Website Migration Project - Term Paper Example

Website Migration Project Table of Contents Website Migration Project 5 Introduction 5 Web Architecture 6 Information Architecture (IA) 8 Evaluation of alternatives to self-hosting 9 Use case 10 Use case diagram 10 Use Case Diagram Description 10 Searching for items on the website 10 Buying an item from the site 11 Pre – Conditions of the process 11 Post – Conditions of the process 11 Flow of Events while using the system. 12 For returning Clients 12 For new Clients 12 Website migration process 13 Gant chart 14 Disaster recovery 14 The disaster recovery plan timeline of the site is as outlined below. 15 Webserver maintenance and security 15 Website maintenance 16 Evaluation of the performance of a website 17 References 18 Abstract The projects requirement is to move an existing website from external servers to internal servers with minimum possible downtime. Also, a disaster recovery solution is to be designed. This paper describes the process of moving the website using the system development life cycle. The project is divided into three parts that include; providing requirements in building the website architecture, moving the existing website with minimal downtime and provision of recovery solution to ensure availability and reliability of the website. Website Migration Project Introduction The success of any project is greatly dependent on proper planning. To ensure the success of this project, the execution of the project is done by strictly following the system development life cycle (SDLC). System development life cycles ensures that the user and functional requirements of any project are met. Using the system development life cycle, there is standardization and structuring of all process involved in the system development. Using these standardized and structured processes, the development of any given system in stages which follow the route of feasibility study, planning of the system, development of concept, designing, development of the system, system integration, system testing, and finally system deployment and maintenance are achieved. This paper is aimed at providing a viable solution that will facilitate moving a website from external servers to internal servers with minimum downtime, redesigning of the existing website to incorporate more functionalities, designing a viable plan that can be used as a disaster recovery solution in cases of future failures. The process employs all the phases of system development life cycle to ensure efficient execution of the project. System development life cycle phases’ use is to facilitate execution of the project in the shortest time possible using a structured manner, despite the fact that web development process is unstructured. The project will focus on the legibility and coherence of the website. Coherence ensures users of the website are able to navigate through the site with ease, and also, the users are able to understand the content of the website, i.e. understandability. The websites legibility focus on making the website distinctive and memorable to the users. Moreover, the systems scalability, robustness and modifiability are addressed. Putting together all design purposes and the above stated factors, the structured development process will follow a defined route as outlined below. 1. Graphical development which entails the gathering of required information, analyzing of the gathered information and designing the system basing on the gathered information. 2. Functional development which entails gathering of information, analyzing of the gathered information and designing basing on the gathered information. From the description given in the problem statement, it can be concluded that the users of the proposed system will be from all walks of life. This indicates that the upgraded system functionality should support all possible users of the system. As it hard been connoted earlier, the paper is divided into three parts that include the website architecture of the system, moving of the website to internal servers and finally designing a disaster recovery solution. The detailed information are discussed below. Web Architecture Website architecture encompasses the functional, aesthetic and technical overview of a system. This part of the paper is aimed at discussing the above mentioned components of the web architecture focusing on what it takes in the development of the web architecture. The efficiency of any web system is dependent on various factors that include the available resources. The available resources are also dependent on the requirements of the system and the availability of funds. Considering that there are already internal servers, then the hardware part of the requirements are not considered. The choice of the software to be used is such that it is reliable, secure, interoperable, available, supported by several system applications and finally less expensive. These factors dictates either to choose open source applications or propriety software. Recently, it has been found that open source software are more secure, more reliable, less expensive, interoperable and support more applications as compared to closed source applications. Considering this, it is thus justifiable to choose open source application to be used in this system. In this regard, the choice operating system to house other applications is Linux. This is due to the fact that Linux is open source making it less expensive, it’s more secure as compared to windows operating system, its interoperable thus it can support a wide range of applications including applications designed for windows operating system, and finally, Linux operating system has got a large community that offers support and immediate bug fixes. Since the servers are running a Linux operating system, apache server will be installed. Just like Linux operating system, apache sever is more secure, more reliable and less costly as compared to Microsoft’s IIS. Apache server has been optimized to work with MySQL, thus MySQL is the chosen relational database system. For the web development process, JSP is proffered language. This is attributed to the fact that JSP performance is better as compared to other scripting languages, JSP utilizes the powerful JAVA libraries that can used in building complex applications and finally because JSP is suited with complete enterprise platform class. Information Architecture (IA) The web architecture component that is utilized in the organization and structuring of website components is the information architecture abbreviated as IA. The information architecture is important since it dictates the manner in which the content on any given website is interrelated. This include things like interaction of web pages, Web forms, Images, videos among others. The use of information architecture ensures the web content is organized in a predictable and consistent manner within each of the pages of the website. The development of Information architecture in this process will involve several steps. The steps include 1. Assessing, analyzing of both the existing content and the required content. Thus all the content of the existing content is analyzed together with what needs to be added or removed in the new redesigned website. 