Rajan Shrestha is studying Bachelors of
Information Technology at Kantipur
City College in the third year. He
has developed quite a few good academic
projects using tools like C, C++,
Visual C++, Visual Basic. Now, he
is learning web technologies and has
fair knowledge of asp and php.
During last week I
had chance to interview them. In the
interview, they talked about their
experience with revamping kantipur
Publications's Kantipuronline.com . Please email any comments at info@nepalnet.net
Q.
How would you approach (methodology
wise) the task of completely redsigning,
reorganizing and revamping such a
popular and huge website as Kantipur
Online?
Dhiraj:
I
was fed up of working with the old
static system of kantipuronline. Editing
html files and uploading weren’t
systematic. We had to do hectic job
of uploading each and every page daily.
At that time I was doing my BCA (bachelors
in computer application) final year.
So, I wanted to learn something new
and wanted to start this by redesigning
the website I was working for. I talked
to my coordinator Mr. Ravi Khadka
and got green signal. When everything
was set the project was finally handed
over to Mr.Bikram Shrestha (my teacher),
with whom I had to work with. I was
very glad to get a chance to work
in such a huge project.
Bikram:
Dhiraj
use to discuss about the difficulties
with his job of updating news on Kantipur
online so I was always suggesting
to have a dynamic website with well-built
control panel. One fine day we had
a meeting with Mr. Ravi Khadka, coordinator
of Kantipur Online and discussed out
the modifications and developments
that can be done for Kantipur
online. The idea clicked and the formal
procedures began. Nearly, after a
year of this meeting the project was
formally handed over to us.
Rajan:
There was a call to
develop kantipuronline at CSDR in
my college. I applied for the project
along with other students and got
selected through the interview.
Q. Would you like to share any memorable
event that happened during your redesigning
process?
Bikram:
The
project was completed in very short
time. We completed the first phase
within 6-8 weeks. Each and every moment
was equally memorable. Working with
students in a professional project
was really the experience to cherish
and coordination among us was great.
Both my students were learning every
moment that gave me immense satisfaction.
Some special moments were those when
KOL (kantipuronline) was hacked. We
were still in testing phase then and
it had been only 6 days of implementation
of this new system. The people at
KOL were in panic and they wanted
to switch to older system. We had
to convince them and patch all the
security holes in our system in very
short time and we were working for
36 continuous hours without blinking
eyes.
Dhiraj:
Talking about the memorable
moments, each and every moment were
memorable because I was learning new
thing every moment.
Rajan:
It was a tremendous
privilege to me, for getting such
an opportunity to work in as such
project, under the proper guidance
and supervision of my teacher and
senior.
Q. What
is the general feedback regarding
the redesign? Would you like to share
any interesting ones with our readers?
Bikram,
Dhiraj and Rajan:
Lots
of feedbacks are collected everyday
for KOL and most of the viewers appreciate
the redesign with a nice pat in our
shoulder. However, there are some
who liked the older one. We are still
improving the browsing and navigation
of the site according to the comments
and feedbacks of the users. These
days we are getting lots of feedbacks
and appreciations regarding online
news clips from Kantipur television.
Q. Beside Kantipur
Online, what else can we expect from
you and your team in the future?
Bikram,
Dhiraj and Rajan:
CSDR is a research and
development wing of Kantipur City
College that has an objective to conduct
academic research and to develop professional
and efficient softwares for the industry.
Here, students and faculty members
work together in a project so as to
develop a good learning environment.
For every new projects a new team
would be built so there are less chances
that we three would be working together
in some other projects. CSDR has few
projects in hand and we are focusing
on localization projects. All the
project updates would be available
at our site www.kcc.edu.np.
Also for kantipuronline we are developing
Nepali section with Unicode.
Q. Any suggestions
or last word to our readers concerning
how they should handle completely
redesigning and reorganizing their
website?
We are always
concerned to provide the best service
to the readers. There are various
features available for user’s
ease. News Archive section gives flexibility
to view news from past and also to
view all news of a particular date
in a single page without any graphics
that facilitates users having slow
connection. We might still be unaware
of different problems that our readers
are facing with current system. So
we would be improving our system according
to users feedbacks. We are also thinking
to add help section for KOL that would
provide tips and guidelines to use
the site and also to provide online
supports. We expect our association
with KOL will last long.
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