Web architecture refers to the structure or the organization of a website. It involves the description of the ways in which different pages relate to each other and also ensures that the information is organized in a predictable and consistent way in every page. In order to build the web architecture, the system analyst should into the company’s business needs, and come up with a clear statement of the goals. As there is an already existing old site running, it is crucial that the analyst understands the business and its technological issues involving the implementation of the project.
Since we have an already running Tony’s chips website, it is important to gather the existing functional requirements of the website. The system analyst can get information from the employees of the old company; gather system documentation, production support and also using Fact finding techniques. On gathering this information the system analyst should make a decision on whether to go for a packed solution or develop the software in-house. If we decide to go for in-house development of the website, I recommend that we use; Apache as the web server, JEE as the language to develop the website, Linux as the Operating System and MYSQL for the database of the website. Since MYSQL, Apache and Linux are all open sources the company needs not to worry about their licenses and also by writing the software in Java helps us to deploy the code on any platform and the fact that it is not difficult to find people experienced in Java.
While we build the new web architecture, the system design should be able to satisfy all the business needs as well as the needs of customers and the technical staff. Best websites are created by a designer with keen understanding of the interests and expectations of visitors. Features like; organization, navigation, visual design and text should be built in a way such that they work together in making it easy for visitors to find key information and complete all the critical tasks easily and quickly.
Even the simplest site, such us that uses an existing template that has no special functions, usually takes a team at least 30 days to develop and implement. For this reason we focus on the special steps in creating an effective website for an organization and navigation which require a pre-check list and a glossary. This needs a great coordination with; writers, visual designers and technical staff in working on the phases of creating a website to come up with a quality site. Every party that is involved in the creation of the site keeps the issues of accessibility, usability and the general policies regarding to websites are a dared to.
The creation of a site map of the content of the organization’s site and developing the content and wireframe sketch that the designers and developers make the main part of cite architecture. A well organized website will help its users to find the key information and make the web experience of the visitors using the organization more intuitive, coherent and satisfying. Furthermore the well organized information architecture does ensure that all the phases of the organization website development run smoothly and efficiently. As a matter of fact it can help to cut costs for alterations to the visual design of the website. The following are the steps of creating great information architecture.
1. Definition of key stakeholders’ goals
There is need to clarify the major stakeholders’ goals because this is what drives the project. Key stakeholders are the people who set the base and overall objectives the organization’s website and give the required approval of various stages of site development. They also help in the definition of the target audiences, establishing the functional requirements and determining of the purpose of the website. We try to get the answers to the following questions: Who are the main audiences with whom the key stakeholders want to communicate to? Try to be specific. The main target audiences could include; customers, potential employees, suppliers, support staff, news media or external vendors. We may also want to know the priority of these audiences; the primary audience is our main focus and thus we will optimize our site especially for them. Secondary audiences will be taken into consideration but they are not crucial. Another question we should ask is that; what are the expectations of the key stakeholders in the creation and redesigning of the website? This could be the need to make the site easier to use, explaining the organization’s services, attracting or serving new audience, gathering the visitors feedback, reducing the number of phoned-in requests for assistance, increasing attendance at events, boosting the number of applications from target group or building sense of community. Finally we can ask about the specific functional requirements to do all the tasks the stakeholders want to include in the new website. And some of the answers could be; the inclusion of a search too, having downloadable PDFs or interaction forms, provision of self service options, having an events calendar , having an intranet for internal communication purposes or enabling people to sign up for events online.
2. Identifying the goals and expectations of the website users
The most important goal of effective web design is to arrange the site in a way that the target audience anticipates. In many a times most organizations tend to arrange the structure of their website to mirror the structural needs of their office instead of arranging it according to users’ needs. For example, if the visitor does not know who is in charge they may be forced to read the biographies of all the staff so that they may figure out who is in charge of the organization. Truly in order to find the understanding of the users’ needs and goals or their expectations, we should have a wide sample of users who are members of the target audience and interviewing them, this is the best way to find out what their expectations are. From the interview we can draw important conclusions, after the analysis by statistical experts, of the data collected.
3. Defining the site’s content areas
This will help us to develop the navigation structure and this is best done in a group of three to five people such that each person represents the profiles from more than one user data sheets. Then we have to list all the content areas that each user presented. We may also include the features that the key stakeholders want. Next step is “content brain storming” activity. This helps in additional description of the content of the website. This can be done by dividing different people and each person should imagine representing each of the different users of the site produce different data sheets which are put to be visible to the group. Each group then has to come up with questions that will have to be passed right, to another group, where three more questions are added on top of the original three. Continue passing the papers right until all the important questions are added to the papers. We then need to answer each question that has been raised.
4. Organizing the content areas
In this step we will organize the content areas that were compiled in the brain storming step. This activity helps us to group and label the content of the website so that the navigation will be more spontaneous to users. It is advisable to review the main structure and the titles of each section of a similar site that we can find it easier to use. We can use this site as a guide as we’re organizing our site’s content and navigation. We could use the grouping activity where we put the content from the brain storming activity in different and separate sticky notes, sorting the sticky notes with similar content into on group keeping the number of groups minimal. At this point we will have to remove any duplicate items from our notes. The items that we may require to appear on each page, we will have them placed in the footer region or the tool bar.
5. Creating the map of the site
At this point I can say that we are ready to create and validate the site map of our website. ( This is a visual representation of the content areas of our website). Organize the structure of the website in a hierarchical way. When finished making an hierarchical map of the site, it’s time you ask the audience chosen randomly about what they think of the site. Correct and make any changes if there are any.
Moving the website to a new server with minimal downtime.
Moving a website to a new server may lead to the website not being active for the time during the transferring period if the following simple measures are not a dared to. First we need to Identify the new host in which we are interested in, in this we have chosen to transfer our website to the local host. We need to make sure that our we are familiar with our local host server by checking through the functions it can be able to perform. Since we are planning to host our website locally, need to make sure that the local host has the functionality that will enable it perform all the functions that our website needs.
Now that we have a local host that meets all our requirements, we need to start by creating a backup of all the data in our old host. This is very important since we need a backup of our files such as the database dump, web application files etc. we normally prefer to use the FTP manual method to download every file on our website in doing the backup and also we create a generic database dump file to ASCII format. And finally we backup the created generic ASCII file.
The next step is to upload the website files tomour new host and making the required settings. This entails moving the