Virginia Center for Civil War Studies eLibrary:
Contents
1. developers Richard and Kevin are developing back end server side features that correspond to front end Ul features These stories center around database management and allow our website to store information about users or bookmarks or any other data we need to remember All of the developers have agreed to these roles and take an active approach to managing the project via the trello website Software Environments For this project we have decided to use AngularJS as a javascript framework and Netbeans as an IDE Integrated Development Environment We write our code in that environment then use git as version control We have our project hosted in a Gitlab repository where we can all pull push to This gives us accurate up to date code as soon as someone edits a file We are using WAMP server to allow the website to be easily hosted on our dev machines 13 Tools Technologies Used Web Hosting Server Web hosting allows us to make our website accessible via the World Wide Web therefore this technology is fundamental for the success of our project We will be using a third party web hosting service called WAMP 1 to support our project Although this is how we will be starting our project we will be looking to move our system to the Virginia Tech hosting service in the future when the web application is more stable Styling and Design We are using Bootstrap 2 for CSS styling of all of our web elements We are also plan to use a2. homepage http www civilwar vt edu 9 Agile software development with Scrum http scrummethodology com 26
3. labeled with concise 3 descriptions of what kind of information the link holds They were going to be presented in an accordion view feature was reversed in final product so there is less clutter and the user can focus on the titles instead of all the small details Once the user has chosen which link he prefers to investigate further he can click on it to expand the accordion and reveal a preview of the page This design will allow the user to discover the resources they need quickly and efficiently If you were a previous user of the Delicious website then you will have no problem navigating this new website as it includes some of the same features of the Delicious site and more Developers Manual Design Overview For the design of this website we use several existing libraries of Javascript and CSS styling We are utilizing some popular well known frameworks such as Bootstrap for CSS and the way the overall website looks Font Awesome 6 for icons that are easy to manipulate and some AngularJS libraries that allow for some pretty robust features out of the box Combining these technologies has allowed us to create a nice looking functional website with features the previous version did not have e g Searching amongst links Users Favorites For database management and server side operations we will be using a MySQL database and PHP PHP will allow us to communicate with the MySQL database easily and will help create and
4. page is not fundamental to the redesign so it will possibly be a stretch goal to complete this Refinement During the refinement stage there weren t any major changes we intended to make to the prototype because our client really seemed to like the design and placement of all the web elements However there were some minor changes we did to improve the aesthetics of the webpage and usability of certain features e Collapsable menu o After the collapsable menu was developed we realized that it was blocking the search bar when the menu was open So we incorporated the search menu into the menu so it would also collapse in and out with the rest of the bookmarks This made sense because the users were using the search bar to search for specific bookmarks The size of the search bar was readjusted to look appropriate to the webpage The menu toggle button was adjusted for aesthetic purposes Civil War Newspapers Discovery Commons Virginia Tech Open in new tab Primary Sources Online The Civil War Women and the Homefront LibGuides at Duke University Emergence of Advertising in America 1850 1920 Duke Libraries Collection of popular American advertisements from 1850 1920 Searchable by Keyword and Date Crisis of the Union the Civil War Avalon Project Confederate States of America Documents Civil War Maps Library of Congress VMI Archives Letters Diaries and Manuscripts University of South Carolina
5. we found as we were doing the project For example there were some bugs in the back end related to registering users and also when logging in We have also been finding and fixing design and formatting bugs All of the bugs anyone finds are being communicated to all of the group members through the use of an on going group messaging system Any major bugs have been logged as tasks using Trello The following show some examples of how we conducted some tests e Registering Users o Testing for this aspect of the webpage consisted of creating a new user and then making sure that the user can login afterwards While running through any exploratory test all steps for each process was carefully observed for any 20 O bugs From the clicking of the button to the expected output The following screenshots show the testing process for Registering users T 8 E k A A a dd Register Username examplel Email example l example com Password TTT Subrnit Cancel CE Figure 17 Registering users After we register we want to make sure that we can login Login HM x Username A s i examplel i Password i l dr Figure 18 Login window k After we login we want to make sure that the username appears on the top corner 21 O o Additionally admin users should be able to manage users example Figure 19 Name of user on top corner of page This is how you can verify the process of registe
