Term Paper: Website Migration Project
Presently, Tony’s Chips has been occupied by a new independent organization and the leading authorities of the company have decided to shift the present website to an internal host, which is being hosted externally. The organization wants to enable customers to place orders online and, therefore after relocation website has to be redesigned. The organizations’ management also wants to make a backup solution system in order to ensure smooth operation in case of any issue with main website. The main aim of this project is to plan and arrange a new efficient policy for hosting a website and also, to proficiently transform the present website into a new website with smallest downtime. This system utilized five phases of the systems progress life cycle, in order to achieve a successful relocation of the present website. These five phases include planning of system, designing a system, systems’ implementation, analysis of systems, and lastly, systems support and protection (Shelly & Rosenblatt 2012).
In the first phase in the website migration project, the objectives of the project will be recognized, and business process will be identified. The process may involve IT professional; in order to get a feel for the operations of the organization they will be required to attend meeting with business pioneers and comprehending the official business plan. The organization considered in this case produces and distributes potato chips. Also, the decision of requirement, duties and placement of different workers in this project is one of the main objectives of phase one of website migration project. One of the main objectives behind building new website was to allow clients to place online orders. Presently the website is hosted externally, so part of the planning is finding a home for the website. A server should be acquired in order to host a website on the inside. Along with other hardware devices, the server needs to be housed in a physical area in order to ensure the safety. In addition, the judgment requires to be made whether or not to house the structure in numerous locations while preparing the backup recovery solution in case of any issue. Natural calamities and fires may create disturbance in business operations. Therefore, managers decided to have numerous locations considering the concerns of business stability. (Ricardo 2012).
After first phase comes the planning phase, in which explorations are made about the present website and its operations. While investigating the present website, its affirmative and unenthusiastic features are identified; decisions regarding portions to be kept back, discarded, or enhanced are made on these identifications (Kneale 2008). In the first phase, the major object has previously been recognized. However, in order to get an improved perceptive of the trouble, leaders, executives, employees, and clients can be interviewed so a practical solution can be attained during the planning phase. Project management tools can be employed by using the collected data for example; Gantt charts. The Gantt chart can be used to schedule and organize job tasks and observe the steps forward of the entire task (Shelly & Rosenblatt 2012).
Two main factors are essential to be considered; size of organization and prospects for company’s growth. A web server that does not support the amount of customer traffic and commotion affects the speed of the server that is not able to hold too much information and therefore slows down. A slow browsing gives a bad impression on the customer; therefore, anticipating the position of the company down the road five years will help to make a decision regarding selection of server. (Lynott 2003) Some of the big businesses create a separate facility for housing their hardware in order to make sure that there is adequate room. The task of housing hardware for website requires regular monitoring and maintenance which is done by company employees. Therefore, companies might prefer substitutes such as charging server space, contacting a third party, or sometimes external workers are hired for managing the location. A cost-benefit analysis is an essential part of planning a phase. Performing a cost benefits analysis is carried out to assess whether it is an organization can host the location on its own or not (Kneale 2008).
In planning phase tasks are designed, time period is set for each task, cost of every task is analyzed and a team is gathered to execute the project; therefore, it is the most critical part of website migration process. The planning phase implies that clear expectations are set to ensure the success of the project and so; it is of greatest importance. A feasible and prioritized schedule is made in order to assure minimum downtime throughout the migration process. As stated before, a new housing location is required in order to shift the website from one house to another. The housing infrastructure of the site includes hardware and software of the website. After installation of infrastructure, the second phase can be initiated.
After selection of a physical location for housing and selection of appropriate web server, the web design can be selected. A server requires a software package to become operational. Otherwise, it bare hardware is of no use. The website provides a visual interface to the customer which consists of different links, menu bars, lists, radio buttons, dialog boxes, etc. Database management is not displayed to the customer on the interface. Another software operating the website is also hidden from view; entering customer data, product selection, and placement of orders is operated through this software. Selection of most excellent operating system for supporting the business necessitates cascades into the development phase and needs to be handled with a database administrator or DBA. A range of operating systems are accessible, and their accessibility depends upon expenditure, display place, usability, and language. Structured Query Language or SQL is a universal coding language utilized in database management systems. SQL lets clients contact the database of the organization externally while on the inside supervisors are permitted to renew product information such as accessibility and value of the product. SQL is practiced and offered by different vendors including Windows, Linux, and MySQL. MySQL is one of the most accepted platforms, and it has a free downloaded version with accessibility of a number of support resources (Ricardo 2012). During the planning phase, the selection of web architecture is made, and it has to be revisited all through the project.
