Essay: Building a website – choices

WordPress – The Chosen CMS
WordPress is an excellent choice for developing the website. It is the easiest of the three for the Client to use because coding skills are not required. It has all the required plugins that is needed to install the required features. There are plenty of themes to customise. There may be few security vulnerabilities but there is a plugin that can help and finally, it is free.
SilverStripe
According to Wikipedia, SilverStripe is a free and open source Content Management System (CMS) and Framework for creating and maintaining websites and web applications. It provides an out of the box web-based administration panel that enables users to make modifications to parts of the website, which includes a WYSIWYG website editor. The core of the software is SilverStripe Framework, a PHP Web application framework. SilverStripe is released under the terms of the BSD License. SilverStripe separates the roles of content authors (who get a rich (AJAX) web-based user interface that omits technical jargon) and website designers/developers (who write code: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP). This provides a contrast to CMS products that allow technical website development tasks to be performed within a GUI, and a contrast to programming frameworks that offer no out of the box content authoring application. The Silver Stripe approach is stated to remove complexity for content authors, and offer more flexibility to developers.
Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SilverStripe
Search Functionality
The website will provide a search facility that queries the database and return results for a search. The search function will be setup to allow for queries that a regular user would ask.
Database
Create a database to store the frame models, frame brands, type of eye tests, services.
Web Hosting
This section deals with finding a suitable web hosting company to register the domain and deploy the website onto the internet. The following information deals with what makes a suitable web hosting company, comparing with other web hosting companies offerings and then choosing one that will help launch the website.
What makes a Suitable Web Hosting Company?
There are a handful of matters that need to be considered when it comes to finding a suitable web hosting company. These matters are determined by the requirements of Student and Client. They should be deliberated before signing up with the provider.
WordPress Compatible: There should be compatibility to website hosting company and it should support WordPress, since the website will be built using the CMS.
Disk space: There may be constraints with web hosting companies which has a fixed amount of disk space allocated to a website per month. If you exceed the disk space, you will be charged an extra amount. Before you register, some companies allow you to pay for more disk space. It is a common practice to know all the details before you decide.
Affordability: Student and Client are unable to spend a huge amount of money and it should be affordable.
Monthly Payment: It would be more appropriate to pay a monthly fee without a fixed term contract. This makes easy for client whenever the Client takes over from the student and there is no fixed contract. If the client decides not to continue with the website and after six months, it will be easy to terminate.
Website traffic Fee: There may be constraints with web hosting companies which allow you a certain amount of web traffic and if you exceed, you will be charged extra. Sometimes, it may be unclear on how much you will be charged. Hence, it is a common practice to know all the details before you decide.
Easy to contact: You should not face difficulties finding/reaching out the web hosting company. If there is no contact number available, you must reach via email, which ideally takes a longer time to receive a reply.
Security: If the site is hacked, the Company should have excellent security model. There should be regular backups to foresee any unforeseen circumstances. Also, most companies provide users with backups to their websites.
Company Reputation: It is a good practice to sign up with a company which has positive reviews with reputation. This will save a lot of unnecessary mess if for any reason, you are unhappy with the provider.
Development
The first part of the development stage included installing and preparing WordPress.
WordPress
The latest version of WordPress was downloaded from the website, http://www.wordpress.org. The database was created within and then WordPress was installed locally. The entire installation process was pretty straightforward.
Gathering requirements from the client
An information Architecture analysis approach will be used to develop the website.
Information Architecture Analysis
Information architecture (IA) is the structural design of shared information environments. It supports usability and find ability for art and science of organizing and labelling websites, intranets, online communities and software.
It involves a model of information that is used and applied to activities (library systems and database development) which require explicit details of complex information systems.
Initial Interview
I have interviewed my Client about the Business and the outcome of the interview was to build a website. The website was to be built based on the available resources in minimal time.
Questions
Why did you choose vision centre?
I always am fascinated to feel the nature with naked eyes and I feel that if eyes are not good, one cannot lead a visually appealing life. I feel that without eyes, there is no life irrespective of poor or rich.
What makes you unique?
My services can be affordable for any Customer.
How can you withstand when there are multiple optical centres?
My staff is user-friendly and services are affordable.
What is the Objective?
