Forum Moderators: buckworks
I am a disabled person who can no longer work at a regular job.I have a ton of software development and some website development experience. But what I do not have is a real good idea of what this job will entail. I want to do this because it is something that I can do to be somewhat productive and hopefully earn a little extra income to support my family.
My expereince is basically as follows
1. Strong C/C++/Ada development (last position was developing software for the NASA Mission Control Center, Space Shuttle and Space Station onboard Avionics software)
2. Inital development of a secure sire for the U.S. Department of State. (HTML and Perl)
3. Development of a personal website which consisted primarily of an extended resume.
4. Development of HTML pages for displaying items to be sold on eBay.
Is there somewhere I can go that can give me the framework of what I will be faced with and need to do as a webmaster?
I notice you dont mention ASP or PHP, I think you should know these before taking on anything serious.
I have "played" with ASP and JSP but nothing that I would call serious work, so I have some concept of how the active server page system works. I just went and picked up some documentation on SOAP and am trying to make my way through it right now.
For curiosity, why PHP?
With experience in both of these (perhaps somewhat more in C++) I think you would be better looking at developing with Java, Struts & JSP's using tiles and the J2EE framework. At first you might think it is an overkill, but I can assure you that a small store can grow endlessly.
-George
I have "played" with ASP and JSP but nothing that I would call serious work
If you go with .Net which is the successor to ASP, you can use your C programming skills.
You can download the .Net framework and WebMatrix (development tool) from the asp.net site.
I think I'd start by asking the owner exactly what he expects you to do!
Does he only want you to build the structure or populate it as well, or will the owner load up the databases?
If it's just putting a store online, stores are like toasters, there are a ton of them out there and many better than <ick> OsCommerce, it's a total pain in the adminstration area [you'll click yourself to death trying to get anything done in that poorly designed obtuse mess] and most of OsCommerce all look alike. Giving him an OsCookieCutter (as I call it) probably wouldn't be the best decision.
With that said MonsterCommerce is nice and so are a bunch of others, it costs per month but most of what you need is built right in and you get support. I would get a list of his requirements and look around at all the options, tons of free software to meet many needs and some good paid services that have SUPPORT when you or the owner need it opposed to the self-service freebie world.
If he's like most brick and mortar people I know, the more hand holding and complete service that can get in the daily operations the more successful they'll be.
Do some research, it's all there for the taking.
Good luck.
How about this approach.
A webmaster is responsible for building and maintaining a business entity that has a cyber front door. If I look at it that way I can apply my MBA background and do what is necessary to establish and maintain that business, but with the cyber front door.
The tricky part of this approach is probably going to be the actual owner of the store and how much she want's to invest in the cyber store. This is the same problem as an owner would have with a physical front door. But the owner has much more knowledge of what they want the physical store to be and will need techical guidance for the cyber door.
What do you think?
