November 13: Dan Baker on Using VFP as your CMS

Our next meeting will be Tuesday, November 13 at 7 PM. Member Dan Baker will speak on “Using VFP as Your Content Management System for an Information-Rich Website.” This is part 1 of what Dan sees as several presentations on this subject. Dan Baker is a market research analyst in the telecom market who lives in the Poconos and has used his VFP skills to develop what he calls a “information rich” website for his business. The website is an on-line magazine, Black Swan Telecom Journal http://bswan.org. Here’s a short list of the topics Dan plans on discussing in his first talk on the subject. 1. Why website development is a VFP business opportunity of its own, regardless of whether VFP web applications are used or not. 2. What is an “information-rich” website actually? Why is the VFP desktop with FTP uploads an excellent choice for managing a website of this type. 3. The kind of websites where a VFP solution does not make sense as a business opportunity. 4. Why a VFP developer should not be intimidated by rich websites or by competition from Dreamweaver and traditional web designers. 5. How to create a professional site by “standing on the shoulders of giants”, borrowing great design concepts all over the web. 6. Why VFP is often a better choice than web-based content frameworks. 7. How I organize images, CSS, articles, “include” files and other content in folders for easy management. 8. How you can retrieve server-side files and webpage components without using any on-line database. 9. How an information rich website’s pages are organized. 10. Naming conventions in organizing your webpage. 11. Bringing out the artist inside. A quick discussion on the value of images and how to manage them. 12. Helpful training websites and places to find great stuff to enhance your knowledge and make life easier as a website developer. Dan also plans to distribute sample web files including simple server-side code written ASP so that you can play with the concepts and see how the website is organized on your own. In addition, we’ll have a Southwest Fox 2012 review. We need speakers for upcoming meetings. Please let Jim Connolly (JConnolly@jtca.com) know if you have something to share with the group.