For this part of the project, I will be talking about some of the technical underpinnings.
Hosting platform
I have to keep three things in mind, so I can choose the right hosting platform:
- The type of website I would be creating, in this case, it will be an informational website.
- The amount of traffic my website will be having. As the project is just starting, I am not expecting to have a high amount of traffic. Therefore, a Dedicated Web Server is not needed, neither a Virtual Private Server (at some point, I might go for this one once my website has built enough traffic to justify it), meaning that Shared Web Hosting will be a good type of hosting for my project.
- The budget I have is limited; this reconfirms that Shared Web Hosting would be the best option as it is low cost due to the cost being shared with other sites.
Based on the requirements mentioned above, I have decided that Bluehost or Clook would be good options to consider as they are low cost (around £5), they include SSL certificate and offer support 24/7. The differences I could find is that Clook has a limited disk space and bandwidth.
Even though Bluehost offers unlimited disk space and bandwidth, I feel more confident using Clook; this is the main reason why I feel that Clook would be the right choice, at least for now, as I know I will be considering this choice a bit more before taking a final decision.
Front-end Technologies
HTML is definitely one of the front-end technologies I would use for this project, and CSS and JavaScript, for a more personal experience.
Other things I am considering is using BEM (Block, Element, Modifier) as the naming convention as it can help me to keep consistency when naming elements and would solve some future problems such as what the selector does, where it is being used or the relationship between class names just by looking at it.
I don’t think I will be using any CSS pre-processor as I don’t think this project is going to be large enough to need one. Although, if I think I need one, I will probably be using SASS as it is a prevalent one and has great community support.
Version Control System
I will be using a version control system as it will help me to keep my project safe and to have previous working versions available.
There are different versions, including Centralised (CVCSs), which stores files on a separate server, recording what was done and who’s done it. Also, another version available is Distribution (DVCSs); this version allows the developer to check out the latest version as well as history. It keeps backups on local machines, meaning that it is very secure.
I consider myself a systematic person. I think I will use a local system having daily backups, saving the files in an external hard drive and One Drive or Dropbox.
Also, I would like to get familiar with GitHub, a platform where this project could be saved, as it is important to get familiar with these platforms.
Content Management System
I had three requirements to keep in mind in order to choose the right management system for my project. These requirements were:
- I like open-source systems as I like to know that there is an active community of developers contributing to improving the system continually. Also, open-source platforms are generally low-cost or free, which is good when you have a low budget like the one I am having for this project.
- A good user interface with simple template manipulation can be useful when not much time is available to complete a project, so this is an important point to keep in mind.
- A helpful user community allows me to feel safe when using a new platform as I know I can find help if I need to.
Based on the aforementioned requirements, I chose four platforms (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and Ghost). They all have active communities working no them, making them safe and confident to know that help will be available in case I need to.
Although, when comparing the four of them, Drupal is a bit more complex to understand. Joomla can be considered not user-friendly, and Ghost is more blogging-focused and more complicated with a lack of customizability. WordPress can be the best option for me because it has many plugins available, it is easy to learn and use, SEO is easy to add, and I am familiar with it as it is the one I have been using for the last few months.
My learning requirements
I will be using PluralSight, books (Jon Ducket, Aaron Walter, etc.) and online articles (CSS-Tricks, Smashing Magazine, etc.) to learn some of the things I need to know, such as JavaScript, JQuery, PHP, GitHub and MySQL.
These things will probably take me weeks of intensive learning, but I can accomplish them with the right schedule.
Conclusion
Some of the things mentioned in this part of the project are points that still under considerations so I will probably change of mind in some of the things I have talked about.
Feedback
- exploringsouthamerica.com is not a good domain name as it sounds more like the place and not the people, it is more for a travel agency than a community project.