Fillable Printable Website Proposal
Fillable Printable Website Proposal
Website Proposal
Website Proposal
Providing opportunity through education
Digital Technology & Culture Web Design Team
Submitted
July 1, 2008
Kara Gribskov Kelsey Payne Andrew Uhacz Teresa Willard
Introduction
At Home At School (AHAS) addresses the issues of homeless students feeling
“invisible,” “unwanted,” and “untouchable” in school and in society. Their mission
is to provide opportunities for children, enabling a feeling of inclusion, equality
and safety at home and at school. The AHAS program provides educational and
artistic support to children who are either homeless, in foster care or otherwise in
need to be visible in our society.
Dr. Susan Finley, director of At Home At School has asked us to create a website
for this inventive program so that she has an online resource for referral agencies
and interested parents. Additionally, Dr. Finley asked that this website be easily
updated with new information and material and that it produce a user-friendly
digital environment for those visiting the site. These goals are intended to
strengthen this very special program for equity in education and will be carried
out by Washington State University’s Digital Technology and Culture (DTC)
Program senior students.
The AHAS Website Team includes four senior DTC students who are varied in
background and abilities.
• Kara Gribskov- Project Manager: website publication and design, graphic
design, final content editing
• Andrew Uhacz- Webmaster: website concept, design, publication, and
implementation
• Kelsey Payne- Content Analyst: research, content management, initial
editing
• Teresa Willard- Website Analyst: website navigation and appearance,
content management, research
Scope of the Project:
The following plan includes:
Methodology of AHAS website contents and utility
a. Using the Website as a tool
b. Simple Navigation for Viewers
c. Management Made Simple
Value Statement
Project Needs
Cost and Benefit
Methodology
AHAS is a unique, community-based program that offers educational support to
under-privileged children and provides experience in the field for future teachers
working in a diverse society. The AHAS program has a solid structure including
students, volunteers, funding sponsors, events, curriculums, and more. However,
to make a powerful impact and to ultimately serve the community, the AHAS
program needs a website.
Our Digital Technology & Culture web design team plans to create the AHAS
website based on the following methodology:
The AHAS Website as a Tool
The AHAS website will serve as a voice to the public, informing people about the
importance of AHAS’s purpose. Parents, current students, future students, social
agencies and organizations would benefit immensely from the AHAS website
because the AHAS program would prove a wonderful resource.
Simple Navigation for Viewers
The design of the AHAS website will be simple, clean, and informative, complete
with aesthetic appeal. Viewers will be able to navigate fluidly throughout the
website content. The following is a sample layout of the AHAS website:
The Menu section of the website includes navigational links to AHAS Art, About
Us, Contact Information, Curriculum/Services, and Funding Sponsors. From each
page, there will be links in the following sections: Menu, Gallery, Our Friends,
AHAS Online, Get Involved, and My AHAS.
~AHAS Art: serves as the homepage, lists the mission statement in full,
provides a slideshow of AHAS images, and shows the “Searching For
AHAS 2006” video.
~About Us: includes a more extensive background on the AHAS
program and allows the viewer a more personal glance at what AHAS is
all about.
~ Contact Information: lists the name and email of the program director as
well as the Washington State University Vancouver address.
~ Curriculum/Services: informs the viewer on the various activities AHAS
offers including the AHAS Summer Program, the AHAS Tutoring Shelters,
AHAS Outdoors, and AHAS Art Saturdays. This section will be available
for further updates of future AHAS events.
~Funding Sponsors: offers recognition to the fine companies who have
donated funds to the AHAS cause.
Gallery: display of all AHAS photos, which are also rotated on the front-page of
the website as a slideshow.
Our Friends: section will serve as a reserved section for links to similar
programs/websites including Kwamba.
AHAS Online: section provides links to the AHAS YouTube channel where
viewers can get an even more intimate look at the program by viewing AHAS
videos.
Get Involved: section offers room for future AHAS updates including events,
news, and research.
My AHAS: section provides an easy way for the administrator to log in directly
from the website.
