DuoMesh Project Blog

After extensive testing I have now removed the Beta tag from DuoMesh and I have now release it as final. The core features from the projects Aims and Objective have been implemented. This includes support for: text (e.g. blogs), audio (e.g. podcasts) and video based media (e.g. vidcasts). Towards the end of 2006 I did I have a list of possible features that I could integrate, but some of these proved to be too time consuming to implement.

The final list of features includes support for:

• Text based RSS and Atom Feeds
• Image based RSS and Atom Feeds from such websites as Flickr or Gallery
• Podcasts including audio and video formats
• Weather information

Enjoy!

By default all websites contain www. This is something that web users have become familiar with, but many websites are now automatically removing the www. from the URL to make their domain shorter and cleaner. According to some websites this also improves your ranking on Google.

To achieve this on an Apache web server, add the following code into a file called .htaccess

[Source: bigbold.com - 1 December 2006]

To match with the new template/design I have created on the home page, I have now updated the DuoMesh Project Blog to incorporate the mesh look!

Continuing from my first design, I am still using the mesh look. But I have changed it so that that its now white text on a dark background. I have also made use of rounded corners on all the main boxes to make the design more pleasing to the eye. So far I have received positive feedback for this design, so I think I will be using this design and possibly gradually improving/tweaking it as I go along. This mock up was made in Photoshop and I will be building it in CSS and div layers rather than tables as it makes it more accessible to other devices, just by changing the stylesheet.

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Now that I have chosen project title DuoMesh, wanted to design my logo and site template around a mesh look. Selecting the right font and typographic style is important to set right mood/feel for the site.

After researching for various fonts online I came across a site called better fonts which has a wide verity of fonts (over 10,000 free fonts) my main choice for a font is that it needed to be a Sans-serif font as personally I think it looks simpler, cleaner and easier to read. My final choice of font was called Microsoft JhengHei which is actually a heiti font for Chinese characters, but when English characters are input it outputs a clean and pleasing font.

After various attempts of creating a suitable logo I choose logo 24 from my logo designs.
24:

This logo incorporates a drop reflection which has been skewed to the right and also uses the background A5.

Keeping with the site name I chose to design the site template around the idea of a mesh.
My main ideas for DuoMesh's design include:

• It should be clean and easy to use
• Navigation should be clear and users should be able to identify where they are on the site
• The sites design should be relative to the branding (e.g. could be mesh like)
• Content should be accessible and customisable
• The website site should render/be displayed correctly in the following browsers:
• Internet Explorer 5, 6 and 7
• Firefox 1 and 2
• Opera 9
• Safari 2
• Netscape and Camino should work as they now rely on other browsers rendering engines (Firefox and Internet Explorer)
• The design should be attractive to the user
• The site's content should be able to draw the user in and encourage them to repeat visit the website

My initial design idea was to use black text on a white background. Using a mesh as the background proved to be a bit of a problem as the grey background didn't make the website stand out at all and it didn't look very professional. I will be working to improve this design before I make it final:

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After a few months thinking of possible website names I have settled on the name DuoMesh.

Duo meaning that the site will work on the web and on mobile devices.

Mesh meaning that the content is synchronised between the web, mobile devices and RSS content.

I have purchased DuoMesh.com and setup hosting for my new website with UKHost4U.
There were many news related and non-news related names which I had thought of, but the main reason for this name was:

• Its easy to remember
• Its sharp and to the point
• It suggests that it can be used on two types of devices or can access a range of information from it
• The domain name was available
• The name has meaning to it, and isn't just some catchy sounding name

After deciding on a list of questions that should asked in my questionnaire, I have posted it online.

This will allow a greater user base access to my survey, and it also makes it significantly superior for distribution. There are various different websites which allow you to create online surveys, but most of them will start charging a fee after a certain number of people have taken part in it.

In order to combat this problem I researched into different self hosted surveys. I found 2 open source questionnaire PHP scripts:

• PHPSurveyor
• phpESP

After experimenting with both of these software packages I found that the installation and setup of phpESP a better experience and also had similar features as its rival PHPSurveyor.

The online questionnaire can be found here:
http://www.sebflipper.com/questionnaire
(this maybe moved once I find a suitable domain name to host the website)

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Update: this has now been moved to:
http://questionnaire.duomesh.com