Phase of Analyzing System is considered as the second phase when it comes to project of website migration. During this phase in the project, we start to develop more logical models of the site that is going to be redesigned. As we know that the planning phase can only be accomplished by proper examination and teamwork, same is the case with system analyzing phase which focuses more on the system requirements and prepares those model that comprises of data stream and flow diagrams, data dictionaries, sequence diagrams, use case diagrams, class diagrams and many others. These diagrams serve the purpose of offering a visual representation related to the condition and performance of the system. The diagrams support in further assessment of the under-observation project before it is fully completed. If the project is carried out without this examination, it will take more time and will prove to be more expensive. Case in point, A normal contractor never initiates constructing a building before taking its blueprint that depict a physical layout. An information system in our case in also designed in the same manner. Before an actual website is designed, it is sensible to design a prototype in order to examine its features, benefits, weaknesses and hindrances that could take place while actually designing it. Designing of a role model for the website will assist the leadership in saving a lot of time and money by making them aware of the future benefits, growth and problems associated with the website (Shelly & Rosenblatt 2012).
Once the phase of website relocation or migration planning is accomplished, all the prototypes have been prepared, examined and finalized; the actual designing of the website could be initiated. During the physical designing stage, establishing a user interface is considered as the primary step, which serves, as an external element of the designed website allowing its users to view the database of the corporation or organized that owns the website. The importance of user interface can be illustrated by the fact that it can attract or even discourage more customers from using the website. The user interface offers a simple way for the customers to make their choices, customize the options, cancel orders or even send the payments without any complication. Because, if the process of making choices is slow or complicated, it leads to making an organization looses more of its customers. For example, if a user interface for making selection of chips is difficult for customers to access, they will immediately switch to other websites with a good user interface. Therefore, the prompts of user-interface should be effortless and user-friendly to attract more and more customers and hence augment a website’s popularity along with persuading customers to reuse the site more often (Shelly & Rosenblatt 2012).
The newly developed site is fundamentally a customer/server system permitting clients to buy the products they like. As the data related back to the main server which in turn transfers it to the respective employees in order to process requested orders, therefore, the main server continually takes input and yields an output of the processed data. In order to make the current website to be successfully transferred to the newly designed one, the website host server must be allocated along with domain name and IP address. Therefore, the database should be made more uniform in order to prevent it from redundancy, when the modifications take place during website migration. The backup server should ensure the perfect replication of information when the data is transferred to the main server, in order to save it from server malfunctioning (Ricardo 2012). Moreover, the security measures should also be taken into account when managing customer’s information the information of website owner corporation’s proprietary. To ensure this, updated, and active antivirus and firewall could be installed.
When website is designed and developed, data is moved to the new website from the previous location. After that structure is put into practice various run tests are conducted to make sure that there are no viruses that need to be set. At this stage, all phases and tasks that have been finished before are completely documented. Every action requires to be closely observed during this phase; reports are required to be produced and analyzed in order to make sure perfect productivity. Moreover, it is also of significant importance examine the failure that occurs in the main server in order to inspect the capability of backup system. Website migration feedbacks given by leaders; employees and users could also prove to be an important strategy in maintaining the popularity of a recently developed website. Offering customers the option of filling survey questionnaires as soon as their transaction process is completed will succor the website owners to become cognizant of the customer’s experience while using the website. Whilst, feedbacks taken during the rehabilitation or system’s execution stage can assist in addressing the issues in order to resolve it in a shorter time period. As soon as this phase reaches its completion, the final phase certifies that both internal and external parts of the server are getting appropriate support (Shelly & Rosenblatt 2012).
An opportunity to e-mail or chat with an organization’s agent is an excellent idea in order to make sure that customer’s issues are delicately addressed. In Small organizations, there is no requires of a helpdesk internally; instead, clients’ issues are handled through the DBA. However, in order to ensure no disturbance in business operations, bigger organizations often require internal support (Ricardo 2012). A final project assessment and documentation should be done at the end of completion of all phases, in order to avoid any problems during this project. All charts and figures can be found on the following pages.
ORDER BAG OF CHIPS Use Case
ACTOR Customer
DESCRIPTION
Explains the procedure of placing online orders of a bag of chips
SUCCESSFUL COMPLETION
1. Customer logs onto site
2. Customer selects the chips
3. Customer selects the payment method
4. Customer enters into shipping information
6. Customer confirms and submits the order
7. Employee processes payment
8. Employee order the ships
ALTERNATIVE
1. Item not available
2. Customer makes another selection
PRECONDITION Customer requests a bag of chips
POSTCONDITION Customer receives order of chips
ASSUMPTIONS None
References
Kneale, R. (2008, March 01). From Static to Dynamic-Choosing and Implementing a Web-
Based CMS. Computers in Libraries, (3), 17, Retrieved from http://elibrary.bigchalk.com
Lynott, J, W. (2003, February 01). Seven steps to a better website. Dance Teacher, (2), 109,
Retrieved from http://elibrary.bigchalk.com
Ricardo, C. 2012. Databases Illuminated, 2nd Edition. Sudbury, MA. Jones and Bartlett Learning.
Shelly G., Rosenblatt H. (2012). System analysis and design. 9th Edition. Mason, Ohio. Cengage learning
