Lars Fløe Nielsen

Yet another day in Hong Kong

So, up at 5 o’clock in order to process the most necessary batch of mails as well as downloading the latest training materials before meeting up with Torben at the breakfast restaurant. I felt surprisingly fresh and seeing the sun rise over Hong Kong is a uplifting sight despite the heavy layer of fog and smog.

At around 8 we were down at the harbor to take the ferry over Wan Chai, - the Hong Kong river. We were the only two westerners amongst hundreds of locals, and when sitting on the boat looking at he very local boats sailing by, you cannot help getting the feeling of something very out of the ordinary. What a trip. Unfortunately it’s no more than 10 minutes before arriving on the other side with extreme traffic and smog.

We went to our new partner and did a training session. It’s quite interesting how such a day forms. Today, we did have major problems with installing the software at many different training PC’s. This is mostly, I think, when we train partners who have brought their own developer laptops, as in this case (where we naturally could not bring anything). Not that this always poses a problem, but developers tend to keep different configurations on their personal PC’s. This results in all kinds of potential hiccups when installing the software, for example security issues.

Well, we got it up and running, and then went on with the training, only with a few other strange minor problems such as Norton Antivirus interference (latest edition) with the software.

After 9 hours, we decided to stop, and now I’ve gotten home safe from the partner now and just need a few hours of work. It’s quarter to ten in the evening, and I’m getting somewhat tired. But I guess that’s how life is.

Tomorrow, I’m up again same time as today. Hope the day tomorrow will be just as good as today, though a bit more relaxed.

If it happens you are in the region, or if you are a real Content Management Systems geek it's absolutely worth the journey to pass by at the International CM Forum Conference in Aarhus, Denmark November 7th to 9th.

This conference is international, and I was visiting it last year, where I could meet CM gurus and other professionals such as lead developers and architects from our competitors.

This year, they have staffed even more up; 48 speakers from all over the world.

It may seem odd that you would locate such as session in a remote (cold) country, but it’s really not. Scandinavian systems are strong on the CMS market as Tony Byrne noticed as a trend (http://www.cmswatch.com/Feature/119-CMS-Marketplace).

So, come drop by; visit Sitecore and other professionals. Looking forward to see you. Read more at www.cmf2006.dk

As you most likely already know, our new web site is already up and running. One of the major challenges in such a conversion is naturally to design a web site that follows standards; web and accessibility.

Alexey has done a really good job building our web site, thanks for that. One thing that amazes me is the various online validation tools; HTML compliance is naturally being handled by the W3C.org web site, and works pretty well, while accessibility validation is much more complex. Most often, you may need validation from several different vendors. Some are really good at validating table usage, alternative texts etc, while other is good at validating color contrasts.

Personally I prefer offline batch validators, such as Bobby and CSE, but sometimes it’s just as important to really spend some time using the online offerings, e.g. tools that can check for color blindness.

Colorado State University supplies a really good list (http://www.colostate.edu/Dept/ATRC/tools.htm), and the Web Accessibility Initiative also is pretty good entry point (http://www.w3.org/WAI/).

What tools do you web developers out there use?

In distant past, Sitecore web sites usually ran no more than 3000 pages. We now experience solutions that serve in the range of 5000 – 250000 active pages, and larger implementations even more! This is indeed good news clearly indicating our partners and clients truly understand the nature of a CMS.

However, problems may also arise with the growing amount of content being added to the structures. Content expires, which, if not handled results in databases clustered with useless content. Editors suffer the consequences of not finding the right content, and pages with old inaccurate content are wrongly being published to the web.

Partners must be aware of this fact and should always consider the following steps:

• Force the editors to add Meta data to all items, - not only for external use but also for internal use as this will allow you to index and search content more efficiently and hence reuse the content.
  
• The standard archive functionality can help out by moving old expired content away from the working database minimizing the content structure.
  
• The workflows and/or masters could activate a reminder data to all content in order to let the individual editors return and refresh data.
  
• Build a good media library structure and make sure editors follow the guide lines for adding media to the structure.