InfoPoint's Development Environment

InfoPoint has created an environment in its offices that allow it to develop Web sites quickly and under conditions that reduce errors. In addition InfoPoint has the ability to try new technologies and is not tied to the services of an ISP. InfoPoint has hundreds, and even thousands of programs it tries each year to evaluate what would be the most useful for our clients. The software has already been discussed. In this section we want to tell you about some things that might not be familiar.

Recall that InfoPoint's expertise is at developing systems that are used by many people at the same time. While that can be a tremendous advantage it is also fraught with peril, because it is possible that people can change each others work.

One reason that InfoPoint prefers to manage the site is because if more than one person is modifying the site, it is possible that one person will wind up writing over anothers' changes. This is not something that is as much of a problem on a Windows based system, because for two people to share a file one person has to tell the other to get up from the computer.

That same kind of problem can happen even inside InfoPoint. If many people are working on the same Web site, it is possible that one person will edit a file not knowing that another person is working on it. For that reason InfoPoint uses source code control.

Source code control puts the Web site into a central location. When a person works on it, they need to check it out. If another person want to work on it, they go to check it out and find it is already checked out.

For extra quality management we work on the Web sites in a staging area - an area that is not advertised on the net, but looks like the Web site will look when it is released. When the Web site, or a portion of the Web site, is finished, it is checked for spelling, size of graphics, broken links, HTML compliance and many other things and then it is copied from the staging area to the visible area.