Crit: Firmness The Expat Rec-Room Lauren Sternberg University of Greenwich March 10, 2016

Concept A humorous, social-themed website filled with resources and events for American and Canadian expatriates living in England. Important aspects: A calendar on the front page for easy event viewing mobile-friendly for looking on-the-go searchable events database general website search resource for expats by expats blog with multiple authors / articles of interest embedded twitter feed on front page assimilating and still having support of fellow expats entertaining/entertainment Canadian/American-style

Site Map homepage about usevents London Happy hours Sports Family Holidays Outings Manchester Happy hours Sports Family Holidays Outings socializing dating friendship workplace at the pub terminology entertainment American-Style Joints Canadian-Style Joints American and Canadian Groceries photo gallery holidays happy hours other events blog posts articles contact

Hosting Platform For a hosting platform, I looked at Clook, Memset and Digital Ocean. I decided on Clook’s Shared-1 option for the following reasons: offers a per year option, £50/year - helpful as group does not have a bank account for direct debit yet because I kind of understood it recommendation scalable options, so more functionality/bandwith can be added if needed offers unlimited boxes

Choice of Markup Doctype HTML 5 CSS 3 My thinking is that it is best to stay as simple (and responsive) as possible so that people can access the site easily from mobiles and tablets. (events especially for mobiles) Seeing as though the expected age of visitors will be between mid 20s-early 40s, I would expect them to be up to date on mobile technology and desktop browsers.

Available Domains On: GoDaddy 1) 2) 3) com 4) com Also considered: vs.co.uk –.com is more familiar to Americans and Canadians.com is more popular domain ending

Server-Side Technologies Considering use of MySQL for storage of data such as events that can be organized by type and/or location Also the database will allow me to store and organize the appropriate American / Canadian / British English terms PHP for possibly having includes and different survey quotes placed on the site at different times

CSS Strategy Options Option 1: CSS file for front/landing page, CSS file for subpages Option 2: One CSS file (well-organized and commented) for entire site * Option 3: One CSS file for layout, one for content *preferred option for consistency

CMS Options Considered Joomla, Drupal and Frameworks, but they require a lot of skill, better for e-commerce, data-driven sites WordPress looks good in that it has a relatively straightforward user interface and 3 rd party add- ons/widgets – good for beginners WordPress is free. Our group doesn’t have a lot of £/$ to spend at the moment WordPress is popular, so while there isn’t dedicated support, there’s a community for support There is a calendar plug-in for WordPress

Considerations/Issues Having a difficult time deciding how to include resources for Brits who want to learn about American customs /culture Should I include Manchester? Or just do London? ALL OF THE TECHNICAL STUFF. Are there certain CMS options that are better for mobile?

Suggestions, please!