I’ve done the research, the focus group, the planning, and even an evaluation, but now I need to get started on the thing that all of this has been leading up to – the physical coding of the site!

I have to admit that I’m quite nervous at this point. I have some experience with CakePHP, having built two sites using it in the past (one of which has been lost, and the other for an E-Business Technologies assignment, for which I got a C- *boo*), but I’ve just not had enough exposure to it to feel totally comfortable with it.

I’m hoping that once I get started I’ll fall back into a coding frame-of-mind (the point at which I even start to think like code, i.e. IF I cross the road WHILE a car is coming THEN I get hit by a car ELSE I survive to live another day), which should happen sooner or later – I just hope it’s sooner!

The good news, however, is that I’m ahead of schedule again. According to my project plan, the next two weeks were assigned to the design of the Models and Controllers (which I’ve already done), with the physical coding of the site being allocated three weeks starting on the 23rd October – by which point I’m hoping that I’ll have the initial 80% of the functionality coded, and be working on implementing the final 20% (damn you Pareto).

I’m not in anyway up-to-date, however, as I’ve only done one Cognitive Walkthrough (CW) – yesterday – which did highlight some problems I have with the interface, but it was not as in-depth or thorough as it should have been. The plan at the moment is to take the feedback received from it, code it directly into the site as I build it, then conduct the second CW on the live site, rather than the 960 Grid System prototype I built for the first one.

In other news, I had a meeting with Sue on Monday and have now – almost – completed the table of contents for the write up. Using an IS submitted last year as a basis, I was able to take its chapter headings and modify them to my own requirements. I say ‘almost’ as I’ve got to take a thorough look at what I stated I would do in my proposal, and make sure that everything is represented, then draft a list of bullet points for each chapter highlighting what that chapter needs to say.

Lots of work, but hopefully it should not be too much of a challenge – after all, I hate love building websites, and the real challenge doesn’t start until I need to get to work on the write-up!

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