Management Made Simple
WordPress, a self-hosted blog program, is an excellent publishing forum with
specialties in web design, usability, and aesthetics and will be used for creating
the AHAS website. This stellar program is free and completely user friendly as it
was created by the community, for the community.
The AHAS website will need future management in order to update events,
newsletters, and projects. Anyone with time and minimal computer experience
should be able to successfully maintain and update the website.
Value Statement:
This project involves the production of a website for Dr. Susan Finley and the At
Home At School (AHAS) organization. This website will enable the AHAS
organization to further the education of underprivileged children by making its
information more accessible to referral agencies, parents, and social agencies.
The AHAS website will include necessary information, such as resources,
services, and curriculum. Students of the Digital Technology and Culture
program at Washington State University Vancouver will produce and provide the
AHAS website at no cost.
Project Needs
In order to run this Wordpress based website, AHAS will need to designate an
administrator. The administrator’s main task will be updating the content of the
website and possibly changing the structure or layout of materials. If needed the
images, color scheme, and structure are easily updated through the design
section of the Wordpress administrator area. Our DTC Web Design Team has
put together what we believe to be an attractive and user friendly layout. If further
changes are needed, someone with knowledge of image design, CSS, PHP, and
HTML would be required. Wordpress is one of the largest open source blogging
collaborations on the Internet. There are many resources to answer any
questions that might arise, along with a built in Wordpress help area. As a
suggestion, there are multiple videos on You Tube that demonstrate how to use
Wordpress, and there are multiple books such as Wordpress for Dummies that
easily spell out the steps needed to maintain the website.
To access the design area, an administrator simply logs into the website:
(example: http://www.athomeatschool.com/wp-admin). At this page the
administrator user name and password must be entered. Once the administrator
is logged in they will see the backend of the website. From this area a user that is
registered as an administrator can add, remove, or manipulate any of the content
on the website.
We would like an opportunity to sit down with the AHAS administrator to go over
how to add information to the website. Although this website will be created using
a blog, it resembles a normal website. Traditional blogs can be quite time
consuming to navigate, so we have been working to make the site useable for all
intended audiences. Also during this session we will explain how to upload
photos, videos, how to edit, and various other tasks that will help make the site
run more smoothly. The great thing about all this is that you don’t have to be a
programmer. If you can check your email, and use a variety of computer
applications, then the simplicity of Wordpress should be very easy to adapt to.
Cost and Benefits
There are two options that will allow the AHAS website to exist online. Currently
the website is being tested on a domain name and hosted through a Web
company called Godaddy.
There are many host / domain registration companies to choose from, but we
recommend going with Godaddy.
Their cost of host / domain registration are as follows:
Domain Name Registration is $9.99 / year for .com’s.
Web Hosting is $4.29 / month for Economy.
If chosen, the Godaddy method of registering a domain name and setting up an
Economy hosting account would be $61.47.
The benefit to having this setup would be to have a specific domain name for
AHAS. So, when people search for a domain name in search engines or in the
address bar, they are directed to the athomeatschool.com website directly.
The other option is to have this Wordpress based site setup on the Washington
State University Vancouver servers. This would allow users to find the site by
searching for the appropriate extension. (example: wsu.edu/ahas) This option
would also make it easier for people to find information about AHAS via Google
search, as pages from WSUV are automatically indexed into Google.
A second part to option two would be to buy a domain name and then redirect to
the WSUV extension, allowing users two ways to access the same site. This is
likely the best option, assuming that we can get access to the University servers.
Conclusion
Because of the AHAS website, interested parties will be able to find virtually
everything they need to know about the At Home At School organization.
The Wordpress format will allow the administrator to easily update and manage
content. We think of this website as a great resource enabling the AHAS
community to stay connected; a place where news, current events, and research
can be viewed. As information is constantly changing, a website is imperative to
the success of organizations such as AHAS. We hope to provide a final product
that will not only satisfy all the needs of the AHAS organization, but also allow the
opportunity for growth.
