Recomendaciones al adquirir el servicio de desarrollo de una pagina web

Cuando usted o su empresa deciden adquirir una página web, su desición se basa en la necesidad de acceso al mercado de Internet. La mayoría de mis clientes vienen a mí con una mala experiencia relacionada con la insatisfacción en sus expectativas, o en el peor de los casos, el fracaso en el desarrollo de la página web. Por eso, aquí están mis recomendaciones:

Para el inicio de su sitio web, usted necesita un par de reuniones en las que va a decirle a la persona a cargo, sus necesidades y esperanzas acerca de la página a desarrollar. En la mayoría de los casos usted no sabe qué esperar, en esta parte del proceso deberá pedir a los desarrolladores web cosas como:

• Pregunte a los desarrolladores web un cronograma con: fecha de inicio del desarrollo, las diferentes etapas de desarrollo, la fecha final de desarrollo, la fecha de los informes, y la entrega final.
• Los desarrolladores deben entregarle un documento (contrato o declaración de trabajo), donde se informe sobre las etapas en el proceso de desarrollo, las fechas de inicio y el final y los entregables (código fuente de la pagina web, copia del diseño, informes escritos, copia de la base de datos, información del hosting y el dominio).
• Se deben planear fechas de reunión donde se le informará acerca del avance del proyecto.
• Para la entrega final el desarrollador debe de entregarle: copia magnética del código fuente de la página web, copia de archivos fuente de diseño, imágenes, copia de seguridad de la página web y base de datos.
• El nombre de dominio es de su compañía o empresa, ese dominio tiene que estar a su nombre o de su representante legal. el desarrollador web debe garantízar la propiedad y el acceso al dominio.
• Toda la información sobre el acceso a alojamiento a través de FTP y el panel de administración del hosting.
• Por último el desarrollador web debe definir el soporte y garantía, fecha de inicio, fecha de finalización, el tipo de asistencia y garantía.

Siempre encontrara pequeños problemas en el desarrollo de su pagina web, pero estos problemas serán menores si tiene claro sus objetivos en el desarrollo de su pagina web y se los comunica a su desarrollador web. Tenga muy en cuenta las anteriores recomendaciones y si tiene dudas solicite que su desarrollador web responda a ellas, y le ofrezca soluciones practicas y reales a sus problemas.

Mucha suerte.

Recommendations to purchase the service development of your website

When you or your company decide to make a web page, your desicion is based in the neccesity of acces to the internet market. You make a contract with a company or freelance web developer, in that case you based your decision in recomendations, or may be you find in internet or advertise, a web developer enterprise or freelance. Most of my clients come to me with a bad experience related to dissatisfaction in their expectations, or in the worst case, failure in the development of the website. Because of that, here are my recommendations:

For the start of your website, you need a couple of meetings where you're going to tell the person in charge, needs and hopes for your new page. In most cases you do not know what to expect, in this part of the process can ask the web developers things like:

• Ask web developers with a schedule starting date of development, different stages ofdevelopment, the development deadline, the date of the reports, and final delivery.
• Developers must give a document (contract or statement of work), which report on the stages in the development process, the dates of beginning and end and deliverables (source code of the website, copy the design, written reports copy of the database, information on the hosting and the domain).
• Dates should be planned reunion of reports of development where the developer report on the development of your website.
• For final delivery to give the developer must: magnetic copy the source code of web page, high resolution layered file, copy design source files, images, back up the website and database.
• The domain name is your company or business, this domain must be in your name or your legal representative. web developer requires ownership and access to the domain.
• All the information for access to housing through FTP and hosting management panel.
• Finally, the web developer must define the support and warranty, start date, end date, type of support and warranty.

Always find small problems in the development of your website but these problems will be lower if you have clear objectives in the development of your website and communicates your web developer.
Take into account the above recommendations and if in doubt ask your web developer to respond to them, and offered practical and real solutions to their problems.

Good luck.

