Determining Site Features

Chapter 4 - Planning the Web Site
byGareth Downes-Powellet al.
Wrox Press 2003

The Dreamweaver Hotel requires a number of different elements. First of all, there is the client-facing site that allows a customer to check the availability of rooms based on date criteria that they specify. If a room is available, then the visitor is given the opportunity to place a reservation and give their credit card details to act as a security against the booking. The customer can return at any time and view their bookings, and make amendments or cancel them as appropriate. As well as this, there are the usual informative sections including Hotel Information, Travel Information and Map, details of rooms and suites and of course contact information.

The second part to the site is the Administration section. This allows a designated hotel representative to check bookings and manage staff user names and passwords.

The overall site structure is something like the diagram above. Whilst there aren't many pages, we can limit the number of physical pages by looking at the types of page we have to create.

Hotel Information, Travel Information, Map, Room Information, and Contact Information will all contain static information provided by the client. As these pages do not use any other functionality of the web application itself, these pages can be created as standard HTML pages using our design template.

Many web designers who use a scripting technology often opt to store static information of this kind within the database itself. Then, with the addition of some extra administration pages, a system is integrated to allow the customer to maintain the 'static' content of their web site themselves. This might be above and beyond the initial design requirements, but creating functionality like this is usually a good idea. Experience has shown that of all the last minute amendments required by the client, the integration of some way to easily edit page content is usually around the top of the list. This is called latency, or the adding of features without activating them. It is generally a good idea to do this whenever possible, as it speeds development and later redevelopment, and creates a more professional and scalable end product to the customer.

Having now determined the site feature set, we need to establish how the content provided by the client for the site is integrated into the overall design and layout. As all of the information is to be stored in our database, we now need to determine the database structure.