Monthly Archives: October 2013

Twitter Bootstrap

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Twitter BootstrapHere in the College web team we have been experimenting recently with building websites using the Twitter Bootstrap toolkit.

Bootstrap offers a very lightweight set of tools (it’s perhaps overkill to call it a ‘framework’) to set up a functional website in a very short space of time, that does everything that you might expect a modern website to do. With it, a website can be created very quickly that offers ‘out-of-the-box’ modern browser-based client-side technologies such as JavaScript jQuery interface components (e.g. navigation toolbars, tabbed or drop-down menus), and conforms to modern web development guidelines and standards such as the use of valid HTML (and HTML 5), CSS, accessibility, SEO and cross-browser support.

In particular, Bootstrap v3.0 offers the ability to easily build a Responsive Web Design (RWD) website so that the same codebase can be used for multiple browser/hardware client platforms of all sizes, including tablets and smartphones, without too much effort.

We’ve also been experimenting with using Bootswatch to theme (fonts, layout, formatting and colours) the default interface template offered by Bootstrap, and using the Drupal v7 Bootstrap module to integrate the functionality of Bootstrap into a Drupal v7 theme. The combination of the server-side PHP/MySQL Drupal Content Management System and the client-side jQuery/CSS Bootstrap toolkit is a very powerful one that allows a relatively sophisticated website to be built very quickly.

Bootstrap fits in very well with a Rapid Application Development (RAD) methodology or even an Agile development methodology. It’s perfect for building functional web prototypes or basic small-scale operational websites, but perhaps its limitations should be recognised – like a lot of WordPress-based websites there is a danger that without some customisation, the website interface can be too much like any other Bootstrap-based website and becomes a boring ‘vanilla’ website. It’s also not really an option if a website is designed to conform to a demanding specification, such as an interface that will feature some groundbreaking functionality or attractive and unique design that perhaps will be used for branding and marketing an organisation or idea.

What is does do though is allow a web developer more time to concentrate on the advanced requirements of developing a website on the server-side without having to worry too much about building a ‘quality’ website on the client-side from scratch for every single project, to gather valuable user feedback at an early stage of development, and it offers a scalable platform for future development and customisation.

Why you shouldn’t reuse passwords

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With so many website accounts to keep track of these days, many people are tempted to use one or two passwords that they can remember for lots of different sites. We have heard that it’s dangerous to write down passwords, and of course no-one can store dozens of random strings of characters in their head for websites that they may only visit occasionally. So, having a small number of passwords to reuse across multiple websites can seem like a sensible compromise.

However, this can be a very dangerous practice. It’s impossible to know how securely a website stores your data, and you should always ask what would be the worst case scenario if this information were to get into the wrong hands. There have been countless examples of password lists being leaked (examples include last.fm, eHarmony, LinkedIn, Yahoo!, Phandroid, Writerspace, and Adobe), but often passwords can be stolen without users being any the wiser.

Last week, a vulnerability was found in WHMCS, a billing and support application used by web hosting providers. Potentially, attacks such as this can give hackers control over things such as DNS settings and hosting control panels. In other words, your website itself can be as secure as possible, but hackers can still gain control by extracting your password from other applications.

A good solution is to use software such as KeePass. This allows you to store all your login details in a single encrypted database, so you only need to remember the password for the database, not individual passwords for every website. It also allows you to create much stronger passwords (since you don’t need to remember them), and will even generate them for you. Or if you need access to passwords when out and about, there are versions of KeePass for your phone/tablet.