Table of ContentsTitle Page 0

Table of Contents 1Chapter 1: Introduction 2Chapter 2: Background 2Chapter 3: Site Content 5Chapter 4: Research and Analysis 10Chapter 5: Integration 16Chapter 6: Statistics 18Conclusions 20References 21Appendices

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Gappies Dot Net: An Online Resource for Gap Students Across the World

The project is to create a website, for Students who are taking the opportunity to work in schools. The project has developed over time to not only be about one website, but is also to create a network of utilities, to use both on the project’s website, and off. The project will be designed in such a way that a new developer that is interested in the project can join and understand and work with everything very easily.

Gappies.net is a resources website aimed at three distinct groups of people: 17 - 18 year olds, who are thinking about going on a gap year (prospective gap students); current gap students who want to find more details about the country and the area that they are placed in; and, former, ex, gap students (alumni gap students) who use the site as a way of staying in touch with old friends, and dispensing advice to the younger current and prospective gap students.

BackgroundIn 2001, 25,310 students in the UK achieved confirmed places at Universities, but chose to defer their entry until autumn the next year. According to statistics from the University and College Admissions Service (UCAS). Plomin, J. (2001). Gap Year Popularity Soars. Retrieved Jan 29, 2008, from: tinyurl.com/4u6lte. At the time this was the highest number of students taking a ‘gap’ year (commonly called such, because of the gap between high school education and University education.), a 14.7% increase from the years before.

Many officials in the industry agree that a “well structured” gap year, can be very beneficial, and “Students who take a well-planned, structured year out are more likely to be satisfied with, and complete, their chosen course. Students who take a gap year are often more mature, responsible and disciplined” (Higgins, T, Chief Exec of UCAS, 2001. From: tinyurl.com/4u6lte.)

However, on the other side of the coin, some within the higher education system claim that the increase is due to the fact that students feel they need to work, and earn money, before attending University, where there is commonly a large amount of debt collected.

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There are plenty of things one may do during a gap year. Some simply use it to go straight into work, and earn money; others wish to go traveling, either for the whole year, or a part of the year. Some decide they want to give something and volunteer to help a developing part of the world. The other option which is growing more and more common within the private education sector in the UK, is working in schools for the year. This way the students have the best of both worlds: They work to earn a wage, during the year; and they can use the schools’ holidays to travel. This type of gap year is especially popular between the typically richer schools, and exchanges are made common between Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Ireland, and the UK.

After some basic research it has been found there is a distinct lack of online material for this type of venture. While the other types discussed have a large amount dedicated to them.

Many start-up companies, that want to get into travel, see the ages of 17 – 25 a good age range to market at, with specialist student companies, and student holidays, such as Contiki (http://www.contiki.com) or STA Travel (http://www.statravel.co.uk) focus all their effort specifically on this market.

However while there are thousands of websites catering for the travelers, or the volunteers, - findagap.com, gapyear.com, year-out.com, to name a few - however there are very few, if any, that cater for the students who wish to work in schools for their year out! In fact after many different searches on the internet using varying search methods, and engines, I could only find one website, which was belonging to a company called ‘Tutors Worldwide’. This website was, in my opinion, very limited, and had an ugly design structure. Surely it would be beneficial to have a website that is easily navigated, and has useful, up-to-date content, specific for gap students (gaps) who wish to work in schools.

Web 2.0 - A Common Way of saying “Next Generation in Websites” and often referring to Social Networking sites, has become extremely popular, and users are getting to understand how these sites work better. This project models itself on a social networking model, although it is exclusive to gaps in schools. To assist with the community based site it has been made using almost entirely Open Source (www.opensourcematters.org) scripts. The first of such scripts is the main wireframe of the site, which is a Content Management System (CMS) called Joomla http://www.joomla.org.

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Joomla!Joomla has developed from a group of web developers who used to develop from Mambo, who disagreed with the decisions of the owning company of Mambo (Miro International Pty Ltd.). Miro had a set idea of what ‘Open Source’ meant, however the majority of working developers, and the wider community thought otherwise, hence Joomla! was born as a fork project of Mambo. The first release of Joomla! was on 16th September 2005, as a complete re-branded copy of Mambo, with added security fixes, and patches attached. Since then, the developers have been working on a complete re-release of the software called Joomla 1.5 which was finally release in 22nd Janurary 2008.

For this project Joomla! 1.0 was chosen because another key piece of software - Community Builder - is not yet secure if using Joomla! 1.5.

The benefit of using Joomla! for this project is that there is a wide community of developers, that developer and upgrade the mainframe of the code, but also there our thousands of added extensions called Components, Modules, and Mambots or Plugins. This amount of developers mean that there is always help on hand. The other main advantage of using Joomla! as a favoured choice for CMS, is that once it’s all set up you need no script knowledge at all. Clearly it helps, but especially for this site, which is being designed to be sustained for a long time by a range of administrators, who are likely to be only staying with the site for one year, it needs to be as easy and basic as possible, yet offer the most amount of interesting content and diversity possible.

CompetitionIn initial research we looked at design, and content of potential competitor websites. As it stood, there were no direct competitors as no other site specisilsed in Gaps working in Schools. However the content and design of other similar websites was noted.

Findagap.com - Set up by two university graduates from Southampton. This site was featured in a Channel4 Documentary about new start up businesses. The site’s design is very bland, it is pure white, and it’s header does not match the width of the remainder of the page. The whole site is very much based on adverts for similar services, such as