00001091
Website Development Project
ACS SYPSIG Website Redevelopment Project
Who are we?
We are the current core-team of the website development project, a dedicated group of students and young professionals who have an interest in improving the current ACS website.
What is the SYP-SIG?
The SYP-SIG is a special interest group of the ACS who look out for the best interests of young professionals and university students.
What exactly are we doing?
The projects aim is to re-develop (from scratch) the ACS Victorian branch website ACS Victoria
Why redevelop the current site?
The current Victorian ACS website looks quite old and dated; like something from the late 1990's.
New web technologies and advanced functionality are not currently available on the website.
During the redevelopment we intend to create a new modern-looking site incorporating the latest web based technologies.
The developments we make are designed to benefit users and the administrators of the site.
Improving usability for administrators will allow less technically orientated users to update the site and keep the content up-to-date.
Examples of newer web technologies include Dynamic Generation of content, Discussion boards (or an on-line forum), mailing lists, a calendar system to advise members of events of interest, as well as complying to the newest web accessibility guidelines (please refer to the Consolidate Requirements (rtf) summary for a more detailed list).
How do we intend to accomplish this?
Planning:
The SYP-SIG website redevelopment project has been around for approximately for 12 months in which we have held 2 planning workshops to gather requirement and various meetings to discuss how we intend to go about this project (the requirements document linked above is from the first workshop).
It is our current plan to move onto development of the site as soon as we can.
Development:
During our planning it was decided that attempting to develop from scratch a site with PHP/MySQL or ASP/some other database or a similar technology would be incredibly difficult and would take strenuous effort and large chunks of time.
Furthermore designing an easy way to add content (which needs to be simpler than typing HTML code) would add further complexity to the project (this is a requirement of the project).
An alternative found was using a "Content Management System" (CMS) which would provide written, working code for much of the functionality we required as well as simplifying administration of the system. Please refer to the edited slide-show for our second requirements workshop: Workshop Requirements (pdf).
An investigation into the open-source CMS systems proved that there are many (>50 projects) listed at major open source sites such as www.sourceforge.net and www.freshmeat.net.
Commercial alternatives were also considered but promptly dismissed due to the very small budget of the ACS SYP-SIG.
The CMS systems use a variety of different languages, this information is listed below.
After some investigation the current top 3 open source CMS systems appeared to be:
Plone:
www.midgard-project.org/projects/aegir/
Technologies:Based on the Zope application server
Programming Language:Python
Database support:Various, including MySQL
Aegir:
www.midgard-project.org/projects/aegir/
Technologies:Now a front-end for the MidGuard application server
Programming Language:PHP
Database support:MySQL
WebGUI:
Technologies:CMS system programmed in the Perl scripting language.
Programming Language:Perl
Database support:MySQL
What is currently being done?
While CMS systems may be the way forward for the project there is still a lot of work to do. We need to choose one CMS system according to criteria which needs to be developed by the core team.
We then need to find students/graduate volunteers who are willing to spend some spare time working on this to develop different areas and implement the CMS system according to our current requirements.
What will I get by helping this project?
The experience while working on this project will be varied.You will gain experience in project management, social networking with graduates/undergraduates and valuable work experience.
The ACS will supply an certificate (ACS certified) of the work that you have carried out, this certificate may be valuable when hunting for work and would look great on a resume.
You will also learn something about content management, database systems, web design, accessibility, usability and a variety of other skills which you will be able to apply in future jobs/projects.
There are no pre-requisites to become a member of the core team or to assist in developement, however you will need to have the ability to learn something new and some spare time (approx 1 hour every week or two; or less) to dedicate to the project.
How can I join the core team?
We are currently seeking new members of the core team.
As a member of the core team you will be involved with making decisions about the projects future and how we intend to continue with development/recruiting for the project.
Core team meetings are currently held in the city at the Nurses Board of Victoria, usually at 6:00, near Spencer St station.
If you are interested in becoming a member of the core team then please send an expression of your interest, including what you are currently studying or your current profession.
As well as your area of expertise (if applicable) to:
Gareth Anderson (Core team leader): gand5@student.monash.edu.au
