30-1...Information Technology

When it comes to creating a business based upon information technology, people automatically think of computer programming. Here are links to computer hardware and software that you should consider. But before you do, think of this. IT requires a huge amount of time, determination and a brilliant memory. You also need a clear view of what you want to accomplish. Remember this; there is a huge amount of competition in this field. It is highly likely that what you want to create has already been done by someone else. In addition to the IT, you will also need to advertise your creation, which won't be cheap nor quick. Such a project will take years to learn, perform and finalize. There are 1.5 billion websites on the WWW, with 200 million interactive, so look upon this venture as a hobby. It also pays to be disaster tolerant, as IT hiccups are common. Most of this chapter is devoted to what I had to go through during the creation of this website. I do not recommend this effort to anyone, as it brought me close to a mental breakdown several times. If you intend to create a website, then use Wordpress. The finished website may not be unique but it will certainly be less stressful and time consuming.

If you are a small enterprise and want to sell a product, then do it on eBay, Amazon, supermarket or retail store chain. If you have got an idea to promote, then create a video for Youtube, since pay per click with Google is too expensive, whilst email marketing is impossible, since it's 'classified secret', if like me you want to send it to politicians. In the end you maybe forced to employ TV advertising which is very expensive. At this time of writing in January 2023, my ISP Ionos, is advertising its services on television. I think that says it all. This website has been on the internet 3 years and I still haven't got Google to index all the pages, because the company presents too many technical obstacles, without which surfers can't find my pages through their browser's search engine unless they type in the domain name. As a result this website receives no visitors, so consider yourself privileged. Over time, because of poor usage, Google will not index any of these pages. The webite will simply cease to exist.

You may consider working in the IT industry as a programmer or network manager. Problems in this field include lack of quality training programmes, no national IT standards, no range of approved apps and no help desk which you can phone to ask for a software solution. Such problems can take days, weeks or months to sort out. I use Rapid PHP 2022 at the time of writing. When I display a web page I am working on, as opposed to the HTML page, the page overlaps to the right and is hidden. By clicking on 'code edit' then 'preview' the page resets itself correctly. Is it the app or my programming that does this? I don't know. I had a similar problem with double sets of vertical scroll bars appearing. I came up with a software solution, but this problem mysteriously disappeared after a year or two. If IT was controlled by government, then the approved apps would all be designed and produced by British companies in this country, to government standards. As it is, most .co.uk domain websites are served from the USA including this one. If our IT systems were 100% British, HMG would be in full control. Any operating system updates would be clearly announced, and held in the dead of night at the weekends, so as not to reduce productivity. Productivity? How many have you experienced updates that last 1.5 hours? Or you become impatient at the sight of your machine apparently doing nothing for minutes whilst the screen reads 100% install, so you press restart, only to find the damn thing downloads the KB (knowledge based, update, upgrade) software all over again, do you then call Windows 10 some foul name, like 'you worthless shit'? And after all this, you sit there studying every pixel, looking for the change. 'What have they done? Where is it? What are they now calling it? What does that do? What good is that? They've added a what? What do we want that for?' Of course you realise that they've only added all these knobs and whistles to slow your computer down, to encourage you to buy a new one that conforms to the latest spec, and will somehow be more secure, so that they can then make more people in there security department redundant.

Without realistic standards, you may also find that the people managing you, know very little about IT, or worse, totally ignore your expert advice. Recently I came across an article about failed IT security at the nuclear decommissioning plant at Sellafield Ltd., Cumbria, UK. It says it all. Trade is now through the global economy, with its huge container ships and just in time mentality. However, it's all enabled through information technology and advertising, without which your nation's economy will only go down hill. IT and advertising should therefore be treated with the same importance as the UK's energy infrastructure and nuclear deterrence. My ideas in the Ideas Internet TV chapter should be taken seriously. As it is, HMG has no Ministry for IT and advertising, both of which should be approved and managed by HMG direct, but aren't. As it is I can't advertise because the GUI (Graphical User Interface) of Microsoft and Google ads, is too complicated. So complicated in fact that I get the feeling it's deliberate. Do they really want to own the world by sabotaging possible competitor's business'? I saw a Google stand at a Conservative Party annual meeting in 2023. Is that wise? I use to be a CAD technician, using very complicated GUIs, which says a lot. Of course we'll first need a technocracy, in order to implement all of this, wouldn't we?

