Does Maintaining A Website Count As An EC?

BeKindRewind · July 2009

Wow I'm surprised at that. ^ Kinda defeats the purpose huh?

Having written the forum software yourself is just icing on the cake.

More like the site is the icing on the fake and the forum software is the actual cake.

Harambee · July 2009

@jumpcondition - I absolutely love FF. Firefox + Firebug is the ONLY way to go for serious web developers. I use all those plugins and then some. You should add Greasemonkey and FireFTP to that list of addons. Also, thanks for the link it's really helpful. I've been using (Browsershots - Cross Platform Browser Test). Cross browser compatibility is the single most annoying issue I have ever faced when developing a website. Especially, Internet Explorer. It's so behind in web standards and I can't believe that people still use it. I've decided to stop support for IE6 on my sites. There's just too many bugs and hacks to deal with.

So what browser do you guys primarily use. I'm a Firefox fanboy.

jumpcondition · July 2009

a co-worker just sent me 'browsershots' today. helpful if you want to support multiple subversions of a browser, but still not the same as a five minute working test. we don't use it anything more than to test layouts.

you would be amazed at the IE6 userbase, especially for certain sites. IE6 was out for the longest, thus schools, libraries, older folks, lazy IT departments... they all had IE6 originally and just haven't bothered upgrading. depends on the site, though.

and yeah, i forgot to mention greasemonkey and fireftp (how could i?

)

genevieve961 · July 2009

I read this whole thread and everyone is mostly talking about a website. I want to know about a blog, too. I have a friend who is a little too young for this forum, but she is going into high school. Would something like this count:

Cybercrime International

geek_mom · July 2009

genevieve961 wrote:

I want to know about a blog, too.

With blogs, it would depend on the content. The blog you cited is very shallow -- recently published with only a few posts, and the posts show no depth in the subject (which happens to be in my field).

The author has clearly just discovered this topic and is posting information from other people's sites with little (if any) meaningful, original analysis. From my perspective, it seems a little pretentious that she's already writing "advice" to others on the subject. But she is writing a travelog on her "journey of discovery," which is the way a lot of topical blogs begin. Give her a year or two on that journey, and she may have a blog worth reading (and worth including in an application).

Does that answer your question? IMHO maintaining a blog wouldn't be an EC in and of itself, but maintaining a blog that reflects your depth and a degree of expertise in a particular topic absolutely could.

I can imagine some exceptions to the above as well. If you were an opinion blogger on The Examiner, perhaps, or blogged for your school newspaper, then the blog itself might be more key. Even then, though, the content is really the point.

geek_mom · July 2009

By the way, if that blog owner is your friend, she should look into the Teen Academy program at her local FBI Headquarters. And Infragard. Although she may be too young for membership in the latter, many of its meetings are open. I think she might find the content and the connections interesting.

MidnightBlue23 · July 2009

In order for it to count, do you have to make it entirely yourself? Or can something you get at like webs.com, where basically you can choose an existing template and don't have to do any HTML work since it does it all for you, count as well?

jackbenimble4 · July 2009

MidnightBlue23,

It depends on what skills you are trying to show the admissions officer by mentioning the website on your EC. Anyone can easily make a website through webs.com. If you were to list a site like that, the content would need to be impressive. For example, if you were into photography and created a site on webs.com to showcase your photography and really kept it up to date, mentioning the website could help show your passion for photography.

Creating cookie-cutter websites through webs.com isn't a passion itself.

MidnightBlue23 · July 2009

Thanks for the reply! In that case, I better start designing and coding from scratch then (I was too lazy to before). It's just a class of '10 website for my school that I started in freshman year and keep up to date. Basically I just want to show it's another skill I have because I taught myself how to do everything from trial and error. Otherwise it has nothing to do with what I want to major in.

genevieve961 · July 2009

Wait. How Do Your make a website template by yourself? Do you buy software or what do you do?

genevieve961 · July 2009

I'm confused

noimagination · July 2009

@genevieve961: Sitemap Tutorials

KillinEm · July 2009

You learn HTML, CSS, and JavaScript if all you want is static pages.

Then you might be interested in learning how to use Fireworks or Photoshop for images and templates.

genevieve961 · July 2009

Hey awesome site!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Harambee · July 2009

^Yeah, W3C is a great site to learn about web design. I used to go there all the time when I started doing web design. Even know, I still go there.

MidnightBlue23 · July 2009

Hmm I probably won't do it then lol

noimagination · July 2009

> So what browser do you guys primarily use. I'm a Firefox fanboy.

Most of the time, elinks. Firefox when I need graphics.

dshinka · July 2009

I listed a website I ran as one of my ECs on the common app for my application to Vanderbilt. Of course, had it just been HTML/CSS I wouldn't have listed it just because those are easy languages, but I used Java to data-mine information from other websites and compile it into mine. It easily took up several hours each week to maintain the database, so it's definitely an EC.

jeffson · July 2009

I think if

1) you did *programming* and not just HTML
and
2) your website answers an interesting question, is very popular, or implements some sort of interesting algorithm

then it's actually a great EC. If you do something beyond just a basic joomla installation, it's like a combo of entrepreneurialism and computer science.

pokemon3 · August 2009

i have a question, what if you're into journalism and you help edit an underground website with school updates?

Does Maintaining A Website Count As An EC?

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