Re: [cgiapp] Re: cgiapp specification best practice

[Sean Davis <suppressed>]

On 3/21/06 7:48 AM, "Mark Stosberg" <suppressed> wrote:

> On 2006-03-21, Paul Johnston <suppressed> wrote:
>> Mark Stosberg wrote:
>>> We have a page on the wiki dedicated to this broad topic:
>>> http://cgiapp.erlbaum.net/cgi-bin/cgi-app/index.cgi?BestPractices
>>> 
>>> If after reviewing that you are still curious, try framing a more
>>> specific question about a particular aspect you are interested in
>>> discussing the best practices for.
>> 
>> I took a look at that, and it's got some really interesting resources on
>> it.  However - what I'm interested in is the process of building a site.
>> An example would be:
>> 
>> 1) Design what run-modes are required
>> 2) Design the right number of templates
>> 3) Design and Build external objects
>> 4) Build plugins for cgiapp
>> 5) Build test-suite
>> 6) Build run-modes
>> 7) Test
>> 8) Plug In to templates
> 
> Paul,
> 
> I'm afraid the topic of "building a site" and your exhaustive list of
> what's involved is still a particularly broad topic to discuss-- enough
> content is involved for an all day seminar.
> 
> If you would like detailed consulting on all aspects of the website
> construction process, I might suggest hiring a consultant for a day or
> two to jumpstart your engines.
> 
> To be digestable in this medium of mutual volunteer support, I really
> think it would work best if you could pick a specific question which
> might be comprehensively answered in 15 minutes or less.

Paul,

Just to add a bit here (perhaps tangentially), I have used cgiapp to develop
a set of online databases for gene expression data.  The content isn't as
important as the design process used.  In my case, I am not a full-time
programmer (in fact, I am not really a programmer by training at all), so my
concept of design was to work with biologists closely over several months to
come up with a set of pages that were user-friendly, fast, and powerful.
CGI::Application is so flexible that adding pieces to it, removing pieces,
switching templating solutions, or switching database backends on the fly is
possible.  

So, while design is important, it can (and should) also maintain some
flexibility, in my opinion--we certainly benefited from having some slow,
clunky code at the beginning so that the user-experience in the end was
better, but our "design process" won't work well in other situations.  In
summary, I'm not sure that a "best practices" (as defined in a list like
that given above) is possible (or even desirable) given the innumerable
types of projects to which and settings in which CGI::Application can be
applied.  Specific guidelines can be given ("Use a template system"), but
beyond that, I think the larger design process should remain individualized
and trying to define a best practices for that will be difficult.

Just my 2 cents worth.

Sean


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