It's about time HMG treated IT as a public utility. As things stand at the moment (circa 2015) I feel that customers are being conned. For the last few years I have suffered enormous stress as a result of Microsoft failing to provide an adequate operating system. Now with Windows 10, and after months of use there are still problems. It still feels as if it's in beta. It's like buying a new car only to find that the exhaust pipe is a rubber hose, whilst the salesman tells you not to worry as the real thing will be fitted in about one year's time. Would you have bought that car if you had known what you were getting yourself into? Just because Windows 10 is 'free' (not free from stress) should not entitle Microsoft nor a company associated with any other software to get away with releasing an unfinished and inadequately tested product, for one very simple reason, this product is not only killing people through strokes and heart attacks, it is also costing organisations a great deal of time and money in software maintenance, and hence seriously affecting our ability to compete in the global economy. It is about time HMG got its hands dirty by regulating the IT industry. This nation cannot afford to have high overheads, be it in energy, water, security, training, insurance, transport or IT.

The employment level in the UK is now close to maximum, mainly because companies don't want to invest in expensive IT, either because of the uncertainty of Brexit, or because IT has too many pitfalls. Take this website for example. I tried six web hosts before figuring out how to get this website on the internet. In every case I had to hand over the money before finding out what IT procedures were involved. Their help files were rubbish, whilst the passwords were often wrong. Communication with HELP was to Q&A, or standard replies, usually after waiting a day for the response. Often I simply didn't know what to ask because I'm not a geek. It took four months.

The IT industry has still not matured. The spectre of AI and quantum computers is still over the horizon. However, that is no excuse for doing nothing. Failure to rationalize IT hardware and software is costing the British economy dearly, as companies will not take on someone who is not experienced at using their software, since the high cost of training is prohibitive, whilst there is no guarantee that the trainee will stay in the company once they complete the course. The software selected should be designed and maintained in this country due to economic, defence and security implications.

As an engineering design draughtsman I updated my skills by learning computer aided design on a three month full time course. I learned 2D CAD, parameterization, attributes, etc. in 1987, one year before HMG closed down the Skillcentre. However, while the course was good, it failed to provide employment in that field because the software learned was not used by most employers. The software was mld2, which was very advanced for its day, and if HMG had bought the company, or at least a controlling interest, and made it part of a full range of approved, integrated software, and forced all organisations in the UK to use it and nothing else, then employment would have been no problem. Instead HMG merely displayed its ignorance of financial management by doing nothing. There wasn't then and still isn't an IT standard in the UK, never mind the EU. CAD systems today are linked to industries, Microstation - rolling stock, Autocad - electrical (electrocad add-on), construction & process plant, IBM/Dassault Systemes Catia - aerospace, CADDS 5 & Pro Engineer- automotive, Strucad - structural, Solidworks - printed circuit board, etc. I learned Autocad by buying the hardware and software, but the real problem turned out to be finding a company that knew how to use the technology efficiently. I never found one. Today each seat costs at least 5,000 pounds. Computer software comes in numerous genre: office, accounts, Finite Element Analysis, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Direct Numerical Control, etc. Some CAD software like Autocad has approved add-on software to cover other branches of engineering and even architecture. It all costs a fortune, and companies can't afford to make mistakes when it comes to selection, purchase and training. They get almost no help from government. Failure to impose an industry standard is unforgivable. Because of this, companies find it difficult to get personnel off the shelf. They may therefore feel tempted to relocate their business to where IT standards do exist.

I have worked on the IT for this web site now for four years on and off. The ideas in the ideas section has taken roughly thirty years, whilst the music database has grown over at least seventeen years. The IT has been a pain in the arse, since HTML5 and CSS3 are so complicated compared to the HTML3 I worked with on my college cv in 1994. I did my cv in a couple of months. I get the strong impression that whilst they say the software has been improved to allow the quick editing of very large web sites, in reality these updates eventually stop existing websites from working, requiring update for a very large fee, by some geek who knows the magic art of web mastering. Needless to say, that ain't me. To learn this you need interactive training software, since it's virtually impossible to learn this software from a book, whilst teaching IT subjects in a classroom appears to be no better. Productivity is more important than flashy web sites. HMG should provide a range of fully integrated, free and secure software. Give it to the world, and include intelligent links in the apps, to a government web site that will list companies located in the UK that make a product, or provide a service, that the computer user is working on. That is how to do business in the global economy. You have to think out of the box, invest in effort, not simply throw money at the problem. The management of this kind of effort is beyond that of a democracy. We must have a technocracy if the nation's debts, national, corporate and personal, are to be paid off.

