AFRICAN FORUM FOR AGRICULTURAL ADVISORY SERVICES AFAAS WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT

Transcription

1 AFRICAN FORUM FOR AGRICULTURAL ADVISORY SERVICES AFAAS WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT INCEPTION REPORT SUBMITTED TO: AFRICAN FORUM FOR AGRICULTURAL ADVISORY SERVICES Plot 22A Nakasero Road P.O. Box Kampala Uganda SUBMITTED BY: NAJIMALDIN KATEMWA Plot 37/39, William Street Hotel Equatoria Mall, Room 619. P.O. Box 794 Kampala - Uganda, Telephone: / Mob: / / / info@biztalkweb.com SUBMITTED ON: 08/September/2015

2 Executive Summary The African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (AFAAS) is the umbrella organisation for Agricultural Extension and Advisory Services (AEAS) in Africa. Its objective is to create efficient, effective and synergistic linkages and partnerships between AEAS of member countries to improve the delivery of these services to farmers. It operates within the framework of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), specifically CAADP Pillar IV which has the objective of enhancing the livelihoods of African farmers and pastoralists. The Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) has been mandated to lead the implementation of CAADP Pillar 4 and it s in this context that AFAAS has strong collaboration with FARA and the Sub Regional Research Organisations. i

3 TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY... i ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS... iii 1 INTRODUCTION THE ASSIGNMENT THE OBJECTIVES THE METHODOLOGY AND DELIVERABLES DEVELOPMENT LIFE CYCLE DELIVERABLES NEEDS ASSESSMENT RESULTS PROTOTYPE CONCLUSION...12 ii

4 Acronyms and Abbreviations AFAAS : African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services AEAS : Agricultural Extension Advisory Services CAADP : Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Program CMS : Content Management Information System FARA : Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa HTTP : Hyper Text Transfer Protocol HTML : Hyper Text Markup Language IT : Information Technology LAN : Local Area Network RSS : Really Simple Syndicate RWD : Responsive Website Design SEO : Search Engine Optimisation TOC : Table of Contents iii

5 1 Introduction Welcome to the inception report for the re-design of African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services AFAAS website project, this report is part of the preliminary work ahead of the entire process of designing and developing of an interactive bi-lingual website for AFAAS. Over while now AFAAS has been desirous of improving its online visibility by rebranding and re-designing its website to a corporate website that adapts to the current modern technologies available on the web today. It is based on this background that AFAAS hired the services of Najimaldin Katemwa as an individual consultant to execute this project that will cover creating or developing a new website layout that will portray a true representative image of a corporate organisation, updating of the contents available on the old website into the new website, uploading of the new website on the designated web servers and finally working on search engine visibility of the new website. Within this report we discuss the major objective of this projects, methodology of executing the work successfully to the final stage as well the prototype of the product where are going to develop. 2 The assignment The consultant is assigned to develop an interactive bi-lingual website for AFAAS in the following languages (English and French). The website will from time to time be used as a tool for end users to find information about AFAAS, its work and any another updates from the organisation and for website administrator part of the website will be mainly used to post and publish information about AFAAS online. The assignment also specifies specific features and functionality the AFAAS website must contain as discussed in the next section The objectives. 4

6 2.1 The Objectives The main objective of this consultancy is to develop an interactive, bi-lingual well structured website for AFAAS that is easy to navigate, manage and accessible on a wide range of platform such as computers, tablets and mobile. It is also expected that the new AFAAS website has the following features and functionalities but not only limited to what is included in this document. The new website should be scalable allowing for new features to be easily added to the website without necessarily having to re-develop the entire website. - A custom frontend website design that is responsive and adapted for P.C, Tablets and mobile - A streamlined well structured navigation menu - News and updates section - Social Media Integration and content sharing via platforms like RSS Feeds - Linkage to other useful online resources and websites such as FARA, AEAS and CAADP - Interactive events calendar - Should include media resources such as press release, flyers, brochures and AFAAS digest newsletter - A knowledge base section containing a series of publications, reports and other relevant documents on studies conducted by AFAAS - A section on opportunities within AFAAS such as jobs, tenders, internship, procurement and consultancies required by AFAAS - A detailed sub-section about AFAAS as an organisation clearly indicating its history, presentation, strategic statements, its board and other staff members - An interactive image gallery showcasing the work of AFAAS in pictures - Linkage or connected to AFAAS virtual platform - A full detailed contact page showing the addresses of AFAAS its social media links and as well an electronic form that can capture user input and submits entries to a designated as will be required by AFAAS team - Search functionality that allows indexing of internal website content thereby making it easy for the website users to quickly find what they are looking on the website by using its search functionality with the help of just a few keywords 5

