files from the free-webservers have been removed, now they only redirect the users to this website. As always, there is no mirror of this website.

An important decision regarding design related to the layout of the webpage, particularly the location of the navigation links. Should they be at the top or the left or the right? It was finally decided that the navigation links be kept on the right side, as that would be useful for the print function. Due to formatting, some browsers are not able to take the whole visible page for print, and therefore trim out the right side. It was consequently decided that the main body of the write-up should be on the left hand side and the navigation links on the right hand side. This issue usually hapenned with the hard-coded HTML pages. However with Wordpress, every page is printer-frindly, and properly includes the contents.

Also, as part of its strategy of focus, the previous design of logo and also the reference to this website in normal usage has also been changed. Now the website is referred to as only i3pep.org. This was found important as part of a clear recall and recognition exercise. An important aspect relating to design was creation of the ‘Badge’ and the ‘Banner’. Both portray the ethos of the website. The Badge design has also been put up as ‘favicon’ to impart a distinct identity to the website.

Another aspect of design related to font size. In all the webpages standard readable font size has been kept. This also means that lesser effort would be required to read from the computer screen or the printout. In this matter a balance has been kept between readability and pleasant presentation of the text on screen for different webpages. This also includes the choice of colour of the text. The colour is light black or dark greyish, which does not tense the eyes when compared to using a full black colour.

The javascripts that this site now uses is part of the blog system. Also, as part of the learning curve and full usage of technology available, the website makes use of all the web technologies now available like HTML, Javascript, CSS, CGI, Perl, PHP, SSI, XML, RSS, ATOM and others wherever they are found useful. It is expected that older browsers would also be able to navigate properly. Another aspect of the technology for this website would be that of focus and compactness. Anything that is unessential would not be used. The website would be kept compact, useful and beautiful and without the unessential frills.

It would also be useful to mention here that the files that are uploaded to this website undergoes a thorough antivirus check. Also the webpages on this site are checked from the w3c validator for correctness of coding. Cross-browser compatibility is also checked for each webpage by testing on the most popular browsers viz. Internet Explorer, Netscape, Firefox and Opera. Also, all measures of web security are taken care of so as to prevent any sort of compromise with security aspects. That includes a strict ‘no to any form of spam’ policy. This is particularly true for the html pages and the files that are uploded via ftp. Since the implementation of the blog system, the whole process has become much simpler, and these checks are done only once when the index file is uploaded. After the upload the content addition is quite simple.

Update Dec 3, 2004

Web-locations of bulk of WP plugins:

1. Wordpress Wiki Plugin Page

2. Wordpress Plugins Database

3. Weblogtoolscollection

Update Aug 20, 2005

Few things to keep in mind when designing website and chosing software for website:

1. The most important is the structure of URL. It is very important that the URL does not change. A good website is one in which the URLs do not change for the particular articles. Different softwares provide for different structures of URL. Usually one should prefer such softwares that provide for clean URLs.

2. Then there are other important issues related to software of choice for the purpose of blog. Whether one would like to have a SQL database, or whether one would like to store the data in flat files - both have their positives and flip sides. If the SQl database goes under maintenance (which might happen on a few occasion), then the articles would not be accesible for such duration. On the other hand, the flat file databases, becomes unstable if the website is going to contain a large number of articles

3. Another important thing is whether one wishes to have multiple blogs, or whether a single blog would serve the purpose.

4. A very important criteria in deciding the software is who is the developer and the activity level in the community forum of the particular software. Usually a single developer does not augur well - as a single person may become preoccupied in other things or may simply lose interest in development of the software. A vibrant support forum is very much necessary - it shows that the software is alive.

5. Whether the particular software has the ability to add plugins or whether it works by hacking into the files for the purpose of modification of functions or behaviour of the software.

6. Flexibility in the ability to customise and make changes.

7. Ability to make changes in the website online, or whether one has to FTP everytime one needs to do any change. Obviously a software by which one can make changes online is much more preferable.

8. Nature of licensing. This is again important, whether the software is open source and licenced as such and does not come with any catch like putting any attendant conditions to its use (forcing the website using it to share the designs etc.)

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