Professional Documents
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Design and Development For A Charity Website
Design and Development For A Charity Website
1.1. Introduction
The charity organization has asked the manager to project-manage the design, development,
and launch procedures of the web-site, specialists for which are going to be outsourced taking
into account the fact that the charity doesn’t have web-specialists in-house. In short, it
becomes the sole responsibility of the project manager to specify the functionality of the web-
site in order to fulfil the requirements of the charity organization, event organizers, and
donators; moreover, the manager will have to draft a process schedule or plan of work lifecycle,
demonstrating critical points in time when charity organizers will have to be involved into web-
development process.Further, the project-manager is responsible for ensuring that a viable
back-up solution is put in place for recovery of the financial and other data in case of
information loss or damage. In simpler terms, the task is to plan initial stages in the project
prior to any technical implementations, so that issues or potential problems associated with
that will be foreseen early on and recovered or mitigated with minimal losses and expenditures.
All charity websites must be visually engaging, however stay moderately interactive, so
that people with visual, hearing impairments and learning challenges can easily access and
enjoy the contents. Therefore, some overly sophisticated and distracting features, like
sound, must be omitted.
Homepage design is a highly substantial part of the whole web-site, whereby the single
page can persuade a single user or the entire funding organization to donate to the cause,
allow for fast and speedy navigation, and introduce to the objective of the current web-
project. Therefore, it is clear from the outset that the precise range of target users must be
identified first so that the web-site homepage is oriented towards those users.
Support for social media must be leveraged properly by means of seamless integration
between the website and social media channels so that the user shares his experience on
social networks and forums (Facebook, LinkedIn); it might be feasible to implement forum
directly on the website, but technically it will involve extra financial and time costs.
The content management system might be adjusted to the needs of
volunteers/supporters/beneficiaries through Intranet, for example, by allowing logins and
personal profiles to the volunteers for sharing comments. The additional feature would be to
allow volunteers to take part in creating, updating, and complementing the web-site content
by making suggestions and recommendations as well as telling different stories: this feature
helps attract more volunteers and members.
Clients will also have to be cared for: clients might even take parts in forum discussions
and idea-sharing regarding some acute topic, like orphan children or homeless; users of the
website can be allowed to publish their own works of art, drawing, or essays on the website,
which, although time and budget-consuming, may facilitate more user engagement and
participation in the charity cause.
The website must follow the rule of cost-effectiveness: in other words, the website
design and implementation investment will have to be paid off by the returns in the form of
donations.
There must be option for online donations and online fund-raising through the usage of
direct mails or special appeals
Properly constructed funding application especially for medium and large donators is
present in most sites
Some websites even offer subscription membership options for money; moreover, sites
can allow all members, including users/volunteers/donators to purchase the charity’s own
merchandize and book trainings for fees (related to the charity causes of course)
Search engine optimization is concerned with adjusting site content to search engine or
Google indexation, so that the content must be of a good quality and easily searched by
relevancy.
Some charities are advertised on Google platforms for free: those charity web-sites gain
Google grants by submitting properly constructed grant applications to Google Corporation.
Content of the website must be unheavy and precisely communicating the objective of
the web-site; moreover, it must be periodically updated with news and other novices.
Almost all of these features are considered important for a charity web-site and therefore can
be implemented in the current project.
Charity organization-the primary customer and stakeholder; the final decision is made
by the charity management
Event organizers-volunteers and members of the web-site that will arrange events for
fundraising and post the events on the web-site
Donors- users that will donate money either online or by filling out the application form
Web-designer and developer- the parties responsible for implementing the web-site
v Purpose
The primary purpose of the web-site is to communicate the importance of helping
fellow humans who suffer from various insufficiencies to all potential users of the website;
this can be done through collaboration of the charity organization with event organizers and
posting different events on the site’s homepage.
v Performance
For large funding institutions it will most likely be essential to be able to fill a properly
constructed funding application form and submitting it online by uploading it back on the
website or send by post. In the navigation bar there will be option for donors to donate
either online, using PayPal or credit/debit card services, or by submitting application form.
Single donors are likely to pay straightaway online. However, the site is mostly oriented
towards large funding institutions
Some event organizers will be able to post their ads and offer trainings or charity cause-
related merchandize to donors on the side-bar of the pages through CMS and personal
logins
Users should be able to navigate easily through the website and in case they wish to
donate online, they should be able to specify on their own the sum that they donate
Charity organization can update or make amendments to the website content through
CMS, with their own administrator login
v Functionality
The web project should have a content management system for administrator or charity
organization itself to constantly make updates and amendments to the content of existing
pages, rearrange the site structure and reassemble menu, monitor commenting in forums,
control user registration, and administer online shop: this can be done by means of
Extranet/Intranet and administrator login.