6. D Boards p i VCCWS CS 4624 at Org Visible Backlog E Working Testing Allow users to submit new links Adding columns to the item table Gulpify front end of project Add logic that retrieves links Timestamp TimesClicked o 22 0 3 3 a F Allow users to add tags o A 3 Set up SQL database ED dos o Add Tag association to Bookmarks Add a card Y o ot add the ability to have users 4 RH username password Add search 21 Easier to navigate than delicious Change Front end to use accordian list Slide bookmarks list into menu p4 Ed when preview is present Create Home page 23 Ei Jos Oro a ER Add a card allow users to add comments on links Update Wiki page O 1 Oo BS RH show which links are trending or new add preview of linked site Set up dev environments o 92 Add a card Add a card Figure 6 The trello page for the development of the site Team Member Roles We have four people on the development team and one client acting as a B A for decision making purposes Paul Quiggly is the client for the Virginia Center of Civil War Studies and takes an active role in decision making for our stories on a weekly basis we meet with him every thursday morning Our four team members are divided into two groups of two Suhas and Ben have taken front end developer roles and focused their efforts on creating a usable user interface that interacts with the user well The other two
7. L and its current features to our advantage with certain CSS libraries This gives us complete creative control over the appearance of the website Prototyping The prototype has some great initial design and functionality but there are some changes we are planning in the final version e Collapsable menu on the left side of the screen 14 We would like to save some screen real estate and have the menu with all the bookmarks be collapsable to the side of the screen The purpose of the collapsable menu will be to give the user a larger area to preview the web pages while they are searching through the list of sources in the side menu By sliding the menu to the left the page will clear up and the preview will be larger The user will be able to search from the menu itself to filter down on the sources they are looking for Priority We are definitely planning to implement this change because the team sees it as a fundamental design change which will greatly improve user experience and aesthetics of the page Here is how the menu looks currently Civil War Newspapers Discovery 5 Mm Commons Virginia Tech new tab DUKE UNIVERSITY search ates books Q Primary Sources Online The Civil A War Women and the Homefront LIBRARIES ae LibGuides at Duke University Home Research Support Small colle f primary source material relating to women and the Civil War Includes letters and diaries The Civil War Women
8. Reconstruction Records South Carolina and the Civil War University of South Carolina Libraries Kodak Territorial Kansas Online Home W Du Pond O The Revised Dred Scott Case Ee J Wa Figure 13 Screenshot showing the collapsable menu improvement 17 e Home page o We intend on having a homepage with a link to an existing Civil War website o The style of the header will use the existing style of the existing website 8 o This page is not intended to have any real functionality but rather to make it seem inviting o We received this information from the client think something pretty brief that contains a quick description of the project Something like Explore the wealth of digitized primary sources on Civil War era history Browse our listing of the best databases online Click on the tags to explore by theme Or search for whatever interests you Whether you re beginning a major research project or just looking for fascinating new insights into the Civil War era you re in the right place think the home page will probably be most effective if it is pretty clean with an inviting and easy to find search tab a set of tags maybe in word cloud form to click on and the first part of the listing of sites for people to browse Maybe then you scroll down to see more of the list Then we should have a link to a page called something like About the project or About online research and have an update
9. Virginia Center for Civil War Studies eLibrary Website redesign Course 54624 Multimedia Hypertext and Information Access Virginia Tech in Blacksburg Authors Ben Sechrist Suhas Avadhuta Kevin Ellis and Richard Howell Client Paul Quigley Professor Edward A Fox May 14th 2015 Table of Contents Executive SUMA assar ape cava O E CR da da aan User Manual User Audiente sis cd ccet eect seca a d Sins c is Susa dad R ai a User Experience Developers Mantdl sore sipasicuisop aca s ins O ass ee Nac D ERES ec Es su ede Design Overview FORMAIS emos cicero Cs ene EDER do ECA a LLC edie was sos A ncia is SEA Website Design System Framework sssuaisumss iscas aa seu lees EEEN uaaa Architecture DesIGh s saasascaaadasassaenisnis sd ddscsvardadessascecseassecusbeseietanctecdaesecnsets DESIO PTOLOY DO nas ses i ni Cs Used asso na ib oa Usa Ni nTa Dates aca OT ida Fage Diag amas eras dinda dadas Rana caos dado aaa a Database Archite Lessons Learned Methodology CIR PERNA S E AEE R EA A AE O EE eae aa Timeline esa a a a ae vee ae eos tara O ea etait Se aware ia Gantt Chart Features list Management ADDIOAGM asa aess soa qassa cies sets ae leet ite eee Laos eterna Team Member ROICS jaceccenssecscscescccsencstensassastsanccoseecszressssess SCLCSOs Rss LTaa ani DaRTaR Software Environ MENS ss adido Sis dis Li OS biocide en eee eee E Tools Technologies Used assess ils n6 o ca cedcw ceta
