On Monday I set the scene. We left our protagonist facing a task which all the wise men said was impossible. Fit stuff for stories.
And it does make a good story, with lots of false starts and lessons learned—as well as obstacles overcome. And there is stuff here to interest anyone who has contemplated moving or reconstructing a Web site. What is more, if anyone is in the same predicament, looking at a Web site based on a proprietary CMS, I have a lot to pass on.
But now I am in another predicament. I am too busy to go into the detail. To give you an idea: I have been building a new Web site for a local organisation which already has a Web site. We agreed a date in mid-March for the switch. But the organisation’s old Web site has vanished from the Web! They are now asking me if they can switch this week.
So: here is a summary of what I did to reconstruct the proprietary CMS site.
- I created a MySQL database, together with 4 tables
- I populated the tables partly with data that the previous designer kindly handed on to me, in the form of an Excel spreadsheet, but mostly with data that I copied and pasted from the site.
- I created the main ‘site’ pages as static pages, simply copying the HTML that the previous dynamic system generated.
- I created the ‘browsing pages’ with a set of HTML templates and PHP scripts.
- I downloaded, one by one, by hand, around 800 images, including property images and icons, and put them in appropriate directories.
- I created a PHP script that displayed any of the 70 or so properties, taking descriptions and prices from the database, and images from directories.
- I created a wealth of interactive features: a search facility, a registration form, popup enquiry and print forms, a ‘lightshow’ image gallery, an availability calendar (for each property), and various booking forms.
At last a Web site was there, which looked very like the old one. At this point I turned to creating a new client interface, so that my client had a new personalised CMS.
As you may guess, this turned out taking as long as reconstructing the Web site visible to the public. But I was able to give my client a much more friendly and intuitive interface, with many more facilities than she had had before. (Oh, and as part of the process, I had to recreate the database tables, to make her job easier…)
I would point you to the result, but the public part of the site is only my reconstruction of the original designs, and still contains the mangled CSS and HTML generated by the old CMS.
And nobody but me and my client can see my lovely new client interface. Sad.