It is now November 2019. I have missed the deadline for the UK general election as it appears that my third web host in five weeks gave me the wrong password to type into FileZilla. As a newbie, I'm completely ignorant of domain names, SSL, FTP, DNS, Linux, YABB, etcetera, but I do know how passwords work. And I don't like it when I send out an email entitled 'I want a refund' only to receive a reply asking me what add-on I want, as the first web host did. If PayPal don't get my money back I'll let you know who the con merchants are. My first web host screwed up my passwords. I complained, only to be told to go into cpanel and change them. But I can't go into cpanel because my passwords don't work. With my second web host I got FileZilla to work, only to find that they only handled Wordpress files. I terminated my business with them before I realised that I could have converted my html files to php simply by changing the file type. After looking at so many confusing and distracting web host sites, and they all have a unique website layout, with different procedures, devoid of a simple set of chronological and detailed, customer specific instructions, I get the impression that it's deliberate, in order to get customers to abandon their quest and their down payment. I simply can't believe that a keen, honest and helpful web host exists on this planet anymore. After receiving several odd replies to your help messages you realise that you're communicating with an algorithm. You are a lone castaway, amongst a vast sea of ones and zeros. You are not amused. You have paid in advance for your precious website to appear on the internet, without actually knowing whether the web host is capable of doing that. Have you been conned? All those emails you receive from various web host geeks; do they really exist?

After signing up to the web host, I waited for the four pieces of information needed by FileZilla (HOST, USERNAME, PASSWORD, PORT), an app that assists uploading. Unlike some web hosts who send it in an email, the information eventually turned out to be in my account on the web host's server, on page one. I was told that my home file had to be called index.php, without which it would not appear on the internet unless I typed the file name immediately after the domain name. Domain name is your website's name starting with https:///www., which you type in the toolbar, not the search engine, because you haven't yet signed up to Google advertising. I changed my home page filename, and then using the 'search>replace>find all>replace all commands in my app, I changed all reference to the old home filename to index.php, in all other files, then deleted the original index.php that I had uploaded my files to. After renaming this file name I uploaded the files and folders to the server. It was like the scene in Apollo 13 where they finally bring the computer back to life in the command service module. I was greatly relieved, but it was short lived. Whilst my website worked fully in the app on my PC, the education files refused to switch to the home page when I clicked on the return icon. I stared at the help notice, but couldn't fathom out what was causing the problem. The server could not find the home folder. In each folder that contains images you will see a fixed icon in the top left corner. When you click on that it will take you back to the home page. I worked out the software routine for that years ago, and was dead chuffed when it worked as intended. Unfortunately after uploading and changing the home folder I couldn't make it work, and I had no idea why after I had edited it. Each jpg image in the set consists of three files, a file containing all the images, the html file which dictates the size position and spacing of the images, and the php file which communicates with the server. Now if you change one of these filenames, the graphics won't be displayed because the other two files can't communicate with it. For two days I thought my problem had something to do with this, making me think that I had to create a php or htaccess program. I searched the internet, but couldn't find a solution. Then it hit me. Every time I had renamed a file in the past, I had used the rename command to edit a filename in a list. This time there was no list and no rename command. I had renamed the file without using 'save' after deleting the old filename. All forty files that had this problem were then corrected in thirty minutes. Ninety per cent of website creation time is spent sorting out problems like this. That's why most web masters these days use Wordpress, but when I started this project I had never heard of it.

