SEO Competition — DocumentaryFlims.ca

DocumentaryFilms.ca (http://documentaryfilms.ca/) is up and running. It is not branded yet (the team is working on it) but contents are beginning to populate the site. There are some interesting and thought provoking documentaries from some of the talented Capilano University Documentary Film students. Go take a look. If you like to be more inform on what is being uploaded to the site, follow me on Twitter (@TweetLukeLau).

The skills I've learned from our Multi-Media class are definitely useful in this project.

This is all I can report at this time. Once the competition is over, I will post more details.

More Apple iOS App Development

Heard about another template based SDK for development Apple iOS apps. It is called PhoneGap. It is an open source SDK. It can be used to develop mobile applications on multiple platforms (iOS, Android, Blackberry, webOS, and Symbian WRT).

Both NimbleKit and PhoneGap lack good documentation, especially how-to tutorials. The getting started document does get you started (standard "Hello World" application) but it leaves you hanging as to what to do next.

A few Apple iOS applications were developed to test out these SDKs. Ones that would use of navigation bar and tab bar. The main objective was to see how easy / difficult it is to develop an application to utilize some of these standard Apple iOS device elements.

As well, spend a bit of time to see how to include a launch screen image as well as including a multiple application icon files for different devices. Have to say, this is probably the easiest experiment.

Issues Encountered

One of the biggest learning so far with NimbleKit was proper selection of Product (NimbleKit's terminology of device family: iPhone or iPad or iPhone/iPad) is very important when creating a NimbleKit project. Found that if iPhone was selected, the application does not work properly on an iPad even if the Project Settings' "Targeted Device Family" is for iPad or iPhone/iPad is selected. For examples:

1. Content rotation is choppy / blocky when the device is rotated. That is, a series black blocks (looks like the size of an iPhone) appears as the device rotates..
2. Click events do not appear to fire or the application is not detecting events bewhen the application is ran on an iPad.

Another issue encountered with NimbleKit was with auto orientation detection / support or rotating content as the device is rotated. It turns out every page has to have the follow piece of JavaScript code in order for content to automatically rotating between portrait and landscape.
function NKIsPageSupportsAutoOrientation()
{
return "yes";
}


The above issues were not encountered when using PhoneGap. Though, PhoneGap appears to have the highest learning curve. Please note that this is by no mean an official evaluation or comparison between NimbleKit and Phone.

Learning Drupal and Building a Website in 7 Weeks - Update 2

It has been a productive since the last update. Learned a lot and can visualize how utilize what has been learned so far in real-life situations. Based on what I have learned so far I have to say Drupal is very flexible system. It reminds me of SAP's business solutions. Highly customizable.

What exactly was accomplished?

• Gone thru chapters 5 to 7 of "Drupal 7" by David Mercer
• Basic Content
• Advanced Content
• Multimedia
• Installed / activated the following modules:
• Aggregator
• Book
• File
• Forum
• Image
• PHP filter
• Poll
• Chaos Tool Suite
• Wysiwyg with CKEditor (like — wish images can be uploaded instead of URLs)
• Views
• Learned how to create:
• Content Types
• Feed Aggregators
• Forums
• Image Styles
• Menus
• System Actions (e-mail notifications)
• Taxonomy Vocabularies
• Text Formats
• Triggers
• Users, Roles, and Permissions
• Configured some system settings:
• Account Settings
• File System
• Performance Settings
• RSS Publishing
• Site Information
• Created contents based on the following Content Types:
• Basic Page
• Blog
• Book (thumbs up)
• Custom Content Type
• Forum
• Poll
• Feed Aggregator (very cool and you can categorize each article)

Issues

Didn't run into too many issues. The biggest one was the installation instruction for CKEditor was not very clear. It looks like it is not necessary to install the CKEditor module. The Wysiwyg module only needed the CKEditor library.

The other issue is very minor. It has to do with the fact that I'm running a localhost web server off a Mac OS X (10.6) laptop which FTP is not enabled. Due to time contraint and there is a simple work around (simply unzip and copy the files/folders) I didn't try to figure out how to enable FTP so Drupal can use it to install modules, get updates, etc.

What's Next?