My objective is to provide adequate knowledge about vision to audience. The information from the website helps audience to take their eyes utmost care than neglecting even minor injuries or if there is a disturbance in vision. This gives a wider opportunity to do business online, attract customers from throughout the world, in addition to show kindness.
Develop a blueprint and sketch of the website
Goals
The goal of this website is to provide adequate knowledge about vision to audience. The information from the website helps audience to take their eyes utmost care.
Audience
Following are the audience:
ï,§ Any individual who wants to get their vision tested can visit the website
ï,§ Any individual who wants to go for eye therapy can visit the website
ï,§ Those who want to avail spectacle frames can visit the website
ï,§ Those who want to buy branded spectacles can visit the website
ï,§ Those who want to know the types of eye diseases and their treatment can visit the website
Scenarios
ï,§ A female of aged 16 years visited the optical centre for eye testing. She complained that she is having a regular headache. Her eyes were tested and proposed to wear spectacles as there is a disturbance to her vision.
ï,§ A male of aged 25 years visited the optical centre for change of his existing frames of a preferred international brand. We proposed selecting an international brand of his choice and prepared the spectacles based on his vision characteristics.
Graphics / Layouts
The graphics and layout is based on WordPress, Content Management System. I have selected the theme from the list of available themes on WordPress.
Information Architecture as used to implement the website
The Information Architecture is divided into five steps.
• Planning the goals.
• Define the audience, create scenarios for users and perform a competitive analysis.
• Identify the content and functional requirements for the site.
• Planning the site navigation.
• Finally, the design, which involves doing sketches for the proposed website. These sketches are about displaying the website pages and define the page layouts.
Site Goals
The focus of this website is to provide adequate knowledge about vision to humans. The information from the website helps audience to take their eyes utmost care than neglecting even minor injuries or if there is a disturbance in vision.
User experience
Audience Analysis
Focus of the website is targeted on people who find any problems to their vision, have their vision tested. Provide a variety of frames of different brands for people who want to have a different look on their charming faces. Also, visual therapy is provided.
Competitive analysis
This stage involves analysing and comparing the other vision centres.
Website Content
Functional Requirements
Home Page – This page contains the purpose of the site for the users where users can access everything within the site.
Frames & Brands Page – Displays various types of available frames and in different brands. It also displays each image in a separate page.
Your Health Page – This page lets the user know about various eye conditions in various situations and various eye testing procedures.
Specialist Services – This page displays various visual therapies that a user can undergo in treatments.
Contact Page – This page displays whom to contact, how, and where.
More Information
More information was gathered about Spectacle Frames and Brands. See Appendix C.
Visual design
Wireframe
The normal layout of the website is based on the following wireframe. Each page in the website will have the following layout.
Website Construction
Website foundation
This stage discusses about creating the website using the CMS. The idea is to create the following pages in the website.
ï,§ Home Page
ï,§ Frames & Brands Page
ï,§ Your Health
ï,§ Eye Condition Page
ï,§ Eye Test Page
ï,§ Specialist Services Page
ï,§ Contact Page
Currently, the website is built with the basic flow and structure.
Administrator Login
The Administrator can only login to the website with the following options:
ï,§ User Name
ï,§ Password
ï,§ Forgot Password
ï,§ Change Password
ï,§ Login Status
ï,§ Password Recovery
ï,§ Deployment of working website
ï,§ Upload
ï,§ Test and review
ï,§ Maintain
7. Reflection
The overall experience of developing the website has been delightful. I have learnt all the technologies that are hard to understand and I have excelled my skills to implement the website. I have built simple websites for non-commercial purposes, but while building this website, I had to think in the user’s perspective and it fetched a good knowledge about a user understanding using this website about, how is it useful, in what way a user can navigate the website, etc. This website is static and it allows navigation between the pages.
I have built the complete website with the possible resources by referring to journals, watching YouTube videos, and reading the technological websites. This is not an easy task to build the website without prior knowledge and experience. It took a substantial amount of time and effort.
Extra effort was put in the research of finding the frames and brands. It’s not so easy to gather the information about various eye diseases. But, it took more time in researching to know the types of eye testing facilities, causes for eye repair, designing the services to cater to customer’s needs.
In a nutshell, I am delighted with the prototype of the website. It matches with the expected results. On a whole, the outcome of the project is successful.
Current state of development
The website is static and it is not yet hosted on any domain. But, the complete functionality is working as expected.
