Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Portfolio Delivery Requirements

XHTML 1.0 Strict
This will be used to write the markup of the page. This will also be validated to make sure that the language is correct.

CSS 2.1
This will be used to give a style to the different elements on the page and create the layout for the page. This will also be validated to make sure the language is correct.

FTP
This will be used via Marcromedia Dreamweaver 8 to upload the website to my hosting account.

PHP 4 and MySQL 5.0.22
These will be used to create a simple contact form on the site and also to create the restricted area of the portfolio that will require a password to gain entry.

SMTP
Along with the contact form I will also provide an email address so I will need SMTP for this.

Image Optimization Software
This will be via Adobe Photoshop CS2 where I will optimize any images used to ensure a fair balance between image quality and file size.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Portfolio Target Audience

Target Audience #1 - Educationalists
Paula is a 59 year old female working as an External Examiner for Edexcel. She works part time earning approximately £7,000 per year. She is an intermediate web user who goes online every other day and accesses the internet from home. Paula enjoys spending time with her grandchildren and going to the gym to keep fit. She uses Internet Explorer 6 as a web browser and has a 2MB broadband connection. Her monitor is 15inch and has an 800 x 600 screen resolution. She mainly goes online to check her emails and to do online clothes shopping. Her favourite websites are Monsoon and Next where she spends roughly £60 per month on new clothes.

Target Audience #2 - Industry Professionals
Patrick is a 42 year old male who works as a Technical Operations Manager for a Web Design company based in Doncaster. He earns £40,000 per year and has a company car. He is an advanced web user who accesses the internet every day except weekends for approximately 8 hours. He enjoys keeping up to date with the latest technologies in the interactive media industry and regularly attends courses to further his knowledge. He is a keen sports fan and has been a season ticket holder at Doncaster Rovers F.C. for over 20 years. He enjoys spending time with his wife and children and regularly takes them on days out. Patrick mainly accesses the internet from work and uses Firefox 2.0 as a web browser. He has an 8mb wireless connection and uses a 17inch widescreen monitor with screen resolution set at 1024 x 768. Patrick accesses the internet to catch up with the news headlines on BBC, sport headlines on Sky Sports and to order books and DVDs online at HMV. He regularly spends around £100 per month shopping online.


Target Audience #3 - Potential Clients
Julie is a 32 year old female who is a self employed mobile Beauty Therapist. She has just started up her business and requires a website to market the services and prices of her company. As her business is in its infancy she does not have a set wage and simply takes home whatever profit is left after paying her overheads. She is a novice web user who has recently bought a PC and is beginning to learn the basics to enable her to go online and check her emails. Once she has gained more experience she will go online once a week. Julie enjoys going shopping on a weekend and meeting her friends for a drink on a Saturday night. She will access the internet from home using Internet Explorer 7 as a web browser and will have a 2MB broadband connection. She will use a 17inch monitor set to a 1024 x 768 screen resolution. She currently doesn’t shop online but when she becomes confident in using the internet she will spend around £50 per month on cosmetics at Boots.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Website Goals - Portfolio Site

To validate the website using XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS 2.1
I will validate the site because if the coding is not valid the browser that the site is being viewed in will correct any errors itself. The correction of the errors varies quite a lot between browsers so to achieve better consistency between browsers I will ensure that they are validated.

This could be measured by using the HTML and CSS validators on the W3C website.

To meet priority 1 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
I want to meet priority 1 of the checklist because this enables a wider range of users to access the information. Features such as “providing a text equivalent for every non-text element” and “organising documents so they may be read without style sheets” make the site much more accessible.

I would be able to measure this goal by simply checking if I had managed to meet each checkpoint.

To have the site usability tested by 5 of my peers and 5 people outside of college
This will enable me to gather vital information on the functionality and the overall impression of the site. I feel that it is important to have it tested to have it tested by both groups of people to reach as wide range of people as possible.

This will be measured by collecting the results from each person tested.

To display my technical expertise by using a variety of technologies
I would like to use XHTML, CSS and PHP in the creation of the website. In addition to the work on the portfolio site this should also help to showcase the skills that I have learnt over the duration of the course. This will also provide a chance to gather further experience with PHP which will be advantageous for the future.

This will be measured by effectively using XHTML, CSS and PHP in the portfolio.