The Fellowship’s Website
March 3, 2005
Review by Barry Clark

 

 

1          BUSINESS REQUIREMENTS OVERVIEW

1.1        The Urantia Book

1.1.1  A web medium for information about The Urantia Book

1.1.2  A means to present The Urantia Book over the web

1.1.3  A means to disseminate the UB (in its entirety) over the web

1.2        Secondary Works

1.2.1  A web medium for information about secondary works

1.2.2  A means to gather and present secondary works over the web

1.2.3  A means to disseminate secondary works (in their entirety) over the web

1.3        Study Groups

1.3.1  A means to gather and provide contact information for those seeking a local study group, world-wide

1.4        Translations

1.4.1  Provide information about the availability of The Urantia Book, in all languages, where to find the text, and key contact information

1.5        Site Search Engine

1.5.1  A polylingual search feature, filterable by content category (e.g., language, entire site, TUB only) that indexes all relevant site content.

1.6        Website Availability

1.6.1  General Availability: 7x24, except for brief periods of maintenance activity during periods of low utilization

1.6.2  Backup frequency (maximum period of data loss exposure): DAILY. Backups sent offsite, ideally to the backup Data Center

1.6.3  Recovery:

1.6.3.1            On site (server failure): Immediate failover to the backup server, no loss of data or service

1.6.3.2            Offsite (site outage):

1.6.3.2.1      Recovery Point in Time: Start of Day (to last daily backup)

1.6.3.2.2      Mean time to recover (maximum downtime in the event of the loss of the primary site): TBD

1.6.4  A documented and periodically tested recovery plan

1.6.4.1            Simulate a server failure scenario (twice a year)

1.6.4.2            Recover the website at the backup data Center (annually)

1.7        What’s New

1.7.1  A means to prominently feature news events and important developments

1.8        Items Available for Purchase

1.8.1  A means to present the items available for purchase

1.9        Contributors Page

1.9.1  A means for individuals to:

1.9.1.1             Donate Funds

1.9.1.2             Submit content for website publication

1.10    Administrative Archive

1.10.1   A means to upload and retrieve various documents by category, currently: Meeting Minutes, Historical Documents, Accounting information, brochures, Promotional materials, Uversa Press information

1.10.2   Document Categories must be configurable - to allow restricted access, where applicable

1.11    Email Administration

1.11.1   A means to categorize and manage email lists, currently: GC, EC, SocAdmin, IFC, IC05, Golden gate Society

1.12    Important Links

1.12.1   A page that presents links and site summaries

1.13    Chat Services

1.13.1   Requirements TBD

1.14    Event Registration

1.14.1    A generalized, configurable service that can be reused. Requirements TBD.

1.15    Website Management and Documentation

1.15.1    Creation and ongoing maintenance of a “WebMaster’s Guide” that documents all key features of the site, suitable for one skilled in the art, to maintain its features.

Maintenance of this document should be required when introducing website changes

1.15.2    Distribute website technical support, by major function, across a group of technicians and promote their cross-training - to mitigate the impact of technical staff losses

2          KEY PROCESSES NEEDED

2.1        Website requirements (enhancements, bug fixes, content) gathering, prioritization, communication, and oversite process

2.2        UAT (user acceptance testing) process for site changes

 

3          PRESENTATION AND CONTENT

3.1        Optimize home page real estate, design to engage the unfamiliar (more ‘sticky’), intuitive navigation

3.2        Study Groups information – expand to cover International groups

3.3        Provide a means to download the English text and selected secondary works

3.4        Provide a means to download a local search facility to explore the downloaded text, e.g. Copernic DeskTop Search

4          USAGE

4.1        Capture baseline and then ongoing metrics, esp. Visitors and key pages

4.2        Implement a “Page Not Found” re-direct (to the home page)

 

5          USABILITY

5.1        Fix broken links

5.2        Test with all popular browsers: IE, Netscape, Firefox, Opera

5.3        Navigation

5.4        Add Print Button on all pages

5.5        Add email a Friend link on all pages

 

6          USER FEEDBACK (POLLING, VOTING)

6.1        User website survey to solicit comments and suggestions

 

7          WEB SEARCH ENGINES – IMPROVED RANKINGS AND ACCURACY

7.1        Baseline current usage so we can assess the impact of changes that are introduced

7.2        Analysis of current metrics and identification of opportunities to improve search engine rankings

7.3        Improved META tags for the UB Papers, esp. Description, Keywords

 

8          MISCELLANEOUS CONSIDERATIONS

8.1        Obfuscate all email addresses to reduce spam

8.2        Link to www.Urantia.info for information about the availability of The Urantia Book in all available languages