Performance and User Experience Improvements to the ASU/NASA Space Grant Website Sean.Malley@asu.edu

Presentation Structure Input Validation Database Improvements Toward Drupal

Input Validation Preventing XSS and SQL Injection

General Process Take User Input Check for Completion POSTs from forms, GET from navigation Check for Completion Strip Improper Characters Check Proper formation (Phone Numbers, IDs and so on) Store in Database or Return to User

Benefits Reduces Potential of Successful Attack “Exploits of a Mom” XKCD.com Helps user properly complete forms Saves time correcting user error

Implementation Research acceptable data for each field Official Specifications Previous Data Educated Guesses Names like O’malley or with accents Project names Semicolons etc

Implementation Create filtering function library Test MySQL escaping functions Regular expression functions Basic type testing functions Test Sample applications

Database Improvements

Database Modifications Cleaning out previous bad entries and depreciated tables Creating a new database structure to simply data storage and extraction Working on structures to better incorporate past data and data sharing between Space Grant Programs

Toward Drupal

The Current Framework is Complex Over 710 PHP Files 826 Images 465 Folders 2 Databases 53 Tables

Benefits of Drupal One display system makes standards compliance simpler Time tried CMS means less errors and the benefit of many skilled developers Skinning the website is simpler Modular setup makes adding features much easier