Website Design Methodology: ‘Tourism in Melbourne City’

NB: We do not resell your papers. Upon ordering, we do an original paper exclusively for you.

NB: All your data is kept safe from the public.

Table of Contents

Information and data collection
Pilot/Mock up website
Design
Styling
Coding
Designing of the storyboards
Validation
References

Information and data collection

For the designing of the website for “Tourism in Melbourne City” the group commenced on doing its preliminary study based on city’s tourism activities. This followed after much considerations that most of the members of group had little or no adequate information and data about the tourism operations and management within the regions. Under such situation, it became quite crucial for the group participants to familiarize themselves with the tourism trade and its closely related activities or situation within the area. During this preliminary research work of the subject, group members visited several privately and publicly own organizations/institutions to get and equip themselves with the relevant information. Two of the groups visited the Melbourne tourist centre where there did some historical search on the industry, specifically establishing the way the industry had been operated and managed over the past years, the key participants and its inter-connectivity with other corporations in its operations (Hehai, 2004).

The information leading to the development of the website was collected using questionnaire methods, which were sent to the private and public institutions relying on doing their trade within the tourism industry. This was aimed at the collection of the enormous data related to tourism industry. Thus, the structured questionnaires were used to collect data of all kind including historical data and information of tourism within the Melbourne city. They also aimed at revealing some data and information related to eating habits, the way tourism affects and operates in the part of shopping. We also went further gathering information based the events directly and indirectly relating or done by persons on a tourism work in the city. The array of data and information that was garnered included those detailing about tourism attraction centers/ places. The gathering of information incorporated all sort of other relevant data on art and culture. While the collected information and data were all mixed up, the members of the project cohorts went on sorting the enormous collects data into the relevant and closely related fields.

Pilot/Mock up website

Though the groundwork carried out to establish the real situation or problem was very crucial in our endeavors toward the realization of the final intended product, it was overt that there was a long way to go. The path toward the actualization required the development of a simple skeletal website structure, which would help to set a moderately final website. Depending on the information that was gathered, it was clear to every member that every city needed to develop a commercial website which would help the city to grow and developed its economy through tourists’ activities. Discussions were then made to establish the website’s title, which individuals consented to be ‘Tourism in Melbourne City’ (Hehai, 2004).

The long journey of creating or towards producing the final product began first with the setting of a sketch/skeleton website to set the main parts of the final website product. The initial work commenced with setting up of the homepage of the website. During the setting up of this home page for the mock up web site, the page was divided into three primary parts/sections. The three sections were considered to give the main navigation approach ton the website. These sections included the top title section which holds the title of the website and the exit command button of the homepage. The additional two parts which were incorporated during this early website development formed the body of the website. For that matter, the body section was divided into two columns, hence, forming a two column website. The first column to the left side was designated to contain the main menu and the right side column was designated to contain the top menu navigation. The two column navigation web site was view as crucial for novice and beginners, who aimed at working for a standard final website product, as this ensured every details and any corrections could be made easily and with great accuracy, that is, there was clarity during the insertion of data and information without making unnecessary mistakes (Pearson, 2011).. The approval of the proposed social and commercial website by the cohort members gave the opportunity to the member s to commence on a serious implementation o f the final tourism website for the Melbourne city.

Design

The building of the Melbourne website followed a schematic a sequential process. Firstly, the development of the final website was begun using the selected and agreed template of the website skeleton as it was depicted in the mock up work. The development of the real website was built first by writing the web contents on a suitable material, mostly on a FrontPage program that generated the basic HTML contents. The FrontPage generator of HTML materials was employed in the writing of the contents due to its many advantages, but mainly because it was easy to work with due to its popularity and commonest among members of the group. The generated contents were then copied and pasted on a compatible website server browser (Hellums et al, 2001).

These initial word contents were designed to generate some details to the visitors of the website. The core contents which were coded or written in this form generally gave historical information on the tourism industry in the city; it also gave the background information that described the core purpose of the site, or the organization hosting this site together with a little bit of its history. The coded contents which were then in the form of text were saved or stored for future use, after they had been uploaded on a suitable and compatible browser. All completed text contents were stored with a name that closely described its purpose of use.