Web Testing: Guide on testing web applications

Let`s have first web testing checklist:

1. Functionality Testing
2. Usability Testing:
3. Interface Testing: 
4. Compability testing 
5. Performance Testing:

http://www.krdesignlab.com/site/

1. Functionality Testing

Test for all the links in web page, database connection, forms used in the web page for submitting or getting information from user, Cookie testing.

Check all the links:

• Test the outgoing links from all the pages from specific domain under test.
• Test all internal links.
• Test links jumping on the same pages.
• Test links used to send the email to admin or other users from web pages.
• Test to check if there are any orphan pages.
• Lastly in link checking, check for broken links in all above mentioned links.

Test forms in all pages:

Forms are the integral part of any web site. Forms are used to get information from users and to keep interaction with them. so what should be checked on these forms?

• First check all validations on each field.
• Check for the default values of fields.
• Wrong inputs, to the fields in the forms.
• Options to create forms if any, form delete, view or modify the forms.

Cookies testing:

Cookies are small files stored on user machine. These are basically used to maintain the session mainly login sessions. Test the application by enabling or disabling the cookies in your browser options. Test if the cookies are encrypted before writing to user machine. If you are testing the session cookies (i.e cookies expire after the session ends) check for login sessions and user stats after session end. Check effect on application security by deleting the cookies.

Validate your HTML/CSS

If you are optimizing your site for search engines then HTML/CSS validation is very important. Mainly validate the site for HTML syntax errors. Check if site is crawlable to different search engines.

Database testing

Data consistency is very important in web application. Check for data integrity and errors while you edit, delete, modify the forms or do any DB related functionality. Check if all the database queries are executing correctly, data is very retrieved correctly and also update correctly.

2. Usability Testing:

Test for navigation:

Navigation means how the user surf the web pages, different controls like buttons, boxes or how user using the links on the pages to surf different pages. Usability testing includes:

• Web site should be easy to use.
• Instructions should be provided clearly. Check if the provided instructions are correct means whether they satisfy purpose.
• Main menu should be provided on each page. It should be consistent.

Content checking:

Content should be logic and easy to understand. Check for spelling errors. Use of dark colours annoys users and should not be used for web page and content building.You can follow some standars that are used for web page and content building. These are common accepted standars like I mentioned above about annoying colours, fonts, frames, etc.

Content should be meaningful. All the anchor text links should be working properly. Images should be placed properly with proper sizes.

These are some basics standar that should be followed in web development.

Other user information for user help:

Like search option, sitemap, help files, etc. Site map should be present with all the links in web sites with the proper tree view of navigation. Check for all links on the sitemap. "Search in the site" option will help user to find content pages they are looking for easily and quickly. These are all optional items and if presents should be validated.

3. Interface Testing:

The main interfaces are:

Web server and application server interface.
Application server and Database server interface.

Check if all the interactions between these servers are axecuted properly. Errors are handled properly. If database or web server returns any error message for any query by application server then application server should catch and display these error messages appropriately to users. Check what happens if user interrupts any transaction in-between? check what happens if connection to web server is reset in between?

4. Compability testing

Compability of your web site is very important testing aspect. See which compability test to be executed:

• Browser compability
• Operating system compability 
• Mobile browsing 
• Printing options

 Browser compability:

Some applications are very dependent on browsers. Different browsers have diferent configurations and settings that your web page should be compatible with. Your web site coding should be cross browser platform compatible. If you are using java scripts or AJAX calls for UI functionality, performing security checks or validations then give more stress on browser compability testing of your web application. Test web application on different browsers like Internet explorer, Firefox, Netscape navigator, AOL, Safari, Opera browsers with different versions.

OS Compability:

Some functionality in your web application is may not be compatible with all operating systems. All new technologies used in web development like graphics designs, interface calls different API`s may not be available in all Operating Systems. Test your web application on different operating systems like Windows, Unix, MAC, Linux, Solaris with different OS flavours.

Mobile browsing: 

This is new technology age. So in future Mobile borowsing will rock. Test your web pages on mobile browsers. Compability issues may be there on mobile.