Website Migration Project - Term Paper Example

? Website Migration Project Inserts His/Her Discuss what it will take to build a Web architecture, move an existing Website with minimal Down-time, and provide a disaster recovery solution to ensure the site is always available. While creating a Web Architecture it is very important to idealize the visitor’s interests, needs and expectations. The combination of Text, Visual design, navigation, and organization should be up to the mark which will allow the users to find the key information and finish their critical tasks with ease and in the desired time. There are certain necessities that have to be implemented in order to build a Web Architecture. A proper team should be selected which should consist of visual designers, writers and the technical staff that will help you in different phases of Web Development – defining the web architecture, quality content writing and lastly the modification of the visual design (Brinck, 2002). Since the web architecture is highly a visible medium in order to deliver your message, you should make sure that all the people working in respective departments are spot on with minimal margin of error. Now, to make a website I will choose the IIS (Windows), Windows operating system in combination with Database – MySql. The reason to select this combination is that the windows based technologies are found to have great support system and an outstanding customer service as compared to other open source alternatives. Furthermore, windows based technologies are registered and they have got legal licenses to public their web architecture whereas other sources need not to be registered and could be misused by any false pretenses. It has been a common practice of transferring of the existing website as per desired. This is a time consuming process. But in order to move the existing website with minimal down-time there are some very technical steps that have to be implemented to avoid down-time. They are as follows: Firstly you need to transfer all the files, data and other miscellaneous settings from the old server to the new server through free content transfer. After the transfer of the files, the new server should be tested properly whether it is giving the desired response or not. To make your visitors visit the new server, change the database settings of your site so that the old server accesses the new sever. This is a very important step. In order to point the new server you should change the name servers and the DNS. Implementing this technique would definitely avoid the down-time. It would also not matter whether the visitors see during the propagation of the DNS, the old server or the new server as both the servers update at the same database. In case of the redundancy of the site a back-up site should always be maintained in order to keep things moving according to regular schedule. As far as your back-up site is concerned, there are three principle components which should be kept under consideration; things you need so that the users view your website, the necessary tools that are required to maintain a website and new innovations and development on your website. There are five strategies that could be implemented to recover from a disaster: Back-up Live Operations This refers to your hardware, network connectivity, operating system and scripts that is required to build a website. If you own your web servers then you should definitely plan for the back-up for any hardware failures and if your web servers are operated by a hosting company they definitely offer great back-ups which help you to recover with ease. Back-up Tools Tools are required to maintain and update your websites. This could vary tremendously with different kinds of sites as there could be different tools for different websites. As far as tools are concerned the back-up plan has to be made by your own since it is specific to your website and other business activities. Back-up your future In order to do the future development of your website, one thing that is very essential is to have complete knowledge about your past. Keeping that in mind, web log files are very important since it contains all the relative information and data about your site, without which any further development is almost impossible. Therefore it is very significant to build a back-up for your web statistics summary data. Though the summary data is the summarized form of your web log files, you need to make sure that every relevant data should be added to it. Evaluate alternatives to the company self-hosting the site There are 3 alternatives that a company may utilize for the self-hosting of the site Silverstripe Silverstripe is an open source tool. It is widely used as an alternative for the self-hosting of sites all around the world. The governments, businesses and many other organizations are found to have associated with silverstripe since it is quite user-friendly and easy to manage. Joomla Joomla is one of the most popular open source wen content management system platforms. It has got millions of users all over the globe;they could be individuals or large organizations. It is one of the most commonly used alternatives as far as self-hosting of site is concerned. Symphony No matter what shape and size your business possess, symphony could be utilized as an alternative under any circumstances. It has got immense amount of varieties through which not only simpler solutions could be solved but complex ones could also be handled smartly and with ease. Build a Gantt chart using Microsoft Project or equivalent software, showing all tasks associated with implementing the Website. Gantt chart Tasks associated during the implementation of a Website. Tasks Months July August September October November Week # 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Defining the scope of the project                                       Analysis of Information Architecture                                       Creating and Updating the Content                                       Visual Design Preliums                                       Set up Content-ready site                                       Addition of Images to the site                                       Implementing the Visual Design                                       Building the Custom Functions                                       Approval of Images                                       Web testing and quality assurance                                       Site available for limited visitors                                       Site Live for All                                       Regular Updation                                       Explain and justify the system architecture you have selected System architecture is used to make the site more innovative and easy for the users to use. A well organized structure makes sure that the user would not face any complexities while placing an order or any other transaction. In order to make the site intuitive I have decided to make information architecture (Peter, 2002). To make information architecture there are 3 steps that have to be implemented. Defining the key stake holders goals These are the