Development of new

Childline website

2012

Steps to creating a new childline.ie website

Documentation

Specification

This document describes in great detail the different roles of users that will use the website:

-children-volunteers- to engage children in conversation, to record information/ details of engagements-supervisors- to set up volunteer accounts, to monitor best practice on chats both live and historical, to collect data for stats etc-administrator- to edit and maintain

Different roles involve different responsibilities, tasks, and access to different parts of the site. All this had to be explained in as much detail as possible to enable the developers provide a detailed breakdown of costs and timelines.

Different roles involve different responsibilities, tasks, and access to different parts of the site. All this had to be explained in as much detail as possible to enable the developers provide a detailed breakdown of costs and timelines.

CostsEvaluated with developers and price and payment schedule negotiated

Prototype This document creates a wireframe of the site from the

specification document provided and allows those not familiar with specification documents a clearer picture of how the site will be created, what page goes here, what page goes there.

Functional Specification

This document goes hand-in-hand with the prototype. It is a re-worked version of the original specification document and in addition allows you to see how the site will work functionally; you can go back and forth between the prototype- to see how the site will be laid out- and the functional requirements document- to see how the portion of the site you are looking at in the prototype should work. Once this document has been completed and it meets the original specification, it will be used by the development team as a template for creating the site.

Design

Moodboard - this is a 1-2 page document showing colour palette suggested by the design team based on the type of site and interaction required. It also details the level of use of each colour, where the colours will be used, the fonts, the shape of buttons, highlighting, etc.

Mock-ups of different page types - The different page types detailed in the functional specification are mocked-up using the design ideas from the moodboard. At this point we sought feedback from children in Dublin and Monaghan about the design choices.

DevelopmentConverting the functional specification into php code, and creating the images and stylesheets necessary to give the site the correct look together with the functionality

Hosting requirementsDeciding where to host the site, ensuring the server is capable of handling thousands of simultaneous conversations

Testing• Checking each line of functional specification against the

implementation. • Test the roles for all user types in various scenarios.• Ensuring that the hosting server is capable of handling thousands

of simultaneous conversations, so that we are future-proofed.• Purchase a Verisign SSL certificate to provide strong encryption

for the site, apply and test to ensure it doesn’t break the chat functionality.

• Plan the deployment and go live strategy- to ensure a smooth transition between the old site and new site; to extract data from old site and import into new site between shifts to ensure no data loss; to guarantee that only the new site is visible when we go live (relates to the 48-hour that it can take for all DNS servers worldwide to reflect the changes to the repointing of the website IP address)

• Upload & format all content

Go Live

• Creation of manual for volunteers and supervisors

• Training given by development team to supervisors

• Training given by supervisors to volunteers

• Website goes live