• You should design and develop a web site that allows users to log-in and purchase goods or services. A list of goods and services must be available to the user, as well as a record of the customer's previous purchases (if any). There should be some mechanism for finding items that are for sale, that is, some way to search for items. It is not necessary that your implementation includes thousands of items for sale, but it is important that your system could support thousands of items.

• Your site should include customer support services, such as account management (changing name, password, address, whatever...), transaction history (reviewing prior transactions, possibly getting status on current transactions).

• A shopping-cart type interface for purchasing items should be supported. The idea is to make it as easy as possible for users to make purchases - they should not need to type item names into a form to make purchases - a few mouse clicks should be all that is necessary.

• You should provide some way for users to get help with any part of your web site. You don't need to get carried away with the content of the help documents, but you should provide a manageable mechanism for providing detailed help with any part of your web site.

• You should consider the management of your web site! If this was a project for a real company, think about how the company itself will interact with the system. How are the databases updated (adding new items, changing prices, updating order status, etc.). Ideally your project will support special services for the people who will maintain the web site.

• You should think about special services that might make your web site attractive to users. For example, provide a message board or chat rooms so users can communicate with each other, or support product reviews written by users of your site.

• Finally, you must do something we have not talked about in class! Find a new Javascript trick, use a fancy web tool to provide the content for part of your site (Flash!), use another language, etc. The point is to convince us that you can learn and apply something new on your own.

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Your project proposal must be submitted by Oct 25th (as hardcopy). The proposal must include the following information:

• A list of group members. Groups size should be 3,4 or 5 people, if you want a group smaller or larger you must ask Dave first. In general, the more people involved, the more we expect. If you don't know anyone and need to find a project - let Dave or a TA know and we will find a group for you to work with (the sooner the better!).

• A description of your web site. This should be a technical description, not something an end-user would read. This description should include:

  • A functional description - what your site will do. Part of this should involve requirements in either English or UML.
  • An implementation description - how your site will do it. It is understood that some details will likely change, but you should provide an implementation plan. UML design documents are required here, although the entire UML design in not necessary in the proposal and is probably not a good idea, since Dave may ask you to make changes to the requirements for your project (and you would then need to re-do the design).

  I would expect no more than 4-5 pages for a description of your web site.

• A proposed assignment of work to team members (a description of who will do what).

• A great sounding name for your web site

There will be status meetings (during class) where each group will briefly describe the status of their project (no more than 5 minutes). Dave will announce (and post) the dates of status reports for each team, so you will in advance when you are expected to provide a status report.

Your group will present your project to the class during the last few weeks of classes. Assignment of presentation dates will be done based on when the proposal is accepted (once your proposal is accepted you can pick any free time slot - so get your proposals done soon!). This presentation will include a live demonstration of the web site.

During the presentation, Dave, the TAs, and the rest of the class will be allowed to ask questions to make sure the team members understand the project. In other words, if you claim that you wrote the code for part of the site - be prepared to show us the code and describe any part of it!

You must submit your project (all the files necessary to run your web site) and the project documentation by the last day of classes.

All program files must include comments that describe the code.

Your project writeup should be a technical document for other web site developers, not a user's manual. You must provide a description of how you implemented each part of your site, including the names of the files that make up your site and what part of the system each file belongs to. Your description should be detailed enough so that a competent developer would be able to change/add new functionality without hunting through all your files to find where each part is implemented.

You must include a description of who did what in your writeup! Each individual team member must write a description of what they did (no more than one page per person) as part of the writeup. Make sure this part of the writeup is clearly labeled with the names of the team members!