Tutorial Seek Development Blog

Obtaining the domain name for Tutorial Seek (www.tutorialseek.com) was generally a good start for me. It was given to me as a compensation gift from one of my clients – Dan Richard (www.danrichard.com) for developing his website the summer of 2006. Pixel2Life (www.pixel2life.com), the website that I worked on, is currently the largest Tutorial Index on the internet boasting over 20,000 tutorials from almost 5,000 different websites. The owner had a sister site of Pixel2Life which was supposed to be a “light” version for users who had a slow internet connection but it was discontinued shortly after for certain reasons. The domain was then later put on sale for almost $2,000 but was never sold, so I thought that the name Tutorial Seek would be a good catchy title for any website, and when the idea of a Tutorial Indexing Crawler came into play, it made the dream come even more of a reality.

Setting up a blog on the website itself to temporally get a general reading crowd as well to use as my process journal was an idea that I thought would be very new and unique. Now only does it display a high level of technological advancement to broaden the standard spectrum of any normal personal project, but it also would make sense if my entire project was staged on the web.

Having a high reputation being a very recognized and respected programmer on some online communities would only mean that I was good at what I do - Coding and Web Development. The server environment which would be used is quite popular among most dynamic powered websites, shorted by the acronym: L.A.M.P. Linux, a free open source operating system for modern web hosts to power and provide a foundation for applications to be ran when the demand is necessary. Apache, the most widely available HTTP server on the Internet which is used by web servers to handle requests sent by users. MySQL (pronounced “my ess cue el”), an open source relationship database management system that uses Structured Query Language (SQL) which proves itself to be fast and efficient to handle large amounts of data in a secure and safe manner. PHP, the programming language that allows web developers to create dynamic content that interacts with databases as well as developing web based software applications. The server side essentials in managing and querying information back and forth from database platform to the user’s browser are as vital as the languagse that the browser really reads. Those are the client side languages such as the powerful scripting language for web pages which adds functionality in a smooth and professional manner called Javascript. The web’s standard, HTML (Hyper Text Mark-Up Language) which is the coding syntax used to create the web pages that browsers read and interpret as text and images and so forth. Cascading Style Sheets, commonly known as CSS which a formatting language that tells the browser the format and appearance of the web page, defining colors of font, background and even the size and dimensions of objects placed on the page – the visual and pleasing aspect of viewing websites. All of these resources, which are free to learn about and use made it easier for a fixed budget, since they are all common and widely used everywhere. The entire server and client environment was already mastered and I was well knowledgeable about them all.

The exact process of developing the website cannot be detailed because simply of the fact that the source code and manner in which it was developed is private to the owner itself and its developer, I – Jamie Chung. The basis would definitely be involved for any modern website. The web host, in which was no additional charge since I already owned a small hosting company and outsourcing a designer for a web layout as well as a graphical artist for the logo and the mascot identity of the website. I invested over $300 outsourcing these artists to do this graphical work for me. It was not my specialty to do artwork or web design, but to provide a good functional website; a visual pleasing aspect is needed as well.

As the project came together, it became clear that the concept was simple – accurate and it worked. I spent many hours, even days debugging thousands upon thousands lines of code. Revising the logic hundreds of times, making sure that there were no loop holes or security exploits that were visible for the modern web hacker. That all data and information sent to and from the server, was truly valid and no unwanted input. The spider reached a point where it could be tested, where real sites were added to the spider’s database to index for their tutorials – a success when put to the test. It actually worked. The artificial intelligence of making decisions on what pages are tutorials and which are not, copying images as well as keywords from that page, and even the URL to that specific tutorial for the database itself. Recounting statistics and the number of visits to that site automatically during specific set hours of the days and specific times per week, months or even year so that to avoid the amount of processes running on the server to be high to slow it down. Users could even currently view that the Seek Bot was up to, a log was placed on Tutorial Seek for the viewer’s pleasure.

The website itself has not been launched until an unconfirmed date in the early weeks if not month of the year 2007. The purpose of this is the possibility of beta invitations to certain tutorial webmasters and websites - to give the index a go, optimize the algorithm of the Seek Bot to make it as efficient as possible as well as accurate. Almost 6 months of development and production would finally be put to the test, against the entire world.