10. and the Homefront ags history united states unfed_states_history women womens_studies of wom en spie es for the Union and g Confederacy as well as African Guide to print and manuscript materials at the Rubenstein Library related to women and their roles in the Civil War Americ wome URL Nttp guides library duke edu civilwarwomen amp Print Guide Emergence of Advertising in America 1850 1920 Duke Libraries Crisis of the Union the Civil War Su mi Avalon Project Confederate States of America Documents he n My nta ce n Ric ha r Be ntle 8 We e The Americ at War Maps Library of and Diaries hE Th sms n Pa rain a 9 1 ses erials in this collection eso ongress users only Th nompst rin ar kbr the Jnion army which _ de e ft ceed ony eh Hu nda and her subsequent post stru no against poverty The New Y Times 1851 3 rgely nother VMI Archives Letters Diaries and aa aa j vil Letters T rs provid f 3 i Spa E users only j S pro Manuscripts glimpse A d the relationships tt th A a s Histori paper heir ow Available to Duk ly University of South Carolina Alice Williamson D mud ena ption ands ed image fro 5 year old rebel girl bo z gi Harper s Weekly Available to iving in Gallatin Te e du agi Un cupation of the area Reconstruction Records Duke users only F i Digitized Materials from Other Institutions or mor es see the South Carolina and the Civil War United States History Nbgu de Documenting the American South Univ
11. ated bootstrap However our client has asked that we change the color scheme to appear more like the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies site 8 System Framework Our project will contain three main layers User Interface Layer Logical Layer and Database Layer These layers will allow us to keep separate the various functions of the system and organize the code base in a meaningful way User Interface Layer This layer contains all the front end design elements that the user will see The majority of this code will be in HTML CSS and Javascript For example the design of the various tabs listing of the bookmarks drop down menus and layout of the various sections of the page will be developed in this layer Logical Layer The logical layer acts as a bridge that connects the User Interface and the Database It is responsible for retrieving and updating the data from the database For example if the user creates an account on the webpage the logical layer is responsible for transferring the account information to the database Database Layer This layer is the database It stores all the information regarding the users bookmark data tags and so on The logical layer uses this information to update the user interface Architecture Design We plan on using a hybrid of the client server and data centered architecture styles With the combination of these two styles we will be able to organize our system in a way that will
12. bookmarks menu America Singing Nineteenth Century Song Sheets Votes for Women Selections from the National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection 1448 1921 Example Descriptive text Open in new tab O Chior Figure 27 Suggested bookmark o This is how you can verify the process of suggesting a bookmark 24 Future Work Currently we do not track users and their visits to the site Some potential future work here would be to collect some data and analyze it If anyone wants to add code in order to get it up and running you ll need an additional db config file to specify where the database will be Acknowledgements Client Paul Quigley Director Va Ctr Civil War Studies Department of History 0117 Major Williams Hall Rm 405 Virginia Tech 220 Stanger Street Blacksburg VA 24061 United States Email pquigley vt edu Work 540 231 5331 Local 540 231 5331 25 References 1 Using WAMPServer APache PHP MySQL on Windows http www wampserver com en 2 Bootstrap the most popular HTML CSS and JS framework http getbootstrap com 3 HTML enhanced for web apps https angularjs org 4 Agile software engineering management software https trello com 9 Code version control with GitLab https about gitlab com 6 The iconic font and css toolkit hitp fontawesome io 7 Communicate through comments with Disqus https disqus com 8 The Virginia Center for Civil War Studies
13. ceans eee PROLOG SUA Eaa O beenen tan netas FIPStREMMEMENt Stage srine i ewadhinneseedaataen wie anens Second Refinement Stage ratse asda aka aa usados Testing Stage Future Work ACKNOWICOGEMECINS sescc5 stcccscnt cr cncivecesteestsocetancaceweccaniannesentanieeunesesenestuseenst RETCIENGCS asp eE A E Executive Summary The purpose of taking up this project was to develop a website which would redesign and improve upon the existing https delicious com vccws website The function of this webpage will be to provide the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies an efficient way to organize and manage a listing of websites containing Civil War era sources The improved website provides an more useful ways to access the many digitized sources on this period of U S history Improving the site in these kinds of ways made it even more useful for the many students historians others who want to research Civil War topics but don t know where to start navigating the many content sites available on the internet The site is a permanent feature of the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies website It can be seen as the go to destination for anyone beginning research in a Civil War era topic no matter how big or small We have four people on the development team Although we make group decisions regarding specific functionality of various parts of the website our client Paul Quigley takes an active role in making the big picture decisions O
