ICS Capstone 2018 Website Development Overview

Technology Used

  • Hosting - Local Server
  • Language - HTML, CSS
  • Data Storage - GitHub

Background

The Capstone project is carried out in the second year of the Information and Computer Systems program at Camosun College. The project involves working with companies in industry and providing them with a software solution and granting the students experience working with industry professionals.

During this Process the class is divided into committees for various aspects. I was part of the website committee, who's job was to setup / design the Capstone website that would contain all relevant information in regards to the event.

Class of 2018

Goal

The website committee was tasked with designing and implementing the Capstone Symposium website. The website needed to display / reference our sponsors and relevant information about them, the projects that were approved and the teams assigned to them, each project was to have a high level description on what it was to achieve, each team needed to have a bio section, and details of the symposium event / registration for the event.

Sponsor page

Decision

Originally, my teammate and I were going to design from the ground up. That idea was quickly squashed when we ran into various permission issues with the existing server. This lead us to a bootstrap skeleton template and a third party registration form that was linked through the website.

Capstone teams

Implementation

Implementation was off to a rocky start, although once we made our decision to use a skeleton template and a third party registration we were off. A couple of mock-ups were created and brought for review among the class. Once a design was decided on we got to work polishing our mock-up and making it suit our purpose. The site was pretty bland however, after a color scheme was voted on we applied\nit in the best possible way that we could.

Symposium details

Looking Back

There were only a few issues that could have been avoided like the permissions to the web server. In the future an isolated web server specifically for capstone that gave students root access would allow a more streamlined flow. Also data collection from the other teams proved to be somewhat challenging at times. Setting a specific calendar with deadlines and some kind of reminder would have potentially soothed some of the growing pains.

Bio page

Final Thoughts

This was a great experience which had similar challenges as working in the field. (IE. clients may not always get information you need on time, there could be technical issues that can hinder flow) If I were to repeat this project a much more structured approach in gathering requirements / information would be taken prior to jumping into development.