CS39930 Blog Post #5

Another week passes and I have finished some of the work on the project.

Not much has changed since te last blog post – I’ve created more of the pages and made a simple set of databases to hold the information the website would have. Forums and E-Commerce solutions are already done – I just need to decorate them so they look like what I want them to.

I haven’t found a way to tie in the forum account with a website login so it can be used for subscriptions – but I have found a way to make the subscription system work, so that’s good.

So I’ve managed to do most of the basic things that I will need to do – the accounts system is the big issue. I’ll be e-mailing Chris with a few questions about the documentation soon so I know exactly what to change – but I think I know what needs to be changed for the document to work right.

CS39930 Blog Post #4

I have started work on the website itself – I have working versions of a forum and an e-commerce shop solution and also the framework for the actual website built.

I have been using some Dreamweaver to structure the thing and I used some knowledge of php and html I gained last year about sessions in order to figure out how to make the subscription system work.

Other than that, it’s a bunch of small things being put together and so far it’s been working for me. In any case, at the end of this project I will have something to present for my work over the past two years since I’m comfortable that technologies I chose to use (mostly) work as intended.

CS39930 Blog Post #3

I’ve handed in the UI deliverable last Friday and I am reasonably happy with the results. I could have added a piece for the shop but I thought that would be unnecessary since I have the sort of black/orange style shown off already with the forums etc. Of course what I have at the moment looks nothing like the final product will.

Now that I know that I can safely create both a forum and shop section without worry I can begin working on building the basic website but currently do not know if I should just build the framework from scratch or simply use Dreamweaver (which at this point looks like the better choice).

Other than that I do not have much else to add – starting the real work now so I have been looking over what we’ve done over the past years and getting ideas from my module assignments to make sure I know what I’m getting myself in to.

CS39930 Blog Post #2

So I’ve had issues with my previous blog so I moved onto a wordpress.com one.

This week I have been working mostly on getting settled on what platforms I will be using so I am sure the user interface will make sense. I am leaning towards wordpress base with custom written elements for the accounts bit and a free forum platform connected to it as stated previously but I still have not decided firmly, which has me slightly worried. I will be wanting to talk to Chris about this during this week as I draw up the UI bits needed. I have already created some of the designs and have some of the images I will be using already done so that will save me some work further on.

I am slightly confused at what exactly this next deliverable wants of us – the example in the lecture was a complete functioning site – are we supposed to have full, final UI done by next Friday? I will be looking to clear this up since I have obviously missed some parts of this. Either way, I am progressing steadily and I should have everything I need cleared up this week. I have some other things to deal with during the week so hopefully that will not interfere with the task at hand.

My main problem right now is not making the account system etc. work but whether or not there is a point in working on the forums but if I should be focusing on other things – stepping into the boundaries of changing the plan, which is something we have been warned to avoid. Still, I am completely confident the month we have to create the website is enough whatever I do – I just have an extremely tough time figuring out if this is, indeed what I wanted to do.