Extranet will also allow members (basic membership for free, premium membership- for
some amount of fees) to login to their personal profiles and make comments, take part in
forum, or post their own works of art or writing to the website for a public use or for small
fees; the money from premium membership will go to charity causes.
All users that want to take part in the charity’s active social live or organize events for
charity causes will first have to register with the website, submit their details as follows:
o Full name
o Country of residence
o Date of birth
o Current address/post code
o E-mail and telephone number
o A particular charity cause they are interested in
o Password
v This volunteer-type access will ensure that volunteers can also make minor amendments to
their posted ads and events, and will be constantly sent newsletters or alerts from the web-
master.
v Security
Security issues are related to web-site hacking and vicious malware that may block the
content of the website from showing up, may trigger alerts popping up to the user trying to
access the web-site, may suddenly decrease the traffic, make malicious modifications to the
web-site files, code, and root folder and compromise the web-site content, down to
disabling the administrator from accessing the content and damaging or deleting the
business data, thereby leading to the loss of business and reputation of the site. Besides,
web-sites featuring embedded blogs, forums, CMS or image galleries are particularly
vulnerable to injections of hidden illicit content that is not always noticed from the first
sight. For ensuring against such accidents on websites and blogs there are different Website
Security monitoring systems, such as WebDefender. However, currently many web-design
and development agencies offer hosting services which also include technical support
packages and security features already embedded into the system. In principle, security is
going to be implemented through the use of appropriate software that hosting organization
can provide alongside with preventive measures that the web-administrator takes to
monitor the content flow and the files being uploaded by means of CMS.
2. Web-project lifecycle
1. First meeting and analysis of the prerequisites: discussion of the site requirements
and purpose with both charity management as well as with web-designer and developer;
arrangement of kick-off meetings or the communication means throughout the project.
2. Preparing the proposal: specify the site requirements together with costs involved in the
project proposal, which is presented first to the managers and after having obtained their
agreement, goes off to the web-designer and developer.
5. Design and content approval: combined design and content are presented to the charity
management/committee and passed on to the next stage in case of approval.
6. Coding/developing phase: once the design and content are approved by the charity
management and several important event-organizers, the developer builds design-consistent
back-end of the site, using appropriate platform and commercially-viable framework. As a
result the coding phase produces the dynamic content of the web-project.
7. Heavy web-application testing: different types of testing should take place after the
completion of the design-coding processes as to ensure the user-compatibility and
loading/traffic resilience. Testing will most probably be done by software testing specialists who
will generate a report and sign off the web-site if it contains no bugs and complies with the
above-mentioned requirements.
3.1. Introduction
It is inevitable that the web-site project should be backed-up by not only hard drive on the
computer, which will be prone to sudden damages, but also on other reliable media as well as
somewhere in the remote location, so that if one location happens to experience flood, fire, or
other emergencies, the data is still secure and kept safe. As the website contents are going to
be dynamic, the updated contents should be backed up regularly as well.
Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID) is another popular option for storing and backing
up the web-site in-house, on internal servers. RAID systems nowadays can come already
embedded into end-user interfaces, although the possibility of purchasing RAID externally for a
charity office server will allow for wider and more relevant choice to be made. RAID systems
have three most substantial advantages over other back-up systems in terms of redundancy (if
one drive of the whole bunch of hard drives on RAID gets damaged, it can be easily replaced
without affecting other disks, usually using mirroring technique), increased performance
(dependent on versions of RAID used and the number of drives, usually RAID 0+1 version), and
lower costs as compared to tape drives (for the charity the RAID used is one with 4 TB of storing
capacity with the moderate cost up to £500.
1.4. Recommendation
For the current web-project it is decided to use RAID backup system, which will cost £ 500
together with online back-up for £30 a year. This solution is the most viable as it ensures
against data damage and loss both online and offline, thus creating double fortification of the
invaluable business content.
Sources
Anon, Practical Guide to Dealing With Google’s Malware Warnings. Available at:
http://www.unmaskparasites.com/malware-warning-guide/ [Accessed April 1, 2011].
Anon, Web site development process – The processes and steps. Available at:
http://www.macronimous.com/resources/web_development_life_cycle.asp#link7 [Accessed
April, 2, 2011].
Anon, Sponsor a Child | Child Sponsorship | Children’s Charity | Sponsor Children : World Vision
UK. Available at: http://www.worldvision.org.uk/server.php?
show=nav.29&rw.cm=ENGINE,PPC,&gclid=CIDu2ZXYzqgCFcRtfAodkBM9jg [Accessed April 3,
2011].
Anon, Action for Sick Children – Welcome :: Available at: http://www.actionforsickchildren.org/
[Accessed April 3, 2011].