Before starting to create artwork for the website design, as a group, we decided to print off websites and analyise their design, using anotation. After doing this, we felt we were able to begin to create artwork on which to base the website template. The artwork was designed by Alex Chaushev and Alex Wiggins. The website template was made by Alex Wiggins, based on the original artwork. We wanted to have a design which made all text easy to read and also allowed easy navigation throughout all the pages. We decided to use the 'colour wheel' rule as far as possible to have well blending colours.

We also decided to use a two-menu system, so that the main sections were listed across the top and the sub-sections listed down the side, as this allows the user to easily navigate. We felt it was important for the user to know 'where' they currently are. This is achieved in our design by bolding the section and sub-section name, as well as having the page title in the design.

We decided to design our website completely from scratch and not to use automatically generated code for our CSS. Alex Wiggins designed the template and Oliver Chick wrote the CSS using nothing more than Notepad++ and Paint Shop Pro.

The site was designed so that its XHTML and CSS are both fully W3C compliant, to ensure interoperability with all current and future browsers.

This website was created using the following tools:-

• XHTML 1.0 Transitional
• PHP 5
• RSS (Really Simple Syndication) 2.0
• Cascading Style Sheets
• MySQL DBMS
• W3C Online Validator
• Notepad++

We decided against the implementation of any Ruby On Rails for this website.

Security has been paramount whilst designing this website, as we feel it is the main problem facing websites today. In order to protect the website and its users, we have made a number of security changes to the site. The code database system has been built to only accept the upload of files with extension .zip or .kpl. This is to stop users uploading potentially harmful content, such as viruses and key-loggers to our website. We also specify that any uploaded zip codes must only contain the source code and not the compiled binary form (exe or equivalent). This is so that the website users can read the code and decide if it is safe to run. We think that this is an essential skill for computer scientists, which is why we do not compile and distribute the exes. We have also used an IP tracker, so that if the site were to undergo any SQL injection or other form of attack, we would have the IP address of the hacker.

Computer programming is, in our opinion a hobby which everyone should be able to join in on and so we have manufactured our website to be accessible by all. The website has been tested with all the current, popular browsers, in both Windows (XP and 98) and Linux (Fedora Core 6). We also stayed clear of using Javascript and flash tools, as it makes the website unusable by a large section of people. We have considered adding buttons to allow handicapped users to change the font size to their liking, however all popular browsers nowadays have that functionality built in, using ctrl and the scroll wheel, so we decided not to add such a feature.

All images have the 'alt' attribute assigned, which means that users with a slow modem can see what the images contain whilst they're downloading. Also, the resolution of all the images has been reduced to an appropriate value, to make them faster to load.