2. The second step involves organizing the pages in a structured predictable and consistent manner. 3. Providing clues that assist users in using the site effectively is the third step. 4. Design of the navigational structure is the fourth step. The information architecture development entail creating of site maps on wireframes that will later be used to develop the complete redesigned website. In the creation of information architecture, the target audience is determined, the functional requirements are set and the goal of the website is determined. In this case the website is designed to use restaurant users, with a goal of providing information to the audience as well as providing a functionality for online ordering. Evaluation of alternatives to self-hosting There are several alternatives that the company can opt for hosting. This include Internet service provider hosting, and commerce service provided hosting. Commerce service provide hosting is divided into dedicated hosting and shared hosting. The choice of the type of hosting is dependent on the required website’s functionality, the security concerns, the costs of the different available options, and finally scalability concerns. Internet service provider hosting refers to the hosting services provided by internet service providers. This is not a good options as it has been designed typically to serve personal websites. Commerce service provider abbreviated as CMS offer a wide range of web services that include web server management. They offer application renting such as content management programs, databases and shopping carts. There are wide ranges of packages that one can select from in commerce service provider. This include shared hosting whereby several websites are hosted on a single server and dedicated hosting whereby the commerce service provider offers a web server to a particular client. The server is not shared at all. This is advantageous since there is high level security and reliability. The plan is less expensive as compared to self-hosting. Use case Use case diagram Use Case Diagram Description The actors in the use case are; administrators, new customers and registered customers. The use cases include; searching for available items, buying items, registering items, and updating items. Searching for items on the website The site is designed such that any user, whether register or not register is able to search for available items by using the available items’ name. The brand name of the available item or the group name of the available item can be used to search for the items. Registering customers While the client is buying the item, his/her account is created in the process. Thus, the customer’s personal details are acquired from the customer together with the items’ details. The details will be used to register the customer in the system. Buying an item from the site Buying an item is only available to registered customers. If the customer is not registered, the customer’s details are captured together with the purchase details to create an account. The buying process include the searching for the desired item by the client, validating the clients details to make sure they are correct, preparing the customer’s bill and finally making the customer to pay for the purchased items using the available payment methods. Pre – Conditions of the process The process of purchasing an item begins when a user shows an indication that he/she wants to purchase the item they have selected. Post – Conditions of the process The order details together with the purchase details for the new users will be saved in the system for new users, for register users, the purchase details will be saved together with the particular user’s already existing profiles details. Each of the order whether for registered users of unregistered users will be saved with a unique tracking ID. Flow of Events while using the system. Initialization of the process is done when the users shows an interest in purchasing the item. For returning Clients If the user is a returning client, he/she will be prompted to login into his/her account to continue with the process. The user will then be provided with the stored information where by the billing information will be fetched from the databases and presented to the client who will in turn verify the correctness of the billing details. After verification of the billing details, the total costs of the item together with any applicable taxes will be presented to the client. This information is presented with the purpose of verifying the order details before checking out. The confirmation of the details will then be followed with the system providing a tracking ID for the order after which the order details are then processed for verification. After verification, the system informs the client of the placement of the order and the initiation of the charge process. The charging process will be processed after which the user will be prompted at the completion and the system will exit. For new Clients A form will be presented to the client to capture the clients profile details together with billing details The billing information will then be presented to the client for verification, after which the above process is then initiated from the third process. Website migration process The real migration of the website takes place in a structured manner. The