Nepalnet.Net - The window to websites on Nepal
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


Revamping Kantipuronline.com !
how 3 men changed Nepal’s largest selling newspaper’s website
By Nepalnet


Left to Right: Rajan Shrestha, Bikram Shrestha & Dhiraj Shrestha


Bikram Shrestha completed Bachelors of Engineering in Electronics and Communications from Kathmandu University in 2000. Recently he is studying M. Sc. in Information and Communication Engineering at IOE, Pulchowk Campus. he has worked as System administrator at Network Technologies Pvt. Ltd and has joined Kantipur City College (KCC)as Lecturer in August 2000. Now he is handling responsibilities as coordinator of Center for Software Development and Research, CSDR at KCC. Bikram has developed quite few website as freelancer such as www.ecomnepal.com and www.mobilephonetrader.com.

Dhiraj Shrestha recently completed Bachelors of Computer Applications from Kantipur City College. He has been working in Kantipur Online since the last 3 years as a junior technical executive. he has experience of web programming with good command on php, asp, mysql and other web developing tools.

 

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.

Related Links

Go to Archive

 
Copyright 2003-2009