Free and Open Source Web Applications
From Evrose
There are a number of ways to create websites, and the sky can be the limit when it comes to how much they cost to create. To create a decent looking site, it used to be necessary to employ a technical expert to write the whole thing in HTML. Then Flash came along and you needed more experts at even higher hourly rates. If you wanted to make a change to any of the content, then it would cost you more money. The only real low-cost options were MS FrontPage and various primitive site-builder applications, that looked pretty poor. In the early days we used FrontPage, and it did a fair job. But still, updating content was a real pain.
Then along came Open Source content management systems such as Mambo and its later "fork" Joomla!. With multiple skin designs to change look and feel, not only could you create much better looking sites, but you could update the content fairly easily using an Administrator panel behind the scenes. No need to upload files any more, everything done via a web browser. For the layman, though, they remained a touch complicated to manage without some technical help.
Around the time Mambo was becoming popular, Wikipedia began it's inexorable climb to supremacy in the world of websites. A collaborative project where literally any web user could contribute. For this to happen the Wikipedia content editing features have to be extremely simple to use. Although there are some formatting rules to learn when writing in "wiki markup language" they are really not that onerous, and you can get away with just using the editing screen by and large. Creating new pages is as easy as just typing the new page title into the browser address and you get the option to edit the new page, no fuss or bother. The software used by Wikipedia is called MediaWiki. It is Open Source and available for all to create their own websites with. Over the years it has developed to a really quite sophisticated level with hundreds of "extensions" and customisations. Many of the extensions available are not that much use, but with time more and more, better and better ones are released.
It is still a work in progress - the choice of decent skin designs is not particularly good. We stick to variations of the default "Monobook" skin, modifying the logo, background design (darker blue/grey mottled design on this site), the background colour of the main body and side boxes (lighter blue). Bolton Interweb is an example of a yellow/sand colour scheme. This gives us an infinite variety of individual colour schemes but retains all the features that make the site easy to maintain and accessible to disabled and visually impaired visitors.
When we set up a MediaWiki site, we use the latest available version, and would recommend that approach even if your host offers you an older version on an automated installer. We also tie down editing security, remove obsolete tabs, and add a couple of must-have extensions such as the Contact Page. For ease of use when it comes to updating content, coupled with good clean design that works well for the visually impaired, it is hard to beat MediaWiki. Which is why this site uses it. But modifying the skin, adding extensions and nailing the editing security involves editing programming code in files held on your web server. So you do need to be a bit of a geek, and/or a bit brave, to do it yourself. The tiniest mistake and the site disappears. However, once up and running, it is probably the easiest type of website to manage at a basic level.
When I first saw the Lightbox effect on a gallery of photos, I was well and truly impressed. I imagined it was something extremely expensive and complicated to work with. It is similar to the effect you get from Google Picasa when opening an image file. I couldn't have been more wrong. Gallery 2 is the leading Open Source gallery application and when coupled with a relatively simple Lightbox extension, it becomes quite simply superb, as good as anything you might pay thousands for. The downsides are that it did take a bit of technical fishing to get it working so initial installation may not be for the layman, and it requires a type of web hosting that is not that common. In technical speak, you need hosting that has PHP Safe Mode turned off and most hosts hate that. Our own hosting services allow the owner of the web space to flick a switch and do exactly that. Another potential downside is that the application does take up quite a lot of web space just on its own, without the photos, so you have to bear that in mind when deciding how much to buy. So to use it, you need the right web hosting service and probably a bit of technical help to install and configure first time. But after that, it is all relatively easy to manage.
Functional Accessibility Evaluator
This is a free online tool that assesses a website's accessibility for visually impaired visitors. Our main page got a 100% pass on all bar navigation where we got 92% - there is a minor sub-heading nesting fault that seems to apply to the navigation of all Wiki sites using the Monobook skin. The same fault applies to Wikipedia and they report no complaints from users of screen readers, or anyone else, saying that they're experiencing an actual problem from this. The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) website main page also got only 92% on navigation, and only 75% on "Text Equivalents" so I'm pretty comfortable with the results, since we are seem to be more accessible than the website for the main charity for the blind. I have to say also that the advice given by the RNIB for webmasters to design accessible websites is quite poor, though they do tout for audit business (for a charge). If any organisation has a duty to provide clear and helpful advice to webmasters, in order to serve the blind and visually impaired, you would have thought that would be the RNIB. Surprising and disappointing.
More coming...
© Evrose Business Consultants Ltd, 2009