people who set the basis of a website. It is very necessary to consider them as they know the basic objectives and the need of the website. Therefore to make an internal website it is essential to know the goals of the key stakeholders. Usually they target their audiences who visit their website the most and this is the main reason why they optimize the website. Secondly their might me some functional tools that they need to add for example having downloadable PDF or interactive forms, or having an intranet for internal communication purposes. User’s expectations All the approaches that are done in an organization are to satisfy the users. It is quite important to know whether the users who visit the website are having any problems or not. To know this fact, user’s feedback and their reviews are considered (Suzanne, 2004). With their reviews it would be easier for us to make the relevant changes and amendments in the website. Otherwise even after so many efforts, if the optimization is not fruitful for the users then it is of no use and all the hard work done would be wasted Content Areas The content written on the website should be clear and easily understandable. For this a group of quality writers are hired in order to present the best work. One more thing that is very important as far as content of the website is concerned is the information you paste on your site. This is a very sensitive issue and should be considered strictly (Wood, 2005). If the users are unable to understand what actually has written in the content it would repel them. Therefore the content areas should be very presentable and organized in a qualitative manner. Create a use case that documents the event of a customer ordering a bag of chips from the new Website. Text Description of the Use Case (Denny, 2005). Discuss the support operations that the internally hosted Website will require after Implementation. It would not be a cheaper task to host your website by yourself. A skillful Web Master will be required in order to run the site smoothly without any complexities. It is very important for them to have complete knowledge about your hardware and software and should have the ability to deal in different programming languages. This is however a time consuming process. A regular check of the ISP is essential. As many ISP does not allow the web server to run on you connection and if somehow you are successful to run you website, you will have to pay monthly charges for the data transfer. This could also not be avoided as the data is very precious and you could not commit any carelessness regarding this aspect. During the transfer of the data, you must make sure that the data is secured throughout the process. In today’s world hackers have dominated the networking era to a great extent. One must definitely take certain precautionary measures to avoid hacking and other activities like the damage of important files. Henceforth, the computer should always be kept up to the mark in order to deal with these critical issues. Lastly, a Web Server should be maintained. A web server requires lots of memory and a large hard disk which would be running for 24 hours a day. This server will definitely need configuring and you also need to make sure that you are allowed an appropriate bandwidth available to deal with your expected site visitors. One more thing that is very important is that the computer on which the web server is maintained should purely be utilized for this purpose and nothing else. You cannot use your personal computer and maintain a web server on it as it would decrease the levels of performance of your website. Explain how you will evaluate the performance of the new site and the success of your project. There are 5 ways to evaluate the performance of the new site. They are as follows: Appropriateness & Relevance A good website always consists of an appropriate content according to their purpose. Any irrelevant content would distract the visitor a lot. There are certain aspects that have to be checked in order to judge the appropriateness of the website. For example, Is the content level appropriate for the visitors? Is the content well-written and relevant? Does the content inform you about the main topic or not? If the answers are positive for these questions then it could be said a well performing website. Currency The website should always be updated and maintained. This is important because the visitors should be kept aware of what new innovations and development are occurring within the website. For example, the website offers a sale on the products but if this information is not delivered to the visitor it would result in minimal response. Therefore to check the currency of the website following questions should be kept under consideration Is the information on the web page updated regularly? When was the last page updated? Does the website contain any dead links? Does the date at which the information was created and the date when the page was last updated has any difference? Responsibility This is a very important issue and is something which cannot be neglected while evaluating the performance of the website. The quality of the website reflects how responsible the author is? The reason behind this is that the author should lead from the form if any kind of mishap has encountered. The communication between the author and the visitors is vital in this case. Questions that would judge the responsibility are as follows Are the authors up to the mark as far as their content and purpose is concerned? Is there any way of communication between the author and the visitor provided? Do the authors offer some credits for the information that have been used? Does the website contain a reference list or not? Clarity The content that has been written on the web page must be very clear and easy to understand. It should be regardless of the age group that visits the site. The team that has been assigned to perform this task should be given strict instruction to come up with the quality content and most importantly understandable. If not then the success of the project is almost inevitable. Accessibility The accessibility of the site refers to the fact that whether the site respond quickly to the visitor or it takes too much time. It is very important that the visitor feels comfortable to roam around the website and visits its desired location with ease. Furthermore, there should be no text alternative for the visually-impaired material. Everything must be to the point or else it would be a failure. References Brinck, T. (2002). Usability for the Web: Designing Web Sites that Work. London Academic Press, 27:57-67 Denney, R. (2005) Succeeding with Use Cases: Working Smart to Deliver Quality. Addison-Wesley, 76(9)1323-1330 Peter, M. (2002). Information Architecture for the World Wide Web. 2 Edition. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly, 124:345-420 Suzanne, R. (2004). Scenarios in Requirements Discovery. Chapter 3 in Alexander and Maiden, 39-59 Wood, L. (2005). Bridging Cultures Conference Tutorial: Card-Sorting and Cluster Analysis for Information Architecture Design. Montreal, Quebec: Usability Professionals’ Association, 42: 34-60 Read More