14. d version of the following page there http www civilwar vt edu wordpress gateway to digitized sources in civil war era history o Header will look like this I The Virginia Center for Civil War Stu r Figure 14 The Header image for the site e Admin Controls o Admins will be able to review link suggestions that users have posted for them and decide which should be added to the site o Admins will also be able to promote users to admins or remove users as admins as they see fit o Only users that are currently admins will have these options 18 Refinement 2 During this second refinement stage we really focused on improving the home page to be simple with a modern design Additionally we focused on including user authentication so that users can log in to save changes such as keeping a list of their favorite bookmarks However we don t require all the users to make an account with us Additionally there were minor bug fixes with some UI elements e Home page o One of the major features that is now fully implemented and refined is the home page The home page is meant to give the users an idea of the type of content our website holds It was designed to be simple and elegant giving access to all users without having to login in or make an account o We refined the home page to give it the look and feel that our client likes Our client provided us with a banner image and also some text which are both s
15. e and more historical sources are digitized and made available online from newspapers and magazines to handwritten diaries and letters The Civil War era 1848 1877 is an especially popular period and there are so many primary sources available online that it is difficult for historians whether faculty members students doing research projects or members of the public to keep track of what s available It can be difficult to know where to start when beginning a new research project Therefore the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies has created a listing of websites containing Civil War era sources Our project is going to use this data and present it in an easy to navigate web application We aim to provide useful ways to access the many digitized sources on this period of U S history The basis of the site is to continue to be a listing of the various content websites accompanied by a short description and tags We have made the website easy to navigate with a navigation bar and menus and have also added new functions such as allowing users to search We can search the text of the short description as well as the titles We added the ability for users to add their own tags and comments We provide a preview of the content websites on our site on the same page User Audience The first users we looked at constitute the general public This includes students teachers historians and researchers This user group will be mostly interes
16. e to Figure 4 User Login allows users User visits User creation to log into the system if site they successfully do they go to home page else they go to user creation Home page Basic information about the organization with links to the other sections of the site Links page links to the outside resources and has Allows users to create a new user account most of the functionality of the site Figure 4 A page diagram of the site Information page More in depth look at the oganization and motives behind the site Preview of outside sites The arrows in the above description mean that a user can go from their current page to that page This creates a clear and concise way for a user to use our site Database Architecture We are using phpMyAdmin as our SQL server manager We have created new tables to hold data for the bookmarks as well as users new feature and their respective passwords We are using a PHP encryption method called password hash that uses a bcrypt algorithm to generate a random mapping This keeps the passwords protected even if the database is compromised The PHP method used also generates a strong salt for us so the security of the passwords are strongly enforced Figure 5 is an example of the user database Name Type Collation Attributes Null Default Extra Action 1 id int 11 No None AUTO_INCREMENT Change Drop 42 Primary a Unique w More 2 username varc
17. ersity of South Carolina Doc tin 91 the Ame uth outh a digital publishing ir tra tv na the University Library at the University of Libraries North Carolin ess to to dig iized primary 3 the ato fer uthem perspectives on American history and ulture It s oo pie at every es senha ith a a wide array of titles they can use for reference Studying t estinciude Microfilm Collections Territorial Ka s Online Home x e First Person Narra Figure 11 A screenshot showing the siicabis menu e Adding tags to the right side of the screen o We have some space to use on the right side of the screen where we are going O to place tags that users can use to narrow down their search for specific bookmarks The tags will allow the user a quick and easy way to navigate the numerous sources which are listed in the menu They will always be readily available to the user so they are easy to discover and use Priority The space on the right of the screen will definately be used to improve the design of the web page Whether it will be tags or something else is still under consideration due to possible time constraints However we are hoping some sort of section will go there to make user interface more efficient This area is reserved for adding the tags 15 aaa Bupport Libraries About Figure 12 Screenshot showing where the tags will go e Favorites O We would like for users to be able to favorite sources and keep them on their p
