Simple Website Creation for a Java Developer

Background

I have been a Java Developer for about 4 years but never really created a very simple website and hosted it. During my work experience I have been involved in much more complex back end systems with front ends in ICEfaces or GWT.

Need

I have seen quite a few websites created in WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. These technologies seem to be a good alternative in that we can do the following:

1. Quickly create a website
2. Train relatively inexperienced users to add content
3. Sit back and let the “super user” add the content

Point 2 is very important to me because when websites are created for small to medium sized companies they usually do not have the resources to hire another employee to add the content on a weekly basis. If an existing employee is trained with relative ease to handle this the company has a greater chance of adopting this website and actually using it.

As a Java Developer I still prefer doing everything in Java (yes I might seem old fashioned) and began looking at Spring Roo. I have just begun looking at it and will try to post some of my finding later.

Creating a Website

Before designing a website the following needs to be considered:

1. Type of Website – Static or Dynamic (weekly / daily updates)
2. Budget – Yes this is very important, how much time will be spent on initial Setup and will there be a dedicated resource to update the site
3. Domain costs
4. Identify technology based on points 1 and 2, CMS type technologies like Joomla or Drupal can be good and bad
5. Hosting costs – Linux or Windows
6. Who is going to host the website – Shop around and find a good provider best suited to your technology
7. User training, if the user is going to be adding content or accessing reports
8. Maintenance and Support – Who will maintain this website

These are some of the basic questions you need to ask yourself before commencing on the design. Websites have multiple purposes and based on that choose the best technology suited. If you simply wanted to show a page with contact information setting up a faces application running a Oracle Database on Weblogic would be a bit too much.

Please excuse me if I left anything out, feel free to add it as a comment.

In my next few posts I will speak about the traditional CMS like websites and perhaps set one up from start to finish and then try doing a similar thing using my old friend Java. I look forward to this journey.

Blog soon!

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