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Association of Computer Science Undergraduates (ACSU)
Client
Michael Wilson, webmaster for the Cornell branch of the ACSU.
mew232@cornell.edu
The ACSU Web Site
The ACSU needs a new web site fairly badly - the old one is running on an old outdated server, using old outdated software. Not to mention when I inherited the web site it was a mess of code - there's really no thought to maintainability. The work has two aspects: (a) the basic web site, and (b) extending its functionality.
The client writes;
Basic web site
Here are some of the things that the basic web site should include:
- Update the server OS, MySQL, PHP version (which involves finding the physical server on campus, obtaining the root password, etc).
- Possibly migrate to a Java-based server (better maintainability over PHP).
- Improve the CMS of the site (it should be easy to edit content without touching code).
- Integrate with Google Apps login (since all students from now on have a cm ail / cornell google account).
- Possibly add a forum / RSS / google calendar / alternative way of getting news to help ease and organize traffic on the mailing list.
- Make it maintainable - right now there's about 5 passwords, and most don't even work for the more important things. This needs to be documented so we can hand it down properly instead of throwing a list of passwords from person to person. That means SVN repository on the server for a dev version of the web site, and a script to push the dev version to the production site. It also means nice documentation - especially for common tasks.
New functionality
Here are some suggestions of new functionality to be discussed with the client and the development team. The client stresses that he would rather have something with more polish than features. It is important that users can easily use the system that ends up created. If users cannot just discover and use the functionality, it will not be used.
- A forum system tied to mailing lists. In other words, you subscribe to the mailing list -OR- participate in the forum in case you don't want to be bombarded with emails. The forum would be tied to your Google Account, and posting to it would send out an email to the list, likewise an email to the list would show up on the forum.
- RSS feeds for many aspects of the site - you can subscribe to new events, new forum / mailing list items, etc.
- Google Calendar Integration - A CMS system for officers to plan events and push them to a live calendar. That calendar can be subscribed to for live updates.
- A CMS and system of displaying media related to events. We currently don't have anything that ties pictures or videos with our events, and it would be nice to be able to dig through an archived calendar and fish out all media related to each event.
- Mobile integration would be very nice. iPhone / Android apps are hard to maintain and platform specific - but a good mobile optimized web site portion would be very useful.
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