18. few Bootstrap elements such as modals and accordions Bootstrap is also helping us to keep the web site very responsive and mobile friendly JavaScript Most if not all of our JavaScript will be using the AngularJS 3 framework This allows us to work with our data models in a very easy way It also allows for dynamic content and a single page application PHP MySQL We chose PHP to communicate with the MySQL database and to help facilitate the creation and use of users With PHP we are able to store information between pages and are able to have users give us information to store We chose MySQL as our database system because of how easy it is to communicate with through PHP With the PHP SQL combination information can be stored gathered and manipulated easily NetBeans This is our IDE of choice It allows for easy website deployment to our local environment and testing on that environment It is how we will write the PHP code for the application Trello 4 As an agile scrum board this software allows us to monitor tasks that each team member is currently working on has worked on and will work on all in one place It also gives us a place to discuss the challenges details and other things relating to specific features of the website GitLab 5 We are using Git for version control and the website GitLab to merge branch changes into the master branch This keeps all our code up to date with each other and HTML5 We are using HTM
19. g divided up into categories Feature 01 Set up Web server Story 1 Set up WAMP Windows Apache MySQL PHP Story 2 Set up backend resources Feature 02 Set up Database 11 Story 1 Create SQL Database Story 2 Load links and data from delicious site Feature 03 Prototype Home Page Search Nav Bar Accordian view for Links Styling and Design Feature 04 User tools Tagging Commenting Feature 05 User Accounts Usernames Passwords Backend storing of info Feature 06 Log In Page Design Authentication system Management approach As with any group project there needs to be some central authority for task assigning and questions regarding steps For this project we are using project management software called trello This allows us to have a place for our team to go and update the rest of the team on progress This is a piece of software that follows the agile approach to software engineering We work in one week sprints and gather cards from a backlog that have been created previously When a developer needs to ask a question to another dev they can add a comment to a card and tag others in the comment which will automatically notify that person that they have someone asking them a question There is no specific project manager as we all are equal in design choice but we do ask our client constantly for guidance when we don t know where to go next 12 e CEE E https ftrello com b 9HZakcaB vccws Bask
20. ge volume of information in our database for a long time for continuous use by the clients The data centric style will allow our essential information to be managed in a central repository that is accessible to all system components This is exactly how access to the database should be set up since we don t want direct interaction of the components All information must be gathered from the repository itself Although the repository may be a single point of failure in this architectural style there are considerable advantages for us in the way we manage our database and integrate it into our system when future changes are made Figure 3 below is a page diagram that shows how the sites will interact with one another Design Prototype Bookmarks Civil War Newspapers Discovery Commons Virginia Tech sponsored by the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies this site provides an index to Civil War issues of the Macon GA Daily Telegraph including digital images of articles Primary Sources Online The Civil War Women and the Homefront LipGuides at Duke University Emergence of Advertising in America 1850 1920 Duke Libraries Crisis of the Union the Civil War Avalon Project Confederate States of America Documents Civil War Maps Library of Congress YMI Archives Letters Diaries and Manuscripts University of South Carolina Reconstruction Records South Carolina and the Civil War University of South Carolina Lib
21. har 50 latin swedish ci Yes NULL g Change Drop 22 Primary q Unique w More 3 password varchar 255 latinl swedish ci Yes NULL amp Change Drop 4 Primary ag Unique w More 4 timecreated timestamp Yes CURRENT TIMESTAMP amp Change Drop gt Primary Unique w More Figure 5 An example of a database to hold user information Lessons Learned Methodology We planned to use the agile scrum 9 methodology to gather analyze and validate the requirements The requirements gathering was done with active stakeholder participation as well as group collaboration For the first release cycle we focused on the fundamental and core features of our system For each feature to be developed in the first release cycle we gathered the details in the form of user stories While identifying each feature we made sure to utilize natural language while describing them After prioritizing and estimating the features we planned to release a new feature every week Using the Agile method to estimate everything is simple and relative Each feature is assigned numbered estimates that have a unit less measure We know that features are the largest scope and under them are stories that are implemented with tasks but the estimations are all unit less For our estimation we used a scale of 1 2 3 4 and 5 1 is the lower lesser end of estimation and 5 is the high end of estimation We used this scale for features and stories and because this is an agile a
