Tutorial Seek Development Blog

It is now 4 in the morning, and I have spent it testing the spider on various tutorial sites.  I spidered all the tutorials on GreyCobra in a couple of minutes, found out they have 229 tutorials to be exact.  This automated process will make it easier for webmasters, in the sense that when they write a new tutorial, they do not have to submit it to the database, but instead, the spider would crawl the site for it.  The test went smoothly of course, and I am liking the speed and the accuracy of the spider to a great degree.

My next big opponent is 13Dots.com.  I figured that if I had a lot of tutorials in the database, even to start off with at least 1000 tutorials off the bat would be great for the website.  So I might as well test the spider on the larger tutorial communities.

While testing the spider, I made a lot of changes to the algorithm of the spider and how it operates.  I changed some methods for parsing the tutorial urls and ensuring that we are grabbing the correct urls.  We will also depend on the user community to keep the spider in tip top shape, reporting bad tutorials, so that the bugs can be investigated and recompiled into the spider.

Bennett presented me with a wonderful concept of the mascot for Tutorial Seek. It is a very simple but funky concept and easy to recognize. The colors are very straight forward and easy on the eyes. Its a cute little guy, but he is surely not the final version. Tweaks here and there, add ons, etc. There will be many changes modifications in the final version which should be unveiled on launch date, but for now, here is a little taste of the future of Tutorial Seek!

The logo designer from Kontruct met up with me tonight and we discussed the future plans for the logo and mascot of tutorial seek. I looked at his portfolio and boy was it amazing. His skills were very advanced and I knew that he had the talent to do create what I was looking for.

We conversed with Julian for about 30 minutes or so and I told Bennett what i was looking for. I had been doing some brain storming in school when I was bored in class of what I could see these things as. First when thinking of a face that would present your website, you need something or someone that when you see it, you will recognize it immediately as being Tutorial Seek. Maybe something that incorporated the idea of finding tutorials like a magnifying class or a similar item.

What I had in mind was a binocular looking mascot. It would be personified to be the Tutorial Seek bot, the same bot that will “seek” out the tutorials on websites. So a binocular it was. Maybe some eyes here or there, feet so it can walk around. I asked him what he thought and he liked the idea and said he would do the best that he could. He said it could be done in a couple of days, and I was fine with that. The sooner the better, so that we could proceed on with the project.

So I talked with Julian this afternoon, and asked him for a quote for the design of Tutorial Seek. He said that he generally charges $300 for a standard design and said that if I do some work for him, he would be willing to do it free of charge.

Of course, being the person that I am, I agreed to the offer. While on the topic of design, I asked him if he knew anyone who could design logos and so forth. He recommended someone in his own design studio for the job. A pretty good deal to get a mascot and logo for $150. That was a reasonable investment on my part, and I said to let him know that I am interesting in hiring him.

So now I am waiting to get in touch with him.

While development has been steady, I have switched my view of the project. Now instead of looking at code, it has been due time before I now look at how the website will be like.

Many of you may be familiar with the buzzword Web 2.0. If you have not heard about it, here is a little bit more about it.

Web 2.0 is a term often applied to a perceived ongoing transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of websites to a full-fledged computing platform serving web applications to end users. Ultimately Web 2.0 services are expected to replace desktop computing applications for many purposes.

I have been known to fall for sites that have this sort of feel and interface for their viewers and the people who the website will accommodate to. Websites such as ( digg.com and flickr .com) would fall into the new web 2.0 category, a new way of standards. I would be in need of a designer who would present this interface to me. I already have one person in mind who can do the job right and knows the kind of things I like to do. He is a past client of mine, I have done a few of his sites in which he has made a few hundred dollars on in the long run. That man is Julian.

Julian is one of the most talented designers I personally know and I am sure he will be able to produce one fine work for this project. When I do get in touch with him on msn or so to talk to him, I will need to ask for a quote for how much he would charge me to design. He usually goes from the mid hundred dollars but I am sure I can get him to cut down.

As well as an web interface for Tutorial Seek, one would surely need a face of the website. An image, mascot and or logo that would represent the website. A method used by many websites and modern cooperations, you will know the website name or so just by the mascot, or logo. Geico would have their talking lizzard, car companies such as Honda would have their own logo that would present them. Its all about the image, and that is what we would need. I am on the lookout for a logo designer as well. I have one in mind, but I am not sure yet.