A while ago I wrote a post on how myElectrical is put together. Since then there have been some changes and maybe its time to update the post. Rather then edit the original I'm writing a new one to keep a sort of history of the site.
myElectrical was something I started a few years ago (sometime in 2002). It started as a quick attempt at making some software available on-line and over the years the site has grown from a couple of pages to what it is now. It's been a learning curve, devourer of evening and weekend hours and despite the odd frustrating moment a rewarding and enjoyable experience. I'm quite please with the way the site has turned out and hopefully it will continue to grow and improve.
In making the site I have blended various techniques and third party pieces of software to create myElectrical.
Main Site
The portion of the site includes the home page, tools and other miscellaneous pages. This is developed in asp.net and Visual Basic using Microsoft's Visual Web Developer and Microsoft's SQL server. There is an express (free) version of both Microsoft's Visual Web Developer and SQL server which for budding site owners are great tools (and expandable to full versions). The express edition of SQL Server does have a limitation on database size and once the site starts to exceed this I will need to upgrade to the full commercial version.
Visual elements of the site are controlled by the use of Cascaded Styles which helps to separate the web-page coding from the visual appearance of the site and make the overall appearance easier to update. Microsoft’s Ajax extension is also used to limit full page post backs - you can see this on some pages where you get the rotating wheel while it is uploading new content.
Additional features not be immediately obvious include identifying users based on IP address and providing appropriate/different content, an email queuing system so that mail is not lost and background tasks to update main page content, etc.
Community (forums, Wiki and blogs)
The community section of the site is to encourage participation by the site's visitors. This includes the forums, Wiki and blogs and is based on a on a product called Community Server by Telligent Systems. Community Server runs on asp.net, is widely used (including being used by Microsoft) and offers upgrade paths. As a coding environment asp.net provides a lot of functionality for site user membership. Both the main site and Community Server share a common membership database which allows seamless sing in to all sections of the site.
Note on the Wiki: originally I choose MediaWiki as the development platform for the site's Wiki mainly because the Community Server Wiki does not support equations. Unfortunately MediaWiki is not an asp.net platform (it runs on php) which required people to sign in to the Wiki separately and it also required knowledge of a mark-up language as opposed to 'what you see is what you get editing'. Recently I have been able to modify Community Server to allow equations making it possible to migrate the Wiki across creating a more integrated site.
Adverts
With myElectrical started growing I wanted to have the facility to place ads on the site to offset some of the hosting cost. A priority was to do this in a professional way and keep control over the serving of the ads. To do this the site uses OpenX; an open source adserver solution written in php and the most widely used adserver on the Internet. As a user of the site you don't really see this, but it runs in the background serving all the ads.
Hosting
As with most sites myElectrical is hosted on servers provided by a web hosting company. Initially shared hosting was used although fairly quickly the site started outgrowing this. Currently the site is hosted using Windows VPS hosting. Everything is on the VPS (database server, website itself, DNS and email services). As the site continues to grow and traffic demand increases the next step will be its own dedicated servers.
Affiliates
Hosting costs money and to try and offset some of this I use affiliate advertising, mainly e Google's AdSense program (which is the delivery of context sensitive ads, where the actual ads depend on the pages content). AdSense ads are delivered via the adserver and every time someone clicks on one a small payment made by Google. Currently the money made from this program covers about half the cost of the VPS hosting.
The books displayed on myElectrical are tied in with Amazon's associate program. Depending on country users either see amazon.co.uk or amazon.com books and prices. The idea of the program is that when people purchase a book Amazon pays a small commission. The site makes very very little money with this, but it does add useful additional content to the site so I'm quite happy to keep the books on.
Going Forward
For the site to continue growing more user participation is the key. Much of my current thinking is on how to get more users and encourage contributions to the forums and Wiki. If anyone has any suggestions, advice or can help with this it would be greatly appreciated.
Related Links
Posted
Tue, Oct 13 2009 7:22 PM
by
Steven