By now my website was on the internet, but it now had to be found by search engines, and then by customers. I had to register with Bing and Google search engines before submitting my site map to them. The site map is an xml file that you have to create using an app called www. xml-sitemaps.com This assists SEO (Search Engine Optimization) spiders or bots to crawl your website and read its structure, producing a precis of its content. After typing in my domain name, I pressed the export button and prayed. The free app is restricted to 500 links. I was amazed to see that it took the full quota. From my PC's download folder I transferred it to my PC's website folder, from there it was uploaded to my websites root directory on the web host's server using FileZilla. Simply highlight the files you wish to copy, then drag them across. The root directory is the top directory on your web hosts file server. It has no name. Upload xml file to root directory using FileZilla. The root directory is the top directory in your server window, and is where you would normally load most of your websites folders/files. Beware of where you upload folders and files in order to avoid duplication when you update them. The directory structure of your website should be the same on the server as it is on your PC. For more than 500 links you are expected to pay a huge fee, but that isn't necessary as Google and Bing only display a limited amount of detail during a browser's search. From the xml-sitemaps website you then ask Google to trawl your website. Now I had read that it can take a couple of months for your website to appear on the worldwide web via a search engine, so I was amazed to see it when I typed my domain name into Microsoft's Edge the next day. The search description was brief and to the point. No mention of my biography and music lists though. Well, with some SEO reading from the internet, hopefully I'll be able to improve it. You can download these free apps, and buy the books I used to create this website, from the links at the end of this chapter. Other SEO websites are SimilarWeb, Semrush, Alexa, Quantcast-own, WebNots and Compete.

In reality this section of SEO contacting Bing, Google, etc. took ages either because I didn't know the best way to do it, or because the best way hadn't been created at that time. I used Screaming Frog SEO Spider free version, which I no longer advise because it created a csv file (comma separated values) which you then had to paste into excel spreadsheet to create an xml file, which Google said it couldn't read. Mind you it couldn't read the CSS file which xml-website.com produced, first time around. Such is the pace of change in IT. I did find the Bing webmaster tools very handy, once I'd found out how to use it. As with Google webmaster tools you have to click on the list of problems before the affected file names would appear. Google's search is more sophisticated than that of Bing. Bing and most other search engines use the META data found in the HEAD of each PHP file (was HTML5). Here can be found the UTF-8, TITLE, TEXT/CSS, VIEWPORT, KEYWORDS, AUTHOR, DESCRIPTION, CONTENT-LANGUAGE, plus meta links for Yandex and Google-site-verification, without which the Bingbot is blind. 'Text/css' tells the bot where the css files are located, whilst 'title' are the words next to 'favicon' as you read a website. If you don't set this up properly, then no one is going to know that your website exists. My website was four months on the internet before I found a website showing me roughly how to do it. Evidently I had initially put the data in wrong at least twice. The trouble with the internet is that you have to know exactly what to type into the search engine in order to find it.

Being a website with global intentions, I downloaded the Yandex (Russia) and Baidu (People's Republic of China) browsers. It is necessary to have most of the world's web browsers on your desktop so that you can test your website on them regularly. I then had to go to the Yandex and Baidu site verification websites, to ensure their browsers could find my website. The foundation of Google Chrome is Chromium, which is open source software used by almost all browsers in the west. Google Chrome is regarded as a more up market version. I still had no email address, questions & answers, and forum. A forum would help retain customers, assuming I was to ever get any.

You can advertise your website either by paying a monthly fee to Google or Microsoft (Bing) or by adding email addresses to spreadsheets which are then cast to the web by a PR company, a process known as email marketing. PR stands for improving client Public Relations through Press Releases. Since hundreds of millions of websites exist, your clientele are not going to find your website by accident. If your website becomes too popular (insufficient bandwidth remaining), you will have to upgrade to VPS (Virtual Private Server on the cloud with Solid State Drive), or even a dedicated server (e.g. e-commerce website with Secure Socket Layer for encrypted communications for money transactions, etc.), through your web host's cpanel, which of course is an extra expense. In addition, your web host could raise fees substantially at any time. Email from your web host also costs more if you don't want a free one from gmail. And don't expect your web host's help assistant to sort out your IT problems. They're there simply to tell you what the next step is and where to find things on their website. Also slowing me down was the state of the UK internet. With office people working from home due to Covid-19, I was timed out many times by routers that either couldn't take the work load or were overheating due to the hot weather. 8.5 million people suffered internet outages at this time. It was easy to see why HMG was not going to put the nation's education system on the internet anytime soon. I had to switch off my computer for days, not just due to heat but also lightening every four seconds. This web site currently has no email addresses. I thought of errata, biography, my ideas and music list advice files, and a P.O. Box No., but at the moment I'm sick to death of IT, and want to get back to the gardening. Incidentally IT stands for intellectual torment. I want none of IT. It should be realised that all of the problems described in this chapter are due to a lack of training. Were HMG to take training seriously, then productivity in IT would increase substantially. Without it, it is likely that this country will lose its competitive edge over other nations in the global economy, particularly as democracy makes way for technocracy across the globe.

