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Case Study : Available Today

INTRODUCTION

AvailableToday is a listings site where the listings are arranged under Subjects and within subjects, Classifications. A Subject is broad, like Business & Professional or Leisure & Entertainment. Classifications rest within Subjects, as sub-headings. Under Leisure & Entertainment, for example, you will find Classifications like Places To Visit, Restaurants and Pubs. Within these Classifications, finally, you will find Information Sources, the pages for the attractions or restaurants themselves.

You may read about these companies and print location and contact information; for many you will find hyperlinks to email them directly, or to visit their web sites.

CONTRIBUTION

External contributors supply the entire contents of the AvailableToday website.

Companies interested in appearing on the site have to register with AvailableToday, if approved they are then issued with a username and password which gives them access to the content providers site. A content provider can then request to enter information into a particular classification, if that is approved then information cane be added under a number of pre-defined headings.

Once the initial process has been gone through the Content provider can then update their information as and when they feel its is appropriate. The information is split into three sections:
" Basic information, Name and address, location, directions and an introduction. This section also includes images that the Content provider can upload.
" Additional pages specific to an individual classification. I.e. Menus for Restaurants
" Applicable answers to pre-defined questions that are used to locate companies in the presentation site.

ADMINISTRATION/EDITORIAL

The administration of the site is split into two sections:
" Site Administration - This sections deals with the initial definition of Subjects and Classifications, the registration of new Content Providers, and the maintenance of various look-up tables. There is also the feature to email all Content providers within a particular classification to keep them informed of any changes to the hierarchy.
" Content Administration - Individual users are defined to control the content for particular Classifications. These administrators both approve whether a particular company is appropriate for a particular classification as well as accepting the information supplied

PRESENTATION

At present the navigation of the site is via a hierarchical listing from subjects down through different levels of classifications. The listings can be filtered by entering either a number of key words and/or by geographical region, these filters can be entered at any time and will remain active as the user navigates the hierarchy.

An additional feature is that for particular classifications the user can perform an advanced search that requires the user to give answers to a number of pre-defined questions specific to the current Classification. For example if the classification was Plumbers then a question might be 'What service do you require?' and the user would be asked to select from a number of pre-defined answers i.e. Central Heating, Bathroom Fitting, General Plumbing etc.

TECHNOLOGIES

The AvailableToday employs the following technologies:
" MS SQL Server 7 - Performance was one of the major considerations for the design of the AvailableToday database.
" ASP Client - The Contributory, Administration and Editorial interfaces are all developed in ASP, the primary reason was that any of these tasks could be carried from any machine anywhere.
" Visual Basic WebClass Client - As a public website, design was a major consideration so the presentation site was developed using WebClasses with HTML templates and Cascading Style sheets.