Can't wait to learn about Views and Theming (chapters 8 and 9 David Mercer's Drupal 7 book). Plus, I would really like to see how to show lower level menu items to show as drop-down menu off the main navigation tab (or some ways to show second level menu items).

Driving Traffics for Documentary Films

How easy is it to draw Internet traffic to a website? Is it possible to be ranked number 1 (being 1st on the 1st search result page) by all search engines in 5 weeks without buying up ads? Why do people goes to a website? Why do people goes back to the same website? Is it all about content? Is it all about content structure? Is it all about visual design? Is it all about keywords? Is it all about promoting the website at as many social networks and other websites as possible? Is it all about interconnecting links?

If you want to know, stay tune. This is exactly what one of my project is about to do and find out. If you already know and have tips to give, please leave them as comments to this blog post.

In my Interactive Design's SEO (Search Engine Optimization) class at Capilano University, we have been divided into 4 teams. Each team is working with a team students from the Documentary Film program. Each team is tasked to build a website, fill it with content, promote it, drive as much as traffics (good traffics — measured by Google Analytics) to it as possible.

Updates to the status of this project will be limited as this is a competition. But I will share my team's finding at the end of the project. Then again, you'll never know, I might leak a tactics here and there. So, come back often.

If you would like to help or stay on top of what we are doing, then Like my team's Facebook page called DocumentaryFilms.ca. Then watch for the URL to new website. The content will be interesting, entertaining, and fascinating.

"Hello World" Apple iOS App

Developed and deployed an Apple iOS application to an Apple iPad as a class assignment. The application was developed using NimbleKit. It is an SDK (a template within xCode) that allows developers to default Apple iOS application using HTML and JavaScript.

This sample application was super easy to do. Here are the basic steps (high level):

1. Start xCode and select new project using NimbleKit template
2. Make some changes to the default main HTML file
3. Create some icons and drag them into the project
4. Assign the icons to the application's plist (property list)
5. Set the bundle identifier in the application's plist
6. Select a code signing identity in the project settings
7. Select appropriate targeted device family (i.e., iPad) in the project settings
8. Change iOS deployment target if require in the project settings
9. Set the NimbleKit serial number in the application's AppDelegate.m file
10. Build

Learning Drupal and Building a Website in 7 Weeks - Update 1

Tasks completed:

• Enabled my Mac's Apache and PHP
• Installed MySQL 5.5
• Installed Drupal 7 (sandbox)
• Gone thru chapters 1 to 4 of "Drupal 7" by David Mercer

Had to do a couple of fixes:

1. In order for MySQL to startup either automatically or via the System Preferences Panel, It is necessary to execute the following command in Terminal. It appears this is only necessary for MySQL 5.5. Earlier versions (according to support forums) do not need to this fix.
   
   "sudo chown -R root:wheel /Library/StartupItems/MySQLCOM"
   
   
2. To allow Drupal to rewrite the URL properly, it is necessary to change $base_url in settings.php (in folder sites/default/).
   
   “$base_url = ‘http://localhost/~luke/drupal’;"
   

The concept of modules, blocks, theme, roles, and permissions seems easy enough and make sense. Can't wait to learn more.

Learning Drupal and Building a Website in 7 Weeks

For my Interactive Design's Direct Study class (a.k.a., learn on your own) I will be learning Drupal (an open source CMS, Content Management System). To aid my learning I will be building a website for an IT service provider based in Richmond, BC (A&T Systems Inc.).

A&T Systems Inc. currently does not have a website. The main objectives of the website is to let visitors learn about the company, and team members, their services, and showcase projects. Their customers are small to medium sized companies in Canada, United States of America, and China.

I have selected the latest release, Drupal 7, for this project. Why? Just because...

Why 7 weeks? It is because this is the last term of my Interactive Design study at Capilano University and there are only 7 weeks for this project. The last 6 weeks of the term will be an internship. I'm for hire...

Searching for step-by-step Drupal 7 tutorials was a bit of a challenge. Most tutorials are for Drupal 6 and earlier. For now, iTunes podcasts (by Drupal School, Drupal Video, and Lynda.com) and a book called "Drupal 7" (by David Mercer) are my study aids.