University Major Project - Trof Cafe

During 2004-2005, as part of my degree course’s final project, I created a fully functioning Content Management System (CMS) and Customer facing website for a local cafe/bar.

Features

Here are some of the technical features of the system/website:

CMS

• easy creation of accessible XHTML
• stats package which was a modification of shortstat (the predeseccor of the mint stats software)
• JavaScript error-prevention
• image upload and thumbnail creation for ease of adding images to content
• a help area with basic tutorials for users
• staff notice board where quick messages can be posted.

Website front-end

• Fully-functional search engine
• RSS and Atom Feeds
• XTHML 1.0 Strict Compliance
• Use of CSS for style and layout - table are used for tabular data only. The site is designed to work well for everyone with CSS or without it.
• Standards-compliant non-intrusive JavaScript to make comment and contact form more user friendly.
• Fully accessible website - access keys and tab indexing used (only where appropriate).
• CSS for different media e.g. printing and mobile phones.

Design

The design of the site was inspired by Trof’s art direction at the time however, the design was all my own. A stylish and modern looking website using many of Trof’s brand colours, my thought, behind designing the site, was for it to accurately represent the organisation’s appeal. That is to say, it takes its inspiration from the physical location of the cafe and its offline marketing materials and tries to recreate the feelings those emit.

Testing

Both the front-end and the CMS were both tested for usability quite extensively and the final product is quite removed from the original design sketches. I felt it important to operate a User-Centred approach to this design by testing the potential users of this system regularly. This helped to create a system that eliminated the confusion that many CMS and for that matter websites in general can cause.

Dissertation

To go alongside this project, I wrote an 18,000 word project report - often referred to as a dissertation on other degree courses. The purpose of this report was to investigate and theorise content management systems before actually creating one. I road-tested many open source equivalents, before designing this bespoke CMS, and found them to be severely lacking in many areas. I proved during usability testing that the CMS I created was more intuitive and easier to use than its peers.

Disclaimer

This project is in no way affiliated with the Trof Cafes of Manchester. They were asked for cooperation at the time and regrettably declined.