Come project due date, Tuesday, December 19, 2006 – I knew that it would be rather weird to be turning in only a Written Presentation. The thought came to my mind to invest a little more and get a poster printed professionally with the identity of the website. That would include the Seek Bot, and the written logo of “Tutorial Seek”. Something physical to show representing my work – that I actually did something. Even to frame and put on a wall for later references. A simple poster was designed and I chose FedEx – Kinko’s as the venue for it to be printed.

Updates and new coming ideas for the project and Tutorial Seek itself would be posted on the web blog which would be found at Tutorial Seek (www.tutorialseek.com). Simply for a closer interaction between myself and the general crowd, the ability to post comments on ideas of interests and concepts that they don’t like or need changed. As well as a form of a journal, it will hold the entries of my process journal, which all of them are the entries on the blog.

It is every webmaster’s dream to get their tutorials known to the world, but it has always been a hassle to submit their tutorials into an index maybe because there is simply not enough time or the large amount of tutorials to submit. That dream has been taken further, introducing automated tutorial submission.

Tutorial Seek is a Tutorial Indexing Search Engine. A website that has an index, or directory of tutorials in which are crawled by a spider named the Seek Bot. Given websites that are submitted by the webmasters of the tutorial community, the Seek Bot will visit those websites, and search them for tutorials in which to add to its own database. The entire process, which is done automatically - is what makes this idea revolutionary. Webmasters now don’t submit tutorials one by one as they release new ones that are written, but their entire site.

All of the popular Tutorial Indexes that are out there on the World Wide Web have all the same basic concept of how they work and deliver content to the public crowd. They have the same environment and the same theme of obtaining content. This way is solely relying on the webmasters to submit their tutorials and articles manually into the tutorial index. Using the idea of a tutorial spider is what makes Tutorial Seek totally different than any other tutorial based website on the web.

Being a web developer for almost 2 years, I have gained a lot of knowledge and insight of the most popular and up-to-date programming languages used for server environments. I know that developing such a site would be a challenge, but I was confident that it was possible, and I was driven to deliver that final product for my own personal project.
During the development phase of this project, and even during the beta testing of the website, I have had to find times in which the project would relate to at least three of the five areas of interaction. The final three that I seem to fit best would have been Approaches to Learning – which includes new concepts, techniques and actions necessary for me to complete the project in a timely manner, Community Service – raising the level of knowledge by providing a free learning service to the web development and graphical arts community and Homo Faber – being the production of the website, from the ground up.

So we had to have this essay due on the big big day, which is - the day of turning the final project in and wrapping it up. For the category that my project was sorted into, my essay had to be between 1500 - 2000 words. Pretty easy task, just that I went over the limit by 745 words. My Written Presentation as it is called, was at a length of 2,745 words. Pretty nice huh? But it was hard to put everything in that I needed to. And it was rather detailed, and if I didn’t keep the details in, it wouldn’t sound right. So I have go to print the Essay and put my name on it. Or else I am dropping out of the program =/.

I will be posting the written presentation in a bit when I finish everything up. That should be in an hour or so.

The same lady called me after Church while I was in the fellowship hall talking to some of my friends. They said that they wanted me to come in and see a proof of the print, to make sure that it was how I wanted it. I was planning to go there anyways coincidentally because I ordered it for 1 PM the next day, since that was an option. I thought that it was possible, and the website made that assumption possible.

I went in, met the lady and she told me that the printer was going to turn on the printer so that she could print it. It was a pretty massive HP printer, one of those heavy duty stuff. I was thinking that I came to the right store for sure.

Time went by, I kept looking at my phone. 5 minutes… 15 minutes… 20 MINUTES! for the stinking printer to warm up and finally print the massive picture in less than a minute. It was pretty sad and depressing.

The printer was waiting for the ink to dry, and I was looking at the picture for the first time. IT WAS BAD! The quality was nothing compared to the vectored version in Illustrator. I was very very disappointed. The lady was telling me about how the printer is an ink-jet, and only used 6 colors while printing. That wasn’t going to cut it for me because my image was very high quality, possibly too much for that printer to use.

