When landlords of older houses hear the phrase “up to code,” they shudder, because if the City singles them out to pass inspection to make sure their rental property is up to code, it often means some expensive or tedious repairs within a short timeframe. But luckily, good coding doesn’t involve expensive materials or labor (unless you’re hiring someone else to do it), but organization, logic, and attention to detail (and of course, knowledge of the language in which you’re coding). It also helps to use which language is most appropriate for the task. For instance, avoid writing a lot of styles into the HTML–save that for the CSS, which is much more powerful at styling.

Recently, the big news was that Getty Images–a huge stock photo company that has been around for many many years, and got really big doing print design photography–recently came out and gave permission (with certain strings attached) to use their vast library of images on blogs and non-commercial web use.

For my Capstone project I chose to do a cookbook, as I’ve been accumulating recipes I’ve made on little pieces of paper in a huge stack in a bookshelf in my kitchen. I took the plunge and coded my project in PHP using the artisan framework Laravel. Laravel for PHP is like JQuery for Javascript–it’s not a language, per se, but a complex library of functions that one can hook into to create applications more quickly and securely–Laravel does some heavy lifting, but has a large learning curve, especially as it is all object-oriented. I could (and probably should) devote a whole blog to Laravel.

The term “blog” comes from “web log,” which, similar to the “Captain’s Log” made famous by Star Trek, is merely a series of articles or posts or entries chronicling something ongoing, similar to a diary, but out in the public eye, for everyone to see. Content is not limited to merely personal journals, but pretty much any subject you can imagine (including a Technical blog!). Essentially, it’s self-publishing, for the web.

The rise of content management systems, or “CMS” (as I will hereafter refer to it), has enabled many people to start webpages, particularly blogs, by themselves, without having to learn any technical knowledge or programming languages, or even design. All they have to do is provide content, and BINGO! instant gratification new website created–in many cases without even needing to set up a hosting account. It has never been so easy for a novice to set up a web page, and have it look fairly decent (thanks to templates). Why? All because of Content Management Systems.

Face it, social media can feel like a bit of a blind date sometimes–there’s no guarantee that you’ll get a response, or what the response will be, positive or negative. But, rather than be discouraged, or stop before you start, consider that honing your message will help a great deal–putting goals in place before you start for what type of exposure, engagement, and interest you’d like to create, and defining measurable metrics that coincide with your business goals.

This blog article looks at server-side install for three different content management systems: WordPress, Drupal, and Concrete-5. The process for each CMS was the same, starting out. Create a database (this can be set up through Cpanel with MySQL databases or through PHP MyAdmin, depending on how your Cpanel is set up, security-wise). Create a user-admin for that database. Make a note of the user and password you used to create the database, and store that somewhere–you will be using it later! Download the CMS from whatever web page hosting it (i.e. drupal.org, wordpress.org.) and uncompress the zip file.

API stands for Application Programming Interface and is a set of protocols and functionality, implemented on an internet connected system, which allows other software (usually apps) to request information and calculations from it. Essentially, APIs help build applications, and function similarly to plugins or widgets for WordPress–they add functionality, but without having to be in a CMS framework. you can plug code right into html–with some javascript and jquery to help, to install APIs into your website or application. They are often the go-betweens in the communication between people and services.

Some companies have been resisting addition of social media for marketing, but change is inexorable, and it is better to get ahead on the emergent paradigm than to rest on laurels–trust me, I’m a print designer. I know all about letting change and technology progressing and turning a blind eye until suddenly, the market has changed. It’s not pretty. “It’s easier to keep up than catch up” the old adage goes, and all of the old marketing dogs are busy learning new tricks to keep up with the business.