The term project is designed to give you a chance to work with some of the ideas we have been discussing this term, by applying them to a real-world application and implementing a limited web site. For the project, you must invent your own company and design a web site for the company. You will implement the home page of the web site.

The project consists of 6 parts, as described below. The entire project is due on the last day of class MONDAY MAY 15. However, it is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that you work on the parts incrementally and do NOT leave it all to the last minute!!

Some of the parts will require research to answer the questions. Some of the parts will require design and writing code.

You will be given time in class on May 8 and May 11 to work on the project in the computer lab in the library.

1. motivation and background
   (5 points) to be included in the hardcopy documentation
   
   • What is the name of your company? What does your company do?
   • What is the purpose of your company's web site?
   • What type of site is it (e.g., e-tail, portal, etc.)? What is the business model?
   • What community does it contribute to? Who is the audience for the site? (e.g., consumers of fishing gear) Include a profile of your user base (e.g., average income, gender and age groups, etc.)
   • What is your competition? Look for other sites that exist in the same niche as your site. List their URLs and provide a critique of each site. You should have at least 3 sites listed here.

2. functions
   (5 points) to be included in the hardcopy documentation
   What will your site do and how? Describe the types of functions that your site will support, for example, user login, shopping cart, chat room. Note that you don't have to implement these!! This should be a high-level design, with text description and including any diagrams where helpful.

3. design
   (5 points) to be included in the hardcopy documentation
   What is the web design of your site? Detail each page and show a tree of how the pages connect to each other. For example, how many pages can you get to from the home page? Can you get back to the home page from all of the sub-pages? Recall the good and bad points of web design that we discussed when critiquing web sites in class. This should be a text and diagram design description.

4. home page
   (5 points)
   Create an HTML page that illustrates your company's home page. You can include links to sub-pages if you want. Your code should be written in HTML and Javascript. It must follow the design that you've described in the previous part (above). You do not have to implement all the underlying components of your design (like a login page), just make a place for them on the home page.

5. documentation
   (5 points) to be included in the hardcopy documentation
   
   • How will the internet help your company or organization?
   • What are the costs associated with maintaining the site once it has been designed and built? How will you sustain the site? If it is a non-profit, how will you get funding to sustain the site?
   • What kind of personnel will you need (e.g., bicycle delivery people, field service representatives)?
   • What computer hardware will you require (e.g., fast server, large database, ipods for all field service employees)? What software will you require (e.g., database server software)?
   • What is missing from the site? What would you like to do with it in future if you had the time, skills, etc.?
   Obviously, these things are speculative, but do a little research and refer to the notes and readings from the beginning of the term to answer these questions reasonably.
   

6. oral presentation
   (5 points) in class on May 15
   On the last day of class (May 15), you will present your site to the class. This will be a 3-minute presentation. I'll bring up your site on the projector in class and you'll have three minutes to describe it to the class and answer questions about it.