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Deliverable E - Technical and Budget Feasibility Report
Technical Solutions and Requirements
The technical requirements that are needed to host our site is that of
- Support of MySQL or Postgres databases
- PHP (preferably version 5)
- E-Mail POP + SMTP
- Support for SSL
- Secure Hosting Environment
- Daily Backups
- Strong Network Infrastructure
- At least 10MB of dedicated bandwidth
- At least 500MB of disk space
- Current hardware ( Xeon 2gb Ram > )
- Site Statistics
After evaluating numerous hosting providers such as 1and1, GoDaddy & and Interland the ISP that we have chosen is that of Jumpline.com. We have chosen this solution over the other alternative for a few key reasons. First being that it satisfies all of the aforementioned criteria along with having a strong industry standing. Jumpline offers a virtual dedicated (J2) server product for 19.95 a month. This plan offers 2 GB of disk space and 30 GB of monthly traffic. The plan also gives SSH access along with full root access to all applications and services on the server. This access will allow us to setup any merchant account and payment gateway that we like for our shopping cart software. In addition, the added usability & security of a chrooted environment that Jumpline provides for its hosting accounts will allow us to customize the service and application offerings to whatever needs that may develop.
Budget
Click here to view the project budget
Measurement Criteria for Business Success
The following are five criteria for measuring web usage and business success of this website:
- Report what visitors are doing the site.
Set-up software to track user's visit. Measure things like who was the referrer, what pages did the visitor view, how long were they on that page and how many overall hits a day the website is getting. This will help in understanding user's behavior and what they are interested in.
- Monitor search engine results.
Often check major search engines such as Yahoo, Google, etc to see if the website shows up using some common keywords that users might be using.
- Do Surveys.
Set up surveys on the website to ask what can be done to help the user experience.
- Keep a log of all the form submissions/inquiries.
Keep track of all the inquires submitted through "Contact Us" page to see what users are having difficulties with and try to improve the process.
- Compare with competitor sites
Check often to see what competitors are doing to attract users. Keep an eye on their strategies and see if it can help business.
Contributions
- L.D. loaded content and product information to the site
- Crystal loaded content and product information to the site
- Andy Mentges documented technical solution
- Andrew Yoder created the budget and updated this website
- Lomesh documented the measurement criteria
- Everyone collaborated on the approach and proofread the deliverable
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