process is generally divided into concept planning, Designing, approval by the client, user interface development, server site development, and finally publishing the website. Generally, the migration process follows the following procedure Implementation of a 301 redirect Testing a section of the website before rolling out the entire migration Using the permanent 302 redirect to route all the traffic to the current site Checking all the links, both internal and external to ensure they are functioning as required. Creation of error pages i.e. 401 error pages to inform the users and if possible redirect them to the current site Maintain both the old site and the new sites for a period of time. Gant chart Disaster recovery The disaster recovery plan is designed with goals of minimizing interruptions to normal operations, limit time of interruptions, possible minimization of the economic impact of the of the damage and interruptions, prepare and establishments of means operating the site in classes of failure in advance, training the personnel working on the site on how to bring back the site in cases of disruptions. In the disaster recovery plan, the following are addressed. Procedures to be followed during emergency such as fire natural disasters e.g. floods, earthquakes etc., backup operations procedures, and finally, the procedures to be followed when carrying out the recovery process. Disaster preparedness involves backing up the data routinely, and creating viable solutions that can be implemented when different scenarios are encountered. The disaster recovery plan timeline of the site is as outlined below. Step Duration Components Identifying issues causing the disruptions 60 Minutes Communicating the disruption to management Setting issue priority Identifying the team members to correct the disruption. 60 minutes Operations Determining recovery plan 60 minutes Creation of disaster recovery plan. Support operations that the internally hosted Website will require after implementation. There are two instances involved in the maintenance of internally hosted website. This are the server maintenance the website maintenance. Website maintenance is paramount since it ensures 99.99% uptime of the website, makes the website security proof and enables fixing bugs that may be encountered while the website is in use. Webserver maintenance and security A server requires regular maintenance for efficiency. The maintenance involves several activities that has to be done on a routine bases. First, the backup servers must always be checked to ensure they are working efficiently. This must also be done before undertaking major activities on the main server. This ensures that the backup server is on a standby mode and can be switched to the main server when the need arises. Secondly, the disk usage must be constantly checked. Old and unused data may be transferred to offline storage materials. These involves deleting old log files such as versions of software that are no longer in use, old logs files, old emails etc. These free the disk space on the servers that ensuring efficiency. Updating the server operating system is also a server maintenance activity that has to be carried out on a routine basis. This is essential since it helps fix important security vulnerabilities. The operating system should always be updated with the current updates. If the server is using a control panel, it should also be updated regularly to seal the security holes that may be present. In summary, all the software used on the server should be updated on a regular basis. Some servers are managed remotely. Thus, it is essential to ensure that the remote management tool are working as required. The rescue mode, the remote console, and remote reboot must at all times be working. Thus it’s essential to regularly the stated functionalities to guarantee there functionality. All the hardware attached to the servers should be checked regularly to ensure there no hardware problems. The hardware logs should be reviewed regularly to ensure no disk read errors, no overheating notices, and not network failures. If these are detected, they should be fixed immediately since they are symptoms of a failing server. Finally, the system’s security should always be reviewed. This include changing passwords in case of shuffling of employs, and use of remote auditing tools to check for server security. The remote auditing security such as Nessus helps detect security vulnerabilities on the system thus making it easier to seal the security holes. Website maintenance Just like the server, the website must be maintained on a regular basis. Website maintenance activities is divided into four classes. This include Website publishing which ensures that content is kept up to date. Quality assurance of the website which pin points errors on the website Monitoring of the websites feedback to ensure efficient usage of the website by the users. Performance monitoring if the website to measure the performance and give recommendations Infrastructure monitoring that ensures efficient functionality of all the infrastructure used Evaluation of the performance of a website The evaluation of the website performance can be achieved through various means. These include manually testing the site on different platforms to use of state of the art tools that have been designed to evaluate the performance of a site and produce recommendations. To ensure the site is functioning as required, several checks are undertake. First, the site goals are identified and evaluated. The goals of the final product should match with the initial design goals. If they match, then it’s a success since the site is meets the design goals. The goals of the site are undertaken on the live site to determine if the design ideas meet the set limits during the development process. Another way to monitor the success of the website is the monitoring of each page visits and the time taken to for a given page view. References Avison, D. E., & Shah, H. U. (1997). The Information Systems Development Life Cycle: A First Course in Information Systems. McGraw-Hill. Roebuck, K. (2011). Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC): High-impact Strategies - What You Need to Know: Definitions, Adoptions, Impact, Benefits, Maturity, Vendors. Emereo Pty Limited. Read More