WIN1205-13 Peterborough Vegfest


 

My name is Paras Chauhan, currently pursuing Wireless Information Networking. I am fluent in PHP, WordPress, MySQL and HTML/CSS. I have been assigned for Leading Team, Content Management, Web Page Designing and Creation of Tutorial Videos for Peterborough VegShop and VegDirectory.

My name is Adele Nguedia, I am a student in the Wireless Information Networking (WIN) program of Fleming college. I have had the pleasure of working on the Peterborough VegFest project with my team members for the last three semesters – building, optimizing, testing, and securing the VegDirectory and VegShop websites. My education and experience as a Software Developer equipped me with the skills I needed to excel in this project as the Lead Developer and Communications Lead. I made good use of WordPress, HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, and a great team spirit to make this project come to life.

Manpreet’s background in CSE gives him a sophisticated grasp of the different aspects of programming. Being a student of Wireless Information Networking at Fleming college, he has applied that knowledge to create the site analytics, backups, and testing of the Peterborough Vegfest website.

I am Prashant Chauhan student of Fleming College, currently pursuing a post-graduate diploma in WIN (Wireless Information Networking). I completed MY bachelor’s degree in ECE (Electronics and Communication Engineering) with experience in multiple electronics projects related to electronics. I am fortunately working as a site security handler and backend controller for team DeveloperLeague in project “Peterborough VegFest. My experience and skills in content editing, designing, and backend controlling have been very useful for the team throughout the project.

I am Shon Joseph, and I am doing Wireless Information Networking from Fleming College. I am Documents manager, SEO and handling Analytics for PTBO VegShop and VegDirectory.


Team Name:

DeveloperLeague

Team Members Names:

Paras Chauhan, Nguedia Adele, Manpreet Singh, Shon Joseph, Prashant Chauhan

Program of Study:

Wireless Information Networking

Mentor Name:

Cathy Smits

Project Name:

WIN1205-13 Peterborough VegFest

Sponsor Name:

Natalie Stephenson



Sponsor Organisation:

Peterborough VegFest


Brief Description Of Project:

This project is for the Organization Peterborough VegFest, which promotes and helps people adopt a Vegan/ Vegetarian lifestyle.

  • The organization was not able to generate sufficient revenue and due to COVID, annual VegFest festivals could not be held which had been the main money-generator for the community. 
  • People shifting towards a vegan/vegetarian lifestyle or new to the community did not have access to an online VegDirectory had a hard time finding restaurants and grocery stores to get their food and groceries. The previous team did a good job in implementing this, but some improvements needed to be done before making it live.  
  • The sponsor wanted the websites to be regularly updated by members of the VegFest community who for the most part have little or no technical knowledge, so Training manual documents and tutorial videos had to be made. 

The focus of this project is to create an online shop with a working payment method (PayPal) where the organization can sell their merchandise and raise revenue, as well as to improve and upgrade the online version of VegDirectory and provide training manuals and tutorials to help members and volunteers of the Peterborough VegFest community to update and maintain the websites.

Project Objective:

The main objectives of this project are:

  • To build an online store which will offer another source of revenue to the VegFest community to supplement their income especially when fairs and fundraisers are not available.
  • To provide a resource that helps vegan/vegetarians fulfill their goals and maintain this lifestyle, by providing them a means to find vegan/vegetarian businesses like restaurants and grocery stores in their locality.
  • To create training manuals and tutorials which will help members and volunteers of the Peterborough VegFest community update and maintain the websites.

Project Innovation:

  • Innovativeness:  In order to respect our budget constraints and still achieve a great outcome, the team had to be really creative and innovative to find free solutions and ways of expanding the features of the free resources we found (this usually involved using plugins and injecting code snippets wherever necessary). The team made use of the WordPress content management system and programming languages like HTML, CSS, PHP, and MySQL to achieve a pleasant outcome.
  • Originality: Initially, we browsed the web to search for Vegan/Vegetarian businesses in Peterborough but even though several businesses showed up on TripAdvisor and Yelp, we noticed that there was no website that held all of these in one place. The originality of this project lies in the fact that it is niche-specific and one of a kind for Peterborough. To make it even more original, we made use of uncommon themes/templates and added extra features to enhance usability, user-friendliness, and overall site performance.
  • Efficiency:  The team showed great planning, execution, and communication skills, which ensured that resources were efficiently utilized and that the solutions provided meet the sponsor’s needs and objectives.
  • Objectives attained: Fully Functional Online Store, Responsive VegDirectory, easily-to-understand training manual, and training videos uploaded to a private YouTube channel, for the exclusive use of the VegFest community members and volunteers. In the final review, the sponsor expressed great satisfaction in the results.

