Site Development Log

Daily Development diary Days 1 - 4 My copy of Visual Studio 2005 Professional has now been installed on my new Vaio Laptop which has now been designated my development machine. The Vaio is such a joy to use, not only does it have a great keyboard to make writing code a more pleasant experience but it also has one of the best screens on any PC anywhere. I regularly calibrate the screen for colour and use it for making the final call on colour rendition with my digital imaging. (BTW it is not necessary to purchase Visual Studio Professional to develop a site like this, you can use the Free Visual Web Developer Edition from Microsoft) Microsoft Visual Studio both Pro and Express editions feature a web browser integrated into the help system. Searching for help not only produces help from the Microsoft MSDN Site but also any site on the Internet right there in your help page! I have the MSDN forum added in here as a "Help Favourite" and very useful it has proved to. The people in the forums are very helpful and even correct about 30% of the time! Thankfully even when they dont have the particular information you need they often push you in the right direction; I heartily recommend joining the MSDN community if you are serious about .NET development. Another useful thing found on the MSDN site is a lot of links to Video tutorials, I spent a lot of time these first few days watching these. One word of caution though they do tend to be heavily oriented towards the drag and drop data controls, convenient for putting quick and dirty views of data on screen but a little wimpish for this kind of work! Next step was to download the "Personal Web Site" template from Microsofts Visual Web Developer Express site. This template makes for an excellent introduction to constructing a site of this complexity. There are also numerous articles available on the Internet written by developers who have customised it thus giving you a head start on understanding the site structure. My first customisation was to create a Manage Site Content page to allow me to edit the content you are reading, (including this) from an on line interface rather than rolling up my sleeves and editing HTML. Day 5 Today I uploaded the incomplete site to my hosting company including the two SQL Server databases attached to this site. Before going on I must say a heartfelt THANKYOU! to the boys in the support team at Network82 for their unfailing patience and support helping me do this. One valuable lesson I have learnt in recent years is that if you want good service think small in your choice of provider. If I had been trying to do this through a large hosting company like Lycos for example I would have been talking to a different person on the help desk every time and would have had to wait hours between calls for a response. Likewise when my ISP was taken over by Orange UK I immediately lost my Broadband connection and was still not online 8 weeks later. As soon as I sacked them and signed up with Eclipse Internet I was back online by the end of the week. I have had to call the support desk twice since I joined them and got straight through each time and my problem was dealt with immediately. So trust me, THINK SMALL when choosing a service provider. Now I have my web site running against two SQL Server databases, one to handle site related data and the other to handle my photography business. Day 6 Its a Saturday so I am taking it easy and even managed to drag myself off to the gym! Today I added a section to the Manage Site Content page to enable me to write up this diary. Created this page you are reading it on and then added the Snap add in to the site to preview all the external links. Now to put my feet up in front of a DVD! Goodnight.br/> Day 7 Busy day today, learnt how to handle single quotes in a string when storing it in a SQL Server database, vital for correctly displaying the site content such as this text! Then I created the tables I needed to begin creating a blog for this site as well as added a table for tracking each version of the database driving this so I can keep a clear history of it's development.

Daily Development diary

Days 1 - 4

My copy of Visual Studio 2005 Professional has now been installed on my new Vaio Laptop which has now been designated my development machine. The Vaio is such a joy to use, not only does it have a great keyboard to make writing code a more pleasant experience but it also has one of the best screens on any PC anywhere. I regularly calibrate the screen for colour and use it for making the final call on colour rendition with my digital imaging.

(BTW it is not necessary to purchase Visual Studio Professional to develop a site like this, you can use the Free Visual Web Developer Edition from Microsoft)

Microsoft Visual Studio both Pro and Express editions feature a web browser integrated into the help system. Searching for help not only produces help from the Microsoft MSDN Site but also any site on the Internet right there in your help page! I have the MSDN forum added in here as a "Help Favourite" and very useful it has proved to. The people in the forums are very helpful and even correct about 30% of the time! Thankfully even when they dont have the particular information you need they often push you in the right direction; I heartily recommend joining the MSDN community if you are serious about .NET development.
Another useful thing found on the MSDN site is a lot of links to Video tutorials, I spent a lot of time these first few days watching these. One word of caution though they do tend to be heavily oriented towards the drag and drop data controls, convenient for putting quick and dirty views of data on screen but a little wimpish for this kind of work!

Next step was to download the "Personal Web Site" template from Microsofts Visual Web Developer Express site. This template makes for an excellent introduction to constructing a site of this complexity. There are also numerous articles available on the Internet written by developers who have customised it thus giving you a head start on understanding the site structure.

My first customisation was to create a Manage Site Content page to allow me to edit the content you are reading, (including this) from an on line interface rather than rolling up my sleeves and editing HTML.

Day 5

Today I uploaded the incomplete site to my hosting company including the two SQL Server databases attached to this site. Before going on I must say a heartfelt THANKYOU! to the boys in the support team at Network82 for their unfailing patience and support helping me do this. One valuable lesson I have learnt in recent years is that if you want good service think small in your choice of provider. If I had been trying to do this through a large hosting company like Lycos for example I would have been talking to a different person on the help desk every time and would have had to wait hours between calls for a response. Likewise when my ISP was taken over by Orange UK I immediately lost my Broadband connection and was still not online 8 weeks later. As soon as I sacked them and signed up with Eclipse Internet I was back online by the end of the week. I have had to call the support desk twice since I joined them and got straight through each time and my problem was dealt with immediately. So trust me, THINK SMALL when choosing a service provider.

Now I have my web site running against two SQL Server databases, one to handle site related data and the other to handle my photography business.

Day 6

Its a Saturday so I am taking it easy and even managed to drag myself off to the gym! Today I added a section to the Manage Site Content page to enable me to write up this diary. Created this page you are reading it on and then added the Snap add in to the site to preview all the external links. Now to put my feet up in front of a DVD! Goodnight.br/>

Day 7

Busy day today, learnt how to handle single quotes in a string when storing it in a SQL Server database, vital for correctly displaying the site content such as this text! Then I created the tables I needed to begin creating a blog for this site as well as added a table for tracking each version of the database driving this so I can keep a clear history of it's development.

Bradley Atkins

Art Poetry and Coding