7 - A robust content management systems with a customized dashboard that allows website administrators quickly update or manage contents available on AFAAS website - Implement a robust user access control levels (ACL) that allowing users of varying privileges or rights to only access or manage specific contents on the website. 3 The Methodology and deliverables Drupal is the framework that will be used develop the new AFAAS website, its open source which means that there are no licenses associated with using this software /content management systems and as well its core or source code is continuously being improved by a community of developers around the world who contribute modules that extended the core functionality of the software. Drupal is built on top of PHP and MySQL technology which is now one of the leading technologies for setting robust and scalable web platforms. 3.1 Development life cycle The entire life cycle or process of developing AFAAS website will be broken down into five major stages which have been explained in detail below:- Stage 1. Requirement specification and system analysis: This is the first stage of developing AFAAS website will include a series of activities and tasks as indicated below: Holding meetings with AFAAS CIKM officer to discuss the desired functionality of the new AFAAS website. The CIKM officer will conduct a practical session with the consultant to review how the current website works and provide to us any materials / contents (text, images, etc ) that will be put on the new website Consultant will as well during stage review the current hosting platform to assess whether the platform will support the new website. If there is a need for a new hosting platform, recommendations will be made. Stage 2. System Design 6

8 In the second stage we shall now focus on creating prototype for the entire website. The following tasks will be implemented during this stage; Creating of prototypes for the entire website Developing HTML documents from the prototypes that will be created Structuring and preparing the backend database that will store all the contents available on AFAAS website Creating icons and any other graphics materials that will be used on the website. Configuring the content management system and as well start structure the custom dashboard that will be used for content editing by the site administrators. Stage 3. System testing In the third stage which is system testing we shall start using the new web application in beta mode testing its functionality; the following tasks will be conducted; Capturing content from the old website into the new website to see if it works as expected Testing user access control level to validate that only specific operation can be performed by a selected group of users on the website Testing electronic forms and comments form to see if they submit input to the required destination Stage 4. System Implementation The fourth stage which is system implementation will involve setting up online hosting space or server on which the new AFAAS website will be running. The following tasks will be performed; Setting live server for running AFAAS website Uploading the new website with its corresponding database and other files to the live server Testing its functionality on the live server Submitting of website to major search engines to improve its online visibility. 7

9 Stage 5. System Maintenance and Support This is the last stage which is also a continuous process in the life cycle of website development. The following tasks will be performed; Writing AFAAS website user manual Training AFAAS staff on how the new website works Providing extended technical support for AFAAS website as stated in the contract. 3.2 Deliverables Under the general technical guidance of AFAAS CIKM Officer and other AFAAS team members, the consultant will make the following deliverables Inception report including needs assessment, usage framework and prototype A complete functional website running online User manual for administering content on the new website 8

10 4 Needs Assessment Results After the inception meeting with a team from AFAAS, there are specific resources that where indentified through the needs assessment and these where to be provided by AFAAS, they include; AFAAS will provide all the content that will be populated on the website in both English and French language. All pictures and other media resources that will be put on AFAAS website will be provided to the consultant It was identified that current website runs on a NGINX server which does not support PHP/ MySQL out of the box and as well has limited storage space of only 1GB. To effectively run the new website without any challenges, we recommend that AFAAS secures a Linux hosting platform that s runs Apache web server and has enough storage space of at least 6 GB. Web Hosting Recommendations: We recommend a Linux hosting package that is natively setup to run PHP/MySQL web applications. BizTalk Systems limited a company co-owned by the consultant offers reliable web hosting services; we have a corporate hosting package that can reliably host AFAAS website giving you 100% network uptime. Below are the features of the hosting package we recommend. Corporate webhosting Plan - 20 domains hosted - Unlimited sub domains - Unlimited s - 30 GBs of data storage online - Unlimited databases GB monthly traffic - Unlimited FTP Accounts - Online backup of up 5GB The corporate hosting packages goes for 180$ per year exclusive of VAT 9

11 5 Prototype The prototypes of the new AFAAS website have been developed and below are some of the screenshots taken. Index page About us page 10

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13 6 Conclusion The end product of this project is an interactive website for AFAAS that will work across a wide range of platform. The consultancy will implement the design and development of this website as well makes sure the end product is optimized for search engine visibility. 12