22. howcased on the home page See Figure 15 below Welcome to the VCCWS Database Explore the wealth of digitized primary sources on Civil War era history Browse our listing of the best databases online Click on the tags to explore by theme Or search for whatever interests you Whether you re beginning a major research project or just looking for fascinating new insights into the Civil War era you re in the right place Figure 15 A screenshot of the homepage e User Login o Once logged in users can suggest bookmarks o Users can be promoted to admins by another admin o Admins are considered users with additional permissions and actions 19 o Admins can suggest bookmarks approve suggested bookmarks and delete promote demote users o Here is a screenshot of the login Login Username Password Figure 16 A screenshot of the login window Testing During the testing stage were really sought out to do a thorough usability and discoverability test to see where we could make improvements from the users point of view Since the focus of this project is mainly on the redesign of the previous Civil War Studies website we also asked our client repeatedly for feedback on how he would like to see the webpage There wasnt a significant amount of testing for the logical aspect of the webpage since the purpose of the webpage is to provide resources for the user in a clean and efficient manner However there were some edge case bugs
23. l images of the newspapers themselves for use by students and scholars The newspapers selected will be a representative sampling of Union and Confederate urban and small town Eastern and Western pro and anti administration The tools on the left can be used to search the collection s index using keywords or choose the browsing options to explore specific newspapers dates or general subject areas Please refer to the Using the Repository link for details on viewing content and navigating the site Background information on the project and the newspapers in the collection can be found by clicking the About the Site Collections button William C Davis Director of Programs Virginia Center for Civil War Studies Professor Department of History Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Figure 3 A initial prototype of our main page As you can see from this initial prototype Figure 3 that we created the design of the webpage will be very intuitive and simple for people of all ages to use This is just an initial mockup of the webpage There will be many iterative design changes on top of this design However some definitive design elements that are fundamental to our system will be an efficient and live update search bar a compiled list of Civil War sources with descriptions and a preview of the web page available to the user when they click on the link Page Diagram Our site infrastructure will look something clos
24. maintain user logins and profiles The MySQL database will allow us to store all the information the site needs to keep track of including users and links Tags and Bookmark Site Formats When discussing the requirements with our client Professor Paul Quigley he informed us that they currently use Delicious tag system for grouping relevant bookmarks together and for describing the format of the content on the site bookmarked The way we are solving this is described later when the database modeling of tags is discussed To represent the tags on the front end we use a type of word cloud similar to Figure 1 When a word is clicked the associated bookmarks with that tag are filtered and shown in the place of all the tags with an animation The filtered tag is then shown above this list near the search bar ac turpis Nam et lorem Consectetur Adipiscing P gQ or SItElit vestibuur Figure 1 An example of a word cloud Disqus One requirement was that any user of the site registered user or not should be able to comment on bookmarks To accomplish this we use Disqus 7 Disqus allows for easy moderation and setup of comments that can be injected onto all of the individual bookmark pages It also handles authenticating users and allows users to login using a variety of platforms or by registering with their email Our client Paul Quigley can then be alerted when someone would like to comment and can approve or deny it Disqus also allow
25. pproach the simplicity of agile means that these estimations include analysis development and testing all in one number Timeline Task Name 1 Planning Phase Requirements Gathering Learning New Technologies Designing Prototyping Setting Up Dev Environments Back End Development Front End Development Plan For Refinement Refinement Testing Bug Fixing Possible Design Changes Testing Ad Hoc Testing Thorough User Base Testing Bug Fixing Start Date 01 25 15 01 25 15 02 10 15 02 20 15 02 10 15 02 10 15 02 18 15 02 21 15 03 24 15 03 26 15 03 26 15 03 29 15 04 15 15 04 15 15 04 16 15 04 29 15 End Date 03 04 15 02 05 15 02 23 15 03 04 15 03 26 15 02 18 15 03 25 15 03 25 15 03 26 15 04 15 15 04 15 15 04 15 15 05 05 15 04 16 15 04 29 15 05 05 15 Figure 10 A data view of the Gantt chart Gantt Chart Task Name Jan 25 SIM TIWI TI F Planning Phase Requirements Gathering Learning New Technologies Designing Prototyping Setting Up Dev Environments Feb 1 SISIM TIWIT rr e e ee o e e 4 Duration 29 10 10 9 33 F 26 24 3 15 15 14 15 2 10 5 Feb 8 FiS S M TIW T Requirements Gathering Predecessors F Complete 100 100 100 100 37 100 30 30 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Feb 15 SISIMITIW ITI FISISIM 4 4 4 4 4 1 I Back End De
26. raries PR CIVIC TF 7 NJ at rute ANS ols Search 0 tory illections tion int Site ions Home Nar Studies American Civil War Weyspaoers ee pune A GS Overture For many years the newspapers of the Civil War era were probably the most neglected of all sources and yet they are one of the richest The reason no doubt lay in the sheer mass of them their inaccessibility and the fact that they were not indexed Few if any scholars had the time or resources to spend weeks and months scanning page by page in the hope of finding something of use to their projects Yet the newspapers are the surest windows on the attitudes of the time despite their inevitable editorial bias All of the daily affairs of the common people play outin the pages of newspapers only perhaps in smaller type than the antics of the great and powerful Moreover thousands of soldier letters military reports general orders and even occasionally diaries found their way into ink on newsprint many of them items available nowhere else Thanks to the policy of editors exchanging newspapers among themselves and borrowing stories from each other often newspapers for which not a single issue survives still live in excerpts published in other journals Even the advertisements are mirrors of consumers and their concerns in the 1860s The goal of the American Civil War Newspapers database is to select a representative group of journals to index with digita
27. ring and logging in as a user e Admin Users admin suggest Bookmark Figure 20 Dropdown for admin users o As you can see here the functionality can be tested by pressing the buttons to O O promote demote or delete users Promote Delete Manage Users um Name Email T bensechrist bensechristdlemail com O estamplel example Mexample com Figure 21 Managing users page Testing to see if example1 is promoted LJ example example lilexample com Figure 22 Promoting a user Testing to see if example is demoted Group Admin Admin 22 LJ example example litlexample com User Figure 23 Demoting a user o This is how you can verify the process of managing users through an admin user e Suggesting Bookmarks o Users can also suggest bookmarks which can appear in the bookmarks menu example suggest Bookmark Logout OC eee he cs Figure 24 User drop down o First we can create a bookmark to suggest rh Ths Cae suggest Bookmark mbit O e e Figure 25 Suggesting bookmark window o Then the admin needs to either approve or deny the bookmark in the Manage Suggest Bookmarks page 23 Users suggested Bookmarks Manage Suggested Bookmarks Title Link Creator Don t approve or deny this http google com admin Figure 26 Mange suggested bookmarks page o After the admin had approved or denied the page it should appear on the bottom of the
28. rofile The user should be able to favorite the sources by clicking on a small icon which will appear next to the links The favorites bookmarks will allow the users to quickly see a list of their favorites and the ability to navigate to that particular source The favorites list will be attached to the users account so it will always be available to them when they log into their accounts Priority The creation of favorites will be linked to the creation of the login page which extends user accounts The back end and front end of user accounts and account management have to be dealt with before favorites can be created The development of all these aspects will definitely take up a significant portion of the project time so for now it is our stretch goal to complete this e Home Login page O We would like to include some form of login where a user can save some favorite sites this will use many to many relationships in our database The login page will be easy to use and simple to navigate We definitely want the users to continue to the main page without forcing them to create an account or login Priority The creation of the login page will depend on the completion of the user accounts feature The back end and front end of user accounts and 16 account management have to be dealt with Since these tasks will take a longer than other planned features to complete it will be one of tasks we will do later on our timeline The login
29. s for our client to change settings at any time without the need to change code as it is independent of the site code 0 Comments Figure 2 Example of Disqus Delicious We initially need to get the existing links that the current website uses from a feed hosted by the Delicious service Then we can manipulate them in our own database and add any necessary qualifiers to provide additional functionality Website Design The website s basic functionality is to host a list of links bookmarks that are relevant to the Civil War in some way Each bookmark has an associated short description that a user can use to decide where to go for the information desired The website will have two more primary pieces of functionality we are working on adding more features if there is time These are a search ability and a preview window The search function will allow users to search through the links with keywords that matter to the user Matches are refreshed instantly with no need to hit enter or refresh the page The Angular JS libraries allow for some powerful useful things The preview window will allow the webpage being linked to by the bookmark to show up iframed in on the current page without forcing the user to lose their place in the current list We opted to use a small list which when clicked on expands to show details of the particular bookmark selected Our color scheme is also similar in style to Twitter because Twitter cre
30. satisfy the functional and nonfunctional requirements of the system The client server architecture will allow us to distribute our services to a wide audience It will allow multiple users to access our product from a range of locations The main reason we needed this type of architecture is because we rely on a system of networks with servers to store and provide web services as well as clients to use these services Our growing database of Civil War Resources will be shared by the clients and because the servers can be replicated they may also be used when the load on a system is variable For example the majority of our nonfunctional requirements depend on multiple users wanting fast web interaction from wherever they chose For example we plan on having a mobile application of our product The client server architecture will allow us to implement this feature without change in our design plan since the user can be anywhere to interact with our shared database In addition we plan on using VT servers to support the clients This will allow us to manage server maintenance and feature upgrades efficiently On the other hand the data centric architecture is exactly the type of style we need to manage our large collection of bookmarks links tags users etc Since our nonfunctional requirements demand that we have quick searching of our various sources the data centric architecture is perfect for this purpose Additionally we need to store the lar
31. ted in a particular link or a type of link on our site We will help them mostly by providing a description of each link and a search function to aid them in finding what they need quickly The next group of users we have thought about are developers This includes the system admins web developers and database developers that will follow us in maintaining the site Their biggest concern will be making sure the website continues to run smoothly and adding features they feel are necessary To aid them in this we have made sure our code is commented and clearly defined The last group of users we need to think about are institutions This group includes libraries and schools universities This group will be mainly focused on all the information we have to provide and how they can get that information easily To help this user group descriptions will not be shown at all points and times only when the user asks for them to be shown This makes it easier for groups trying to get all the links at once without having to scroll through unnecessary information Developers System Administrators Web Developers Database Developers Institutions Schools Libraries Universities User Experience When we built our system user experience was one of our top priorities We wanted to create a website that is simple to navigate In order to do this we provided a user interface which is familiar to the users Our main page of the website contains links clearly
32. ur four team members are divided into two groups of two Suhas and Ben have taken front end developer roles and focused their efforts on creating a usable user interface that interacts with the user well The other two developers Richard and Kevin are developing back end server side features that correspond to front end Ul features Furthermore we managed our project using the agile approach to software engineering We work in one week sprints to come up with prototypes refine and repeatedly test our development The website we have developed is designed to continually grow by increasing the number of Civil War sources that it offers as the user base expands The admins of the webpage can manage all of the the users and the content that is presented on the main page of the website Any of the users can recommend a bookmark to be placed on the website Then the admin like our client Paul Quigley can decide to add or delete the requested source This allows the website to be dynamic in nature and provide relevant content to the users In this way the website can become more and more useful as the number of users expand in the future Users manual Scenarios For users trying to use this website for normal use simply use the website in the same way that it was used in the past Please see the future paragraphs and sections in this report covering the features we added and how they are implemented used Project Overview Every year mor
33. velopment Setting Up Dev Environ Front End Development Plan For Refinement Refinement Testing Bug Fixing Possible Design Changes Testing Ad Hoc Testing Thorough User Base Testing Bug Fixing Figure 7 The left third of the Gantt chart 10 Feb 22 Mar 1 Mar 8 Mar 15 Mar 22 Mar 29 TIWI CREISISIMITIWITIHEISISIMI bi wit Pers S Mr Ww Pe SS Myr pwWwiet Pe yes SIMI byw TI EISSI MT dh Learning Ne ees E E ee Figure 8 The middle third of the Gantt chart Apr 5 Apr 12 Apr 19 Apr 26 May 3 WITIFISISIM TIW TIFEFISISIM TIWITIFISISIMITIWITIFISISIM TIWITI FIS 4 Te ting ase Testing Thorough Us 4 4 Bu Fixihg Figure 9 The right third of the Gantt chart Features List Product Backlog We planned to use include in our product a set of features to better aid in the clients needs The list below shows the features we initially planned on includin
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