Challenges & Solutions:

  1. At the beginning of the project, most team members had little experience working on projects of this nature, so we took several courses online (LinkedIn Learning), read several tutorials and watched YouTube videos to acquire more knowledge and increase our skills.
  2. Late setup of development environment: the team had to show some initiative so we went ahead and created a temporary environment using our own domain so we could start working.
  3. Several times, we had delayed responses from our sponsor, so we had to send follow-up emails and reminders, and at times we made the decisions that seemed most appropriate.
  4. We were working with a limited budget, so we had to find free solutions. This meant many times, we had to build things from scratch or find adequate plugins while making sure integrity and security were not jeopardized.
  5. For the VegDirectory, we needed an easy means to gather information from business owners in order to create listings for them in the directory so at first, we implemented this using Google forms and later after doing lots of research, we found a way to integrate this feature into the website.
  6. Some team members got sick (COVID) and could not fully participate in the project. Fortunately, the team had been functioning in a way that teammates could tend to each other’s tasks in case some members were absent for any reason.
  7. For training manuals, we had to do some screen recording which seemed to be an easy task. However, when we started to find free software (Budget Constraints) what the team found were either had a watermark in the final video, or there was a 10-minute recording limit, or the sound would be too noisy, we tested over a dozen software. Then we tried to use the in-built Game Recorder for Windows 10, it worked fine while working on the training manuals but there was some issue with the format and it did not play the audio when played on WebEx during a mentor meeting and when uploaded to YouTube, we had very less time to figure out a way, as the TR5 was quite near. However, with some time and more research the team came across a free software with good audio/ video quality and that could be used for free without any constraints and had a lot of other features that could come in handy. Here is the link for it: (https://www.microsoft.com/store/productId/9N27GQ6MLS5S) 

Project Results or Progress:

Despite the challenges faced along the way, the team was able to fully implement the sponsor’s requirements and even surpass the sponsor’s expectations. Timeliness were respected and all important deadlines were met. Our deliverables were:

  1. Completed and fully functional online shop (VegShop). The shop offers: 
  • A user-friendly and intuitive interface that is easy to use by anyone regardless of their tech-savviness. 
  • High responsiveness and adaptability, which makes it easy to use on devices with different screen sizes(mobile phones, tablets, desktops, laptops, etc.) 
  • Good security features like SSL, data encryption, limited login attempts which make users’ data secure
  • PayPal payment method which is secure and widely used. 

2. Completed and fully functional directory (VegDirectory) with several Vegan/Vegetarian business listings. This website is: 

  • User-friendly, intuitive and easy to use.
  •  It has search and sort features which make it easy for users to filter listings based on a number of criteria
  • Highly responsive and adaptable to screen sizes of different devices (mobile phones, tablets, desktops, laptops etc.) 
  • Well secure

3. Easy-to-understand user manuals for the VegShop and VegDirectory with step-by-step instructions and screenshots in the training manual. 

4. YouTube videos for each section of the user manuals to make it easier for the volunteers and community members of Peterborough Vegfest to understand the tutorials. 


Lessons Learned:

We all learned a lot from this experience. Each team member can take pride in our achievements and lessons learned such as:

  • Project planning, management and execution.
  • Problem-solving and conflict resolution
  • Time management and prioritization
  • Good work ethic and collaboration with team members
  • Flexibility and ability to adapt to changes that happen during projects
  • Effective and professional communication amongst team members, and between team members and the sponsor/mentor
  • Resource management
  • Hosting, migrating and backing up websites
  • New programming skills: HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL
  • Database management
  • The fundamentals of eCommerce and WooCommerce
  • Building an operation online store and integrating payment methods
  • Securing and optimizing websites
  • Creating proper documentation and manuals for projects

If we had to redo everything over again, we will put a lot more effort into team building, communication and supporting team members. We will also perform site backups more regularly and make better use of plugins.


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