Brandon Greene - Boys and Girls Club

Memorandum
To: Amanda Fouts, Douglas Hartley, Chester Egebike, Scott Estes, and Joshua Harrell
From: Brandon Greene
Date: 9/16/2008
Re: Service Learning Project Proposal




The local boys and girls club of Statesboro Georgia could use a brand new website that provides useful information to parents. The organization hasn’t grown to its full potential since it was started I think that a lack promotion can be a reason for this. Creating a new website for the organization can help people be aware of the program. Websites allow an organization to inform interested people about the types of activities that they do as well as their mission statement. Having a website makes you available at any time as opposed to someone trying to get information during closed office hours.

This organization can support this project because having a website built for an organization is not a high priced investment to make. A company called Ace-Host (www.ace-host.net) provides website hosting that provides an ample amount of bandwidth and extra features that most companies can’t match for the price. For only $90 a year the enterprise package provides 500GB worth of storage space on their servers, 5,000GB worth of bandwidth, and unlimited email accounts. This plan will be more then enough and will keep the website running efficiently with a 99.95% uptime guarantee the website will be up at all times. With funding coming from individuals and local businesses

In order to get this project completed there is a series of tasks that must be completed before the project can be started. First we must get a cost friendly hosting package that we will store our website on we can accomplish this within three days which will give us enough time to shop around and compare and contrast companies. Then we must gather all the information that will be included in the website such as the contact information for the organization, the activities provided, any rules that must be followed, and the times that the organization is available to the public. After sitting down with the president of the organization and deciding what they want on their site can be completed in two days. Next we have to decide how to organize the website and in this case we don’t want anything to flashy that requires third party plug-ins that some people may not have on their computer which will prevent them from viewing the site. The group can develop different layouts within one week and decide on the best one. Coming up with an acceptable color scheme that is easily readable and a simple to use menu is the one of the most important aspects of creating a website. We must add pictures of the people involved in the organization along with some of the kids who attend regularly. We need to get pictures of the facility to show that the building is an acceptable place for children to spend time after school or on the weekends. To make web development go smoother a layout of all the pages for the website should be outlined on paper with basic information to be included on the pages as well as where things will be placed. I believe we can have all the pages drawn out in a week. From there we will start the designing the website using a program such as Macromedia Dreamweaver or Fireworks. This will be the most time consuming part of the project which shouldn’t take us more then 2 weeks. Once the website has been pieced together we will need to present it to a number of people to get valuable feedback to see what problems they encountered so we can fix anything that is missing.

This project can be completed before the end of the semester with team work and dedication. The list of tasks required for this project doesn’t take an extensive amount of time to complete. The task that takes the most time is the actual development stage where the designs on paper become the real web page. During this process all of the information must be typed up using proper formatting techniques such as making the titles larger then the rest of the text on the page. We can divide the tasks up between us to possibly get more then one task completed simultaneously to shorten the overall time span spent on the project. We can divide the work up into groups of two with each team working on a different task. One team can begin with gathering all of the information that is to be presented another team starts to brainstorm ideas on how to design and present the site to its visitors and the last team can be taking pictures for the site. As each group gets their task complete everyone can take part in the production process of adding all of the information to the lay out to make it an actual web site. As you can see this project would be difficult to complete by your self especially when you have a deadline.

A project that requires team work is a good way to enhance your collaboration skills. This is why I think this project would be a good one to pursue. This project would require us as a group to divide up into to teams to get the job done more efficiently. The group that is responsible for getting the layout will have to do the designing with out having all of the information on hand but plan out where it will go. The basic pages every web site needs would be a home, about, services, and a contact page.
For this project we will also add in an image gallery page to let people see as opposed to reading everything. The information team will have to create an introduction or a brief summary of the services offered by the organization to go on the home page. The services page will go into depth about everything that the organization offers. The organization mission statement as well as a brief history of the organization will be included on the about page. All of the ways the organization can be contacted will be included on the contact page. Things to be on this page include phone numbers, fax numbers, and the address. For our image gallery we will have more then one photo album which will include photos of the facility, activities, and staff members. The photo team will be responsible for taking plenty of pictures that will go into each album. The team will then go through and pick out the best photos they think will be best for our website. Our design team will have a more difficult job to tackle because of the many aspects involved in web design. The navigation menu of the website is the most critical part of a website because it allows access to the other pages in the site. The menu needs to be something that is easily understood by the visitor. The color scheme should include contrasting colors that are easily read by the visitor such as using a light gray background with black text. We must keep the web pages looking consistent with formatting. Using appropriate fonts and font sizes for certain text elements will help them to stand out more such as having the title for the page larger and in bold face relative to the other text will ensure readability.

The Boys and Girls Club can be reached at

Mike Jones
515 Denmark Street
Statesboro GA 30458
912.764.9696