I started complaining, and she tried to reduce the colors, which ended up taking probably an hour before it could be printed again, for the printer to receive the image and make good use out of it.

This time, she only sent a piece of it, to see if the quality was to be better. It was a bit more vivid this time, but still not what I was looking for. I asked her about their laser printers, and she informed me that the sizes do not go up that high using their laser printers, why? I have no idea.

I had to go with a smaller size, and it cost only a couple dollars to print, and the same amount per square feet to get it laminated and mounted, a lot cheaper than getting the big poster.

She went to a different computer that was connected to the laser printer and then the printer was giving problems, and it was not working. By now, we have been at kinkos for the past couple of hours, and I have probably read every greeting card in their library twice!

I saw Mr. Desmond there, printing some things, and said hi to him. Apparently he was printing some papers for his English I class - the final and study guide. That man never seizes to amaze me.

By now, at least 20 people have passed through Kinkos, got what hey wanted and have already gone out, it seemed to be a very busy day today, due to the fact that Christmas was just around the corner and everyone wanted to Fed-Ex their things off to families and friends.

I was getting frustrated now, and I am sure she was too. My mom needed to take her passport photo for her new driver’s license, and she even got that done too before we got anywhere else.

She got it printed at one point on another printer, but it came out with a purple tint. Kinda weird and funky, but the image quality was not of that I was looking for.

An hour or so pasted now and everyone wanted to go home. Including myself and my family as well. The finally fixed the printer and she got it working. She printed out the copy that was to be mounted and laminated and got to work.

There was production again at last! She took it to the side and warmed up the lamination machine which would take 20-30 minutes, waiting time? We were used to it by now, which is a sad thought.

Back to read some more greeting cards, maybe I missed one or two. I might of dozed off on the table in that area to take a quick nap and my sister Joanna to come and wake me up.

The lamination machine was finally ready and I went to go watch her move it through the massive heavy duty thing, and use a slicer to take off the excess plastic around the edges. She messed up on one of them so she printed another copy which took a mere second, mounted it and ran it through again.

The first one she showed us had a lot of air bubbles in it and she said she would do another one. It didn’t have much of an imperfection now, maybe one air bubble which was not noticeable, so we took it and head to the casher.

It seems like we were finally going to head out of Kinkos, probably the longest visit on record even.

So now we have 2 posters laminated and mounted, she said that she would only charge me for printing them, which was a mere couple of bucks since we had to wait so long.  That was fine by me, I saved more than 95% than what I wanted to, so that was good enough.

I walked out of Kinkos a happier camper than I walked in, it was a long day, and I am thankful for that Lady.  She had one heck of a day because of me breathing down her neck.

So I was thinking about the future MYP presentation that would be in the 07 year. And just showcasing a website a lone would be very boring and such. Then it hit me, why not create a poster of the Mascot and the Logo to put along with it. It was a handy deal I could settle with.

Here is what it looked like:

I asked my mom if she could drop me off at Kinkos to go in and check what sizes we could get the poster printed at, and decided to go with the 18×24 inches purely because it was pretty big, and it seemed very “decent” in price compared to the others only at around $50 after it was laminated and mounted.

The lady said that I could get it printed the next day ( Sunday ) if I went home and sent it online from their print website.

Fine by me, I went back home, loaded up Adobe Illustrator and played around with the finished mascot and logo that was given to me by the artist. Decided to go with a background sprite from the finished website layout and I resized it from Adobe Photoshop to preserve as much quality as possible.

Finally resized it to the required 18×24 inches, went through the online wizard to upload my .ai file, and with some specific instructions as well to make sure that they didn’t mess anything up. It was a fairly painless process, took about 10-15 minutes and it was easy to understand, even though I had no idea what I was doing.

It told me to call the store in about 30 minutes after I sent in the order to make sure that hey received it, just for verification purposes, just re-assuring that there was not a problem accessing the file that I sent them.

I went off to work on some other projects while I waited for the time to past by. Got distracted to the point where almost an hour passed by, I called them finally when I got the number and I was put on hold. The joy… the agony.

Not only did I get put on hold which was bad enough, but twice, for about 40 minutes even. I eventually hung up, and better hoped that they got it.