Future Development
Since this website is a prototype, there may be more improvements that can be added in the future.
In the first phase, the website should be launched and it should be up and running (live). Due to less time, this website hasn’t been uploaded to a domain to make it live. By this time, anyone could have accessed and the purpose of building the website would have solved, if the website is live.
In the second phase, implementing the login facility, create a database to store the patient’s details.
The next improvement would be to develop a more complex facility for the website which is a Hospital Management System. A patient can access the website from anywhere in the world, visit a doctor virtually through a webcam, have their eyes tested in a real time, get prescription and doctor advise. This isn’t an easy task to implement the hospital management system. A group of people is required to implement to make the system perfect.
8. Conclusion
The purpose of the project is to develop a functional and interactive prototype website. The site was successful and with every aspect planned for the site was achieved. The first stage for construction of the site was the information architecture. The site was given a direction to focus on through the aid of information architecture. The information architecture helped to develop the ideas for the site and made sure that the site is built with the users in mind.
The process in building the individual pages such as frames and brands, eye condition, eye test, specialist services was effective. The timeline I followed was useful and allowed the tasks to be completed on time. However, the amount of information I learned about modelling was invaluable.
The technologies used were:
Programming Languages
Html5, Css3, PHP
Frameworks / CMS
WordPress
Servers
Alter vista
IDE / Text Editors
Notepad ++
WordPress document editor
WordPress Plugins Used
Animate it!
Huge IT Slider
Si Captcha anti-spam
Yoast SEO
WordPress Theme Used
Dazzling
These technologies were instrumental in developing this project. Without these technologies, the project would be incomplete and would have taken more amount of time to develop.
The site structure was based on the multi-tier architecture. This separates the presentation, logic and the data classes. The structure keeps the features and parts separated, which allows for changes without breaking the program.
Overall, the project was a massive success with nearly all the planned functions and features working. During the progress of the website, I developed new skills in Content Management System.
The final outcome of the project advanced my knowledge and experience in website design.
9. References
This website belongs to New Zealand Company which curates the framework and supported by online community.
http://www.silverstripe.org/community/developer-and-partner-directory.
10. Appendix
Admin Login
Vision centre optics
12. Testing
Browsers
The website was testing using various browsers such as Internet Explorer, Opera, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox. All the pages are all displayed without any errors.
Links and Features
The navigation buttons and text links did work well. All images appeared without any error.
Contact
This page is working properly.
Nutshell
All pages have been testing and they pass the testing phase.
13. Conclusion
This report discusses the student’s struggle to develop and deploy a website for the Client. It is so amazing from the beginning to create a website, for Student and Client. There was a lot of effort spent on planning, designing and developing, testing the website. The Agile approach was properly implemented and it’s worthwhile, especially with all the changes that needed to be made. The student is now in a situation how to work with WordPress. He is more confident that he can create more websites in future.
Working with a Client is an amazing experience, especially when the student will have to deal with clients in a real working environment. Users will enjoy the neat design and layout and the easy navigation while using the features.
The student is delighted with the final product and has thoroughly enjoyed working. Even though, there were difficult times, it has been a wonderful experience.
14. Appendix A
Who is your target audience?
Generally anyone who is interested in eye vision will include friends, family, regular public who want to get their eyes tested, who would like to know various types of eye diseases, who would like to select preferred brands for their existing or new frames can purchase.
What are their needs?
To view the images and details of the products and order them. The users can be able to view images, details.
Contact details are required to can contact the Client if they have any questions about the products. A contact form will also be needed for direct contact.
What features do you require on the website?
An image gallery, eye testing services, eye diseases, contact details.
What kind of design do you wish to display on the website?
A simple design which is appealing.
Do you have specific colours to use?
Any soft colours, such as grey, blue, sky, grey, green, blue and brown and I do not like bright colours.
15. Appendix B – Layout Grids of the Remaining Pages
the navigation buttons.
16. Appendix C
Spectacle Frames
Spectacles: An optical appliance which consists of a pair of ophthalmic lenses mounted in a frame or rimless mount, resting on the nose and held in place by sides extending towards or over the ears.
There are various types of spectacle frames:
ï,§ Metal
ï,§ Shell
ï,§ Polyimide
ï,§ Carbon
Frames are designed in various types as full, supra, and rimless.
