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Background
Supporting fashion through a large number of networking events, Chicago Fashion Foundation is a nonprofit located in the city of Chicago and is committed to promoting the education of fashion through programs and general awareness. They promote and support the industry in many ways, involving both professionals and students.
CFF needed a website to provide potential supporters a place to go to view their mission statement and make donations as well as enable interested and qualified parties the opportunity to apply and compete for scholarships.
Objectives
Because of the programming necessary for the CFF website to do what the founders wanted it to do, they contacted SYDCON we helped determine the needs for the website based on the functionalities CFF was looking for:
- Create a sponsorship signup form
- Create an area where visitors could sign up for the CFF newsletter
- Develop a Content Management System (CMS) to manage web content and the two previously mentioned areas
- Create a database where the forms and signup information could be stored as well as any information CFF desired
- Contact Us form
Methodology
In situations such as these, SYDCON chooses to employ PHP scripting language as the main language for the coding of the website. Coding a website enables any kind of functionality, as the code is what enables the website to interact with itself, and the user with the website. Because it is our preference, we employ PHP in most of our development scenarios, specifically when we are the ones doing the initial programming of the website. With this being true, our developers have become talented in using PHP through delving into its full capabilities because they use it so often and to such extent.
We crafted an all-inclusive project proposal for CFF based on the work to be done and the timeframe we had to complete the work. The terms were mutually agreed upon and our development team of one expert programmer was assigned to the project and the tasks detailed in the proposal outline:
- Develop a Content Management System to be used by a non-technical site administrator
- Develop sponsorship and newsletter signup forms and populate them into the database
- Develop the frontend of the website and test the beta version of the website with the client
- Turn the developmental website into a live, working website after the client expressed their satisfaction with the working quality and content of the website
Technical Approach
Multiple scripting languages (PHP, CSS, and HTML) were used in the programming and development of this website. A MySQL database was used to contain all aforementioned information, and a custom-built CMS allows for the manipulation of that data.
Results
The Chicago Fashion Foundation now has a fully functional website that expresses their goals and enables them to both receive and provide support to and from those in the fashion industry.
- Site users can sign up for a newsletter or agree to sponsor the nonprofit
- The site is easy to navigate, the forms are self-explanatory to fill out, and the site administrator is able to make any changes necessary
- The support CFF has seen since the development of their website has been incredible to see
The website could not have been a success were it not for the following factors:
- Chicago Fashion Foundation's clear mission statement for their company and goal for their website
- The mutual time spent checking the accuracy of the website and its progress during the development process
- The versatility of the SYDCON staff and their ability to program any idea into a working website by utilizing their talents and the SYDCON development methodology