Web App: Juvely

I hope everybody had an extremely awesome Christmas, and i hope you have an even better new year! Over the past few days Luca and I have been working constantly to get things done. In this post I’ll try to explain whats going on.

Firstly the interfaces are coming along really nicely, we have a few of the main ones done which Luca is working on to convert them into CSS/XHTML. The way we do this is fairly basic, I’ll spend a few days creating a detailed mockup in photoshop, i’ll send him a jpg file and we then discuss any changes that should be made, I’ll go back and make the changes then i will send over the image files which he will get to work on. Heres a sneak peak of what the app will look like (I’m under strict orders not to reveal to much). I have blurred it so hopefully you won’t be able to work out what the app actually does.

Now as far as the development goes with actually getting some PHP coding done. We’ve both been working on the login system which actually proved to be tougher than we thought. We wanted to it be as secure as we could get it using both cookies and sessions. We have managed to get it working perfectly (finally), although it could probably still do with a few touch ups.

Another thing which I’m proud to have finished is allowing each company to have their own sub-domain address. Now company’s can have their own individual sets of users. For example if 2 companies have someone called ‘Ted’ working for them, both of the Ted’s will be able to use the same username. However it will only work on which company they have been assigned to. Heres an example of the sub-domain script.

http://google.juvely.com would redirect to http://www.juvely.com/appfiles/handler.php
http://microsoft.juvely.com would also redirect to http://www.juvely.com/appfiles/handler.php

In the next couple of days I plan to release a detailed tutorial on how to get this set up.

On another front, we have got the holding page up and running with a little bit of snazzy AJAX and PINK links! If you’re interested in trying out the app once its ready for beta, throw us your email and we’ll be sure to let you know.

So these are the sort of tasks we are currently working on, before we start to code the main system of the app, we need to get some ground work down.

Hello everybody! I am the other developer, Luca Spiller. Now if you aren’t a reader of BareNakedApp you are probably wondering what all the fuss about it is. Well basically it describes the process of developing a web application, but the function of what they are developing is kept a secret. Anyway that is what we aim to do here.

Right, where to start? Well as James said we are both students, so we will be developing this on a student budget - as little as possible. James and I are both fans of the 37 signals’ Getting Real process so we are following that to develop Juvely. We are going to be doing as much of the work ourselves to avoid any costs, and the rest will be funded by having nights where we stay in rather than going down the local.

James has had the idea about this for months, and when I first got in touch with him he hadn’t got anything down on paper, so I made him do that. As he said we are using a Basecamp account to keep track of things which is great. We are using a free account, as at the moment we don’t need any of the premium features. He already had a logo done, and a mockup page in XHTML done.

We sort of skipped a step by ignoring sketches and going straight for the Photoshop mockups. James is the designer, so he may have done sketches but I don’t thing so. I think this was a bit of a mistake as so far we have only really got one page design completed in XHTML, so maybe a few XHTML wireframes are in order for other sections to start with. This isn’t really a problem though as James is doing the Photoshop mockups, and then I am creating the XHTML/CSS so we are always busy doing something or other.

So why have we only got one page done? Well it isn’t because we are lazy, but James decided that the old layout was a bit untidy and difficult to work with (due to rounded corners on almost everything). So now we have a lovely new tidy design, but it has set us back a little bit.

I share the same thoughts as James about finding someone to work with. Not only can you meet someone who is talented in other skills, who you can learn from, but you also get new ideas and more motivation. Anyway, I think I have revealed enough about what we are up to now, and I need to get back to XHTMLing.

P.S. Hi Ed, hope you are busy with the CAs!

Welcome to the Juvely blog! I’m James Deer and my fellow developer is Luca Spiller. Luca and I are both 18 and from the UK, Luca is studying a BSc in Computer Science at Exeter University and I’m studying an MA in Computing Science at Aberdeen University.

Following Ryan Carson’s BareNakedApp from when it started is what really inspired me. The idea of what to build came to me from previous troubles and experiences, i briefly looked around to see what was already available in that market, the things i found were either extremely over priced and/or very badly designed. This is where i wanted to make a change, so i began to plan the app to a certain extent, gathering ideas for a good few months. Once i had done this i started on the very first interfaces. Now my original plan was to start developing the app through summer and have a majority of it done, however, problems arose and i had to put the project on hold.

In September i made a post on buildv1.com, this site “connects entrepreneurs”, i thought i would give it a shot and see what would come of it. I got a couple of emails which didn’t really sound to promising, then in late November i got an email a novel sent from Luca, he explained about himself, what his previous experiences were and what he can program in. I thought as he took the time to type this out i would at least give him a shot. I spoke to him over emails some more, then over MSN, i found him to be an extremely great guy, he shares the same goals and is talented in a good few programming languages, what else could i have asked for.

So now we had both agreed to work on the app together splitting everything we make 50/50. We created a basecamp account, now i had never used this masterpiece of a tool before but like so many others I’ve also fallen in love with it. This is now our main channel of communication. At the start of December i started re-creating the UI’s i had done back in June, now they look better than ever. What i have learn’t is its much better to find a partner to work with, getting constructive criticism improves your work a hell of a lot and it motivates you so much more.

In this blog we plan to document every step of the way and if you’re lucky we’ll give you some video posts!