Following the completion of the coding process of the various modules forming the home page, the overall work was still not enough to represent the desired final outcome. Resulting to too much of the contents and objects that remained without being inserted which would improve the content and make the website a bit presentable. So, the insertions of certain graphics and other visual basic such as logos were incorporated to ensure that there was fuller description of website (Hellums et al, 2001).

Styling

The contents in their generated HTML format through FrontPage program were ordinarily looking in nature, and the website being based on tourism activities, there was great need to make it look or appear attractive. With the purpose being to market the regions tourism trade, styling of the contents became an issue of priority in the development of the website. The home page which has main navigation menus including the top menu and the left main navigation menu were set under different colors of green and bluish respectively. The styling work was the extended by setting up the title of the home page, which is the main title of the entire website at a font size of 24. This was a fundamental consideration in the sense that it was aimed at setting a difference to make it conspicuous for the reader while searching for it, as well as enabling ease recognition of the website. Additionally, while the left side main menus remained with the same color, there was a change in the font size from the general size of 12 inch to that of 18 inch. This was exactly a bit smaller compared to that of the main title word font size. In order to make the website appear a bit improved, the webpage layout was set to size, with the incorporation of different color and background shade that distinguished the various set sections (Plotkin, 2003).

Coding

The website was incomplete and immature in a state that it was lacking in various coding. During the development of the site, it became well clear that this commercialized as well as marketing website needed certain several coding. Accordingly, the website was coded for the administrator, a process which aimed at allowing on the staff members authorized to access certain administrative data and information to do so. The administrative coding was also done such that with the large number of staff members whom were authorized to access the data entered, they did so with full identification details, otherwise, a denial message was send to the individual attempting to access the site (Cheshire and Colligan, 2004).

A part from the administrative/staff coding of the website, the next measure involved in the coding of the website was dealing with the entering of codes in the field of selling tickets to clients. More so, the coding work entailed securing of the data and information for the registered member users of the website. The experts engaged in the coding work of the various databases employed the technology/ technique; or rather program known as my SQL The site development was further taken to another developmental step, which comprised mainly of designing the contents to enable it to adopt a state of controlled flexibility. That is the contents were set on a scripting process, a course of action which entailed the use of PHP technique. The employment of this type of technique permitted us to perform many of the changes required in the initial databases and the overall skeletal components of the entire network (Cheshire and Colligan, 2004).

Designing of the storyboards

The designing procedure employed in the designing of the storyboards for the website was not quite different from the one utilized in the development of the home page of the website, but they were more or less the same. For this matter, a template was selected and the layout set. Certainly, the selected templates were developed based integrated storyboards. This means that visual/textual storyboards were employed. Each of the visual-textual storyboard was designated for one of the main theme which further was sub-divided to sub-themes which were further described further by the individual actions/events (Plotkin, 2003).

The template visual-textual storyboards were labeled for the main events /action intended to perform. A simple single line or word acting as the description of the major event of action taking place in the selected template was inserted. Several graphics and visuals were inserted in the storyboard templates to represented or send the message of the major identified titles in the left main menu. The graphics heavily employed use of geometrically identified tools and objects including squares, circles and lines. All these were sequentially used in the development of the different pictures and objects borne in the various storyboards templates. The circles were mainly used to show geographic regions of the tourism attractions, while the squares were general employed in establishing graphics and pictures needed to buildings used to offer various services to the individuals engaged in the tourism activities. That is to say that they were used to create pictures of buildings used for shopping, resting place such as hotels and restaurants, heritage buildings among others. These two (squares and circles) were also used in showing transportation means/objects such vehicles and airplanes, but this does not imply they were exclusively used in these area only (Plotkin, 2003) This was accomplished through the employment of Disney program was which allowed finally to adds sounds in the templates as it targeted young individuals and persons longing for leisure elements

Validation

In the last part of the website development, specific codes were used to validate the databases of the website. These were enabled through the application of java script technology. The validation through java script program aimed at setting a part or preventing any entry of unnecessary data to the database by any unauthorized individual. Hence, the website contents were protected from being getting corrupted and mishandled.

References

Hellums, D. Jinjer, S., Ray, M. and Stanek, W. (2001). Microsoft FrontPage 2002 Unleashed. Indianapolis: Pearson Education

Plotkin, D. (2003). How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003. Emeryville: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media

Cheshire, J. and Colligan, P. (2004). Special Edition Using Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003. Indianapolis: Que

Click Here To Order Now!