Major brands of spectacle manufacturers are:
Rayban, Oakley, Dolce & Gabbana, Emporio Armani, St Dupont, Safilo, Roberto Cavalli, Rodenstock, Christion Dior, Dkny, Burberry, BvlGari, Adidas, BlueBay, Blick, Montblanc, Boucheron, Boss, Cartier, Charmant, Calvin Klein, Carerra, Giorgio, Armani, Gucci, French Connection, Genesis, Hilton, Levis, Puma, Prada, Head, Hansstepper, Guess, Diesel, Inspira, Activ, Esprit, Fcuk, Vision, Ferrari, Fila, PierreCardin, Porchedesign, Tiffany&Co, Agnis B, AlainMikli, Aria, Augusto Valentini, Seiko, Oopz, Mercedes Benz, Davidoff, Legacy, Garfield, Brendro, Salvani, Elle Miyabi, Flair, Swaroski, Gant, Giordano, Police, United Colours of Benetton, Trussardi, Tommy Hilfiger, Luxottica, Versache, Tods, Tomford, Prodesign, Vogue, KillerLop, Sventh Stret, Oxydo, Lacoste, Hugoboss, SFeroflex, Valmax, Zeiss etc.
Contact Lens
Contact Lens is an optical aid which is placed on the anterior surface of the eyeball (Cornea). It was first described by Leonardo Da Vinci in 1508. Bausch and Lomb, USA first marketed the soft hydrophilic contact lens in 1971.
Principle: Refractive error is corrected by contact lens which is new refractive surface over the corneal surface. This new contact lens is uniform with different refractive indices and Radius of curvature.
Materials used in Contact lens are:
Hard – Rigid Materials (PMMA) Poly Methyl MethaCrylate is non toxic, non-allergic, resistant to chemical.
CAB – Cellulous acetate butyrate, is a transparent polymer with three monomers, it is non-toxic, non allergic, and stable.
PMMA + Silicon Polymers – Silicon has more oxygen permeability, wet ability, stability is thinner than CAB.
Hydrogen Lens Materials – These are hydrophilic polymers, these are soft elastic, water, containing, gel.
HEMA – Hydroxyl Ethalic Methacrylate, absorb 20-90% of water
Silicon Clastomer Lens – Their properties in many ways are between hydro gel and thermoplastic. They are very hard in nature and hydrophobic in nature.
Manufacturing Methods of Contact Lens
ï,§ Spinicost
ï,§ Lathe cut (Generators)
ï,§ Moulding (Spin costing)
ï,§ Compress Moulding
ï,§ Injection Moulding
Manufacturers
ï,§ Alcon
ï,§ Bausch & Lomb
ï,§ Cooper Vision
ï,§ Johnson & Johnson
ï,§ Menicon
Major branded contact lenses are:
ï,§ Air Optix
ï,§ Avaira
ï,§ Biofinity
ï,§ Bio medics
ï,§ Dailies
ï,§ Extreme H2O
ï,§ Freshlook
ï,§ Proclear
ï,§ Pure Vision
ï,§ Soft lens
ï,§ Acuvue
Lens Types
ï,§ Toric & Astigmatism
ï,§ Multifocal & Bifocal
ï,§ Colour & Enhancing
ï,§ Disposal – Daily
ï,§ Disposable – 1-2 weeks
ï,§ Disposable – Monthly
Sun Glasses
Eyeglasses with tinted or polarizing lenses to protect the eyes from the sun’s glare. They are of different shapes, sizes, and shades.
Major brands of Sunglasses
Rayban, Okley, Maujim, Police Carrera, Montblanc, Tomford, Vesache, Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Diesel, Arnette, Emporio Armani, HugoBoss, Oxydo, Safilo, United Colors of Benetton, KillerLoop, Vouge, Puma, Tommy Hilfiger, Nike, Christian Dior, Timex, Burbery, Bluebay, Lacoste, Tedbaker, Persol, Blick, Shuron, Sillioutte, Dkny, Prada, Michel Kors, Marchon, Fendi, Giordano, Fcuk, Richmond, Polo Raulph Lauren, RodenStock, Perrie Cardin, Blugirl, Rudy Proect, Escada, Nomad, Sting, Givenchy, Ferrari, Bvlgari, Roberto kavalli etc.
17. Appendix D – WordPress, Drupal and Joomla Comparison Results