I had tried at least half a dozen web hosts before settling with Ionos. Apart from the stress of seeing all that money going down the drain as I set up my hobby, there was the frustration of navigating someone else's website. In front of a computer I am not a calm person. It only takes seconds to wind me up. They're slow, whilst they always without fail go belly-up. In addition, websites that are not intuitive are experiences I don't need. Why don't web host websites use radio buttons in chronological order (pick and choose) for domain name, DNS, SSL, bandwidth, CPU, emails, email marketing, security and database? Against which should be a help button. Press it and a full explanation of what the question means is instantly displayed without even a hint of Microsoft minimalism, along with all the pros and cons, time to install, price, etc. Instead, what you get is a button which takes you to another button which take you to....by which time you are totally disorientated deep within someone else's website, totally stressed out and having completely forgotten what you were trying to do. You're screaming blue murder, because you've been sitting there for days waiting for a reply to your help message, as your deadline slowly slips away. So why didn't HMG sort all this out decades ago, why? When it comes to IT, the only thing politicians talk about is internet speed. They want to spend something like twenty billion pounds on installing fibre to every home and business in the UK. Instead it is likely to lead to court action by Virgin Media against HMG for creating an unfair subsidization of internet speed. To say that the UK is an IT disaster would be an understatement..

As things now stand in the UK, it is unlikely that any of this will be achieved in the near future, because amazingly, HMG does not even have a Ministry for Information Technology. Believe it or not, digital is discretely tucked away in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Also, there is no Ministry for Tourism and Leisure, just a devolved system. When you look at this list you realise just how far we are behind other countries. And that doesn't include all the IT systems necessary for a technocracy.

Paste this Javascript from Brownielocks into the head of your websites home page. It works in my Microsoft Edge. It prevents people from copying text. Don't place too much faith in it, as standards rapidly change in IT making programs fail. Also read the advice, after all, it is the Wicked Wild West. I couldn't get the 'stop images being copied' program to work. On December 23rd, 2020 I finally got a clean bill of health for my website from Google Webmaster Tools. Everything worked, everything was in its place, whilst the number of impressions was rising like a Covid-19 infection chart. The net day my internet connection was down. I phoned my ISP (Internet Service Provider) only to be told by the auto response that they were all on holiday. So much for there being no Christmas this year. Would there be anyone there before January 2nd, 2021?

Employ HTML editing, to create a more complex website, then copy and save all your HTML files to PHP format. This is because your web host's file server reads PHP files not HTML. I advise you to use Ionos. There you will find an app to create favicons (browser toolbar icon) and touchicons (Apple page files).

When Google bots check your website for mobile phone use compliance, the result can be disheartening and frustrating. Text size and spacing must be correct with viewpoint installed. Just follow the instructions. Each browser has its good and bad points. The next step in your website project is to construct the Favicon and Touchicon. The favicon is that small picture you click on on your web browsers favourites tool bar. The touch icon is used on Apple products to book mark a web page. For this I used the web host Ionos. Type 'create favicon' into search window. Select Creating Favicon. Scroll down to the graphics grid and create your icon. I used the Favicon Generator as that accepts more than two letters. Letters can be upper of lower case, in a line or not, although I must admit that with only 16x16 pixels, you have to be really creative in order to be able to discriminate the letters where it says 'preview Favicon'. Once you are satisfied with the image, select 'generate Favicons'. This downloads the data and instructions into your download directory, and don't forget to scroll down and copy & paste the HTML into the head of your website. 'Did this article help you? - YES' Click on your zip file found in your download directory. Read the instructions in the text file and carry them out. It's as simple as that. It's about the only thing that is simple in this project. You can watch your websites performance either via your web host, in the case of Ionos, or via the Google or Bing websites usually via an email they send you once they have received your sitemap. You can expect no visitors to your site until you have advertised it. This can be done either through video or images through Google, or person specific email marketing, the database of contacts you can create yourself by hiring an RDBMS internet interrogator. This database is then transferred to your web hosts email marketing facility, where your email message is transmitted to the list of hopefully eager clients listed in your database. So which system is best?