Design and Technical Specifications
An outline of the website design criteria, and the technology being used to run this website.
Design Background
Community organisations often have: older computers and versions of software; poor connectivity because of the expense of high bandwidth or due to rural isolation; and clients who use adaptive technology (eg screen readers, text only browsers) to access the Internet. People are used to working face-to-face, so anything that does not portray a friendly, human feel will not work.
From a maintenance perspective it is necessary to involve lots of people in preparing material, and to minimise unnecessary cutting and pasting.
This website has been designed bearing in mind the needs of a community audience and our maintenance requirements. Set-out below is a summary of the design criteria, and a description of the technology being used to run this website. This information is being shared to help you set-up and run a website.
The criteria for the design relate to the needs of a community audience. The two critical components of this are a fast loading website that is accessible to all users.
Website development was undertaken in accordance with the E-Government Web Guidelines 1.3 (August 2002) and subsequently upgraded to Version 2.1 (http://www.e.govt.nz/standards/web-guidelines/web-guidelines-v-2-1/)
Design - look 'n feel:
- A modern website, that it is clearly located in Aotearoa New Zealand
- A real human presence is conveyed.
Design - technical features:
- Navigable and readable with graphics switched off
- Consistency between pages
- Optimised for 800 x 600 screen size, usable for 600 x 480 screen size
- Websafe palette colours used
- Viewable on PCs and Macintoshs, and using common browser software
- Alternative options available, eg for downloads PDF, Word and/or RTF files; transcripts if visual or audio files
- ALT-text for graphics
- High contrast colours
- Minimised use of tables for layout
- Industry standard HTML used.
Testing and browsers
Testing of the website involved technical tests on different machines and using different types of browser software, and usability and accessibility testing with visitors to the website.
We aim to test (on Windows) with the 'recommended' set of browsers listed on the e.govt.nz website, to support the 'extensive' set, and to be readable by the 'comprehensive' set. We also use Macs. See http://www.e.govt.nz/standards/web-guidelines/browsertesting.html for details.
There are many ways of setting up and running a website. With CommunityNet Aotearoa the choice of technology was based on the following factors:
- Ability to allow for multiple contributors to add and change pages
- Consistency of a house style across the whole website
- Powerful searching and filtering options
- Automated submission process to reduce time wasted manually cutting and pasting
- Built-in potential for expansion.
Based on these requirements the Department of Internal Affairs, who are responsible for website maintenance, selected a Content Management System (CMS) to run the website. CMS is powerful software that uses a database to run a website. It enables multiple people to contribute to the contents of a website without any knowledge of HTML. Adding new material is a quick and easy process, and because templates and stylesheets are used the design is consistent across the whole website.
Currently Intergen Ltd provide access to Microsoft CMS technology as an Application Service Provider.