Directory Site cum Community Site - Case Study

Client Profile

The client is a UK based non profit organization started with the key objective to facilitate projects that are focused primarily within the community or the Shire. Their goal is to speed up the rate of change in areas such as humanitarian, environmental, artistic and cultural ... and to ensure these changes are made by local groups, strengthening the local economy and community spirit.

Purpose

To provide a convenient way for people to VOICE their opinions and coordinate collective action to create change in their community and surrounding area. The system should sound like a Community and Directory Site.
To offer a web based platform for anyone wishing to provide, or look for, information within any community.
Allows service providers to advertise their skills, sell and buy products, display their profiles through which eventually meet like-minded people, form groups, advertise business ventures and last but not the least voice your opinion about on-goings in the community. Providing these services online means users can basically avail of all the facilities just by working on a computer i.e. from the comforts of their homes.

Business situation

A need was felt to develop a portal for service buyers and providers to share information easily. This will enable the service providers to display information regarding their skills and services; and allow people to look for the right servicing partner. The portal has a focus is to provide information of all type of services which can be searched based on postcodes.

Technical situation

A directory service needs to be optimized for searching the right data based on various criteria, in order to enhance user experience. It also needs to manage categories and classifications of various services so that users can narrow their searching as required. The additional features required are user registration, adding groups, and business, offered or wanted skill and products. This involved developing a data driven website, with content management support, users tracking.

Solution

A data driven community and directory website is developed with PHP-MySQL; silent features being…

Profile creation and display information/images
Creating business, groups
Search on different profile, postcodes
Adding offered wanted services
Client profiles and account management
Website statistics

Tools and Technologies used for implementations

PHP scripting with AJAX
MySQL as backend database
HTML and JavaScript.