Website: 2005

WBI's 2005 award-winning website was a major improvement over the older one. It offered a boatload of new content and a carefully designed new theme.

Webmasters

Students:

• Emil - main webmaster, PHP scripting, theme, graphics, content coordinator, forum administrator
• Alex - content entering/editing, content management, HTML editor, forum administrator
• Mohit - content entering/editing, content management, HTML editor, forum administrator
• Elaine - graphics, theming
• Ohm - content entering/editing, proofreading
• Genia - writing content
• More than a dozen other team members who wrote articles and supplied content

Advisors:

• Dustin Wise - Theming

How this Website Works

• Every web page is written in PHP.
• Most of the content is stored in a MySQL database. This makes it possible to easily manage the theme since the content is separated from the layout.
• The look-and-feel of this website is stored in a CSS file which provides a central place to change how text displays.
• Although all normal users would see is the final product, this site has a lot of neat administration features. Having great administration functions allows administrators to quickly add nicer and more organized content for the user's benefit.

The Theme

The gold theme represents the main color of Purdue University, our biggest sponsor and local college.

The Menu

Menus are generated automatically by PHP script from an XML file using an XSL transformation. This is an example of how menuitems are defined:

<menuitem type="submenu" page="multimedia" text="Multimedia" url="multimedia" >
    <menuitem type="link" page="photos" text="Photos" url="photos" />
    <menuitem type="link" page="videos" text="Videos" url="videos" />
</menuitem>

Searching

The search is done by redirecting the search request from this website to Google and adding "site:boilerinvasion.org" to the end of the Google search. This tells Google to only search pages within boilerinvasion.org.

Some of Our Guidelines

• The website must NOT be fixed size. If appropriate, pages resize to the size of your browser window. The minimum resolution we support is 800x600.
• All web pages comply with the XHTML 1.0 Transitional standards. This helps make sure that any up-to-date browser will view the website correctly.
• All PHP code must be secure. It is often much easier to write code that does not have to check data for security purposes but this can lead to large consequences later.
• The entire website must be editable through itself. Online file managers and database management utilities make it possible to edit any part of this website from anywhere in the world. All one would need is an internet browser and the administrator password.
• The website must have short, easy-to-read, and up-to-date content.
• Have lots and lots of images. If used correctly, pictures can provide visual cues and enrich the user's experience.
• No annoying intro. Many websites try to "look cooler" by adding a flash intro to their website. Sure - those are cool, but in addition they also slow down the user's navigation. It can get very irritating to have to click through the same intro page every time a user wants to check the website for updates. Since functionality takes priority over "looking cool," our website does not use an intro page.
• Optimize files and images for fast download. Every image, if offered in a smaller size than the original, must be thumbnailed. Many of our videos are offered in WMV format which currently has the best compression algorithm for media content.

Recommended Software

If you are looking for software to develop your website, we have some suggestions. These programs won't magically do everything for you, but we have found them to be very helpful.

• Macromedia Dreamweaver - Rich and simple to use editor for HTML, PHP, CSS, and lots more.
• Macromedia Fireworks - A very easy to use image editor. This program is a very effective solution for editing, compressing, and creating simple graphics.
• Adobe Photoshop - The classic image editor. Depending on how good you are at it, you can create anything from simple images to artistic masterpieces.
• GIMP - This open source graphics program is comparable to Photoshop but has the advantage of being free.
• Microsoft Notepad - The guru webmaster's favorite text editor.

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