Final Project

You will also be creating a website for an outside organization. We will discuss this project in class and this description may be updated with additional details.

You should think of this in terms of a final paper for a course. You will need to select a topic, do background research, create an outline, do a rough draft, and create a final draft based on feedback from the draft.

For this project, I encourage you to work together in small groups on a site (preferably 2, no more than 3 students to a project). If there is a larger group that wants to work together, you should split the overall site into 2 or more sub-projects and/or make competing designs.

Scope:

Here is what I anticipate for the scope of your project.

• Not just a personal "vanity" site. Ideally this is going to be for an outside organization or a larger project upon which you are working. For an organization, it can be for internal use. For non-organizations, it must be for external viewing. Examples of non-group things that would be acceptable include web-comics, e-zines, professional promotion, and conference promotions.
• It should require at least 3 templates of pages (e.g, splash, content, and print) and cover at least 5-10 actual pages.
• It should be something that actually can use a menu to assist in navigation.
• It can be a redesign or re-styling of an existing site, but it shouldn't be just updating the information in it. You need to be using your HTML and CSS tools.
• The organization does not have to intend to use your site redeisgn.
• All pages should be written in valid HTML, XHTML, and CSS.

Report

As part of your final project you will need to submit a typed report containing the following information:

1. Organization and description: What is the organization. What are the goals, mission, and/or purposes of the group?
2. Website description: What are the organizations goals for the website? What are their objectives for the same?
3. Target audience: Who is the website directed towards? What characteristics or interests do you expect them to have? (Keep in mind there may be multiple target groups)
4. Previous state: Describe the state of the organizations website before you started working on it. Did they have one? What sort of HTML/CSS was being used? What pages were there? Etc.
5. Description of your design: Discuss the overall design that you came up with. Include samples of the various layouts you decided to use. What JavaScript functionality did you use? What graphics did you create and which graphics did you incorporate from their previous design?
6. Layout: Include a flow-chart of the layout of pages on the site. (Can be abbreviated for larger sites.) I suggest drawing this freehand.
7. Validation: Include a section discussing the validation of the pages and CSS. If there are any portions that fail the validator or warnings that are generated, you need to address them. Is it something that just can't be fixed? Is it required by sponsor? etc.

Sample pages and template pages

Inside your www/csci100 directory, I'd like you to create a folder called final in which you put your sample pages. Create an index.html file that links to those pages with a brief explanation of what they contain.

Alternatively, you can just have the entire mock-up of the site in the final folder.

Submit that folder using the handin program.

• cd www/csci100    # go to where the directory you uploaded was
• handin -c cs100 -a final final

In-class presentation

You will be giving a brief 2-minute presentation of the site to the class during the final exam time period in lieu of a final exam.

You need to get me the link to the site by the day before so that I can set up a pre-set list of links.

I recommend that you have a copy of the site (or at least some sample pages) hosted in you CS web space as that is less likely to have problems during class.

Last Modified: March 15, 2007 - Benjamin A. Kuperman