Thesis Website
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The non-profit educational organization Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations, or NDLTD, currently has a website built with Google Sites. They wish to redo this site to ensure that it can be accessed by as many countries as possible, is built with a system that is not frequently changing, and has a more visually appealing design.
Our team has been tasked with researching and deciding on a new content management system to create the website with, migrating all of the content to the new website, implementing news and events widgets, coming up with new website designs, and writing documentation for future developers of the site.
We first had to research different content management systems, and decided that WordPress best suited the needs of our client. We then downloaded WordPress to a server that could be accessed by all developers of the site. We sketched potential website designs and presented them to the NDLTD Board of Directors. After receiving feedback on our designs, we migrated the content of the old NDLTD website to the new one, and implemented the agreed upon design. We met frequently with members of the NDLTD Board and received constructive feedback on our site implementation. We made a few final changes to the design, tested the website from the user’s point of view, and wrote up documentation for future developers of the website to use.
We ran into a few obstacles in the early stages of our project, including picking the hosting platform and setting up the Ubuntu Virtual server. We went back and forth between using WordPress and Wix, however, after feedback from our client, we settled on using WordPress. Additionally, with help from our client, we were able to overcome the difficulties with setting up the server and to proceed with our project.
We anticipate that this new website will become the primary NDLTD website. We expect that future developers of this site will make slight modifications to the content of the site and so have provided them with resources that should ease this process.