Study on the Use of Web in Local Community Website

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ECOM503 Cousework1 Part A                

Study on the Use of Web in Local Community Website                   Hongling Wang

University of Plymouth

Study on the Use of Web in
Local Community Website

Module Code        : ECOM503
Module Title                : Programming for Web Applications
Lecturer                : Dr. Andy Phippen
Student Name        : Hongling Wang
Coursework No        : 1
Date                        : 6 November 2002

Content

 

Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………3

The Sample Websites   ………………………………………………………………...3

Analysis by Compare and Contrast……………………………………………………3

The Functionalities Overview   ..……………………………….………………3

Guestbook ………………………………………………………………………. 4

Forum ……………………………………………………………………………..4

News/Events System ……………………………………………………………5

User Authentication System    ………………………………………………….6

Classified Ads System …………………………………………………………..7

Contact  Us ……………………………………………………………………….7

Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………………..8

Reference   ……………………………………………………………………………….9

Study on the Use of Web in Local Community Website

Introduction

With over 50 million users worldwide, the Internet has become the most important information tool of the century. [1] More and more towns, villages and cities went on Internet. They built their own websites on Internet, which gives a digital way for local people to find information, communicate with each other, exchange opinions and support the whole community.

However, the Internet is now no longer limited to static content, it is extending into dynamic functionality.[1] The main objective of this report is therefore to examine the use of the web in local community settings and focus on the usually used functionalities, analyses their design and implementation method – static or dynamic.

Some brief explanation must be made here about what is static and what is dynamic. Traditionally websites are constructed with static HTML pages. They have fix content, every time you visit, the content is fix unless the web editor or developer update it. [2] In contrast to a static webpage, a dynamic webpage is the one whose content is regenerated every time a user visits or reloads the webpage based on a pre-defined template with data usually taken from a back-end database. [3]

The Sample Websites

Before getting started, I browsed over ten local community websites. Finally I choose the following four as my study focus:

Costar-Cwmbran:

South-Yorks :

Peterborough:

Blacksburg:  

Analysis by Compare and Contrast

The Functionalities Overview

Besides displaying some general information such as the location and history of the local place, the website itself (usually named “About us”) and so on, local community websites also provide some other attractive functionalities. The following lines briefly outlines the usual functionalities or services provided in local community websites:

Join now!

  • Guestbook (or Message Board)
  • Forum
  • News/events System
  • Classified Ads System
  • User Authentication System
  • Contact us

Here, what have to be point out is that the functionalities provided by linking to another website will not be examined. We only study and analyse the functionality offered in the website itself.

The table below examines the implementation methods of those functionalities used in the four local community websites:

The following passages will analyse the design and iplementaiton method of above functionalities in the four websites in detail.

Guestbook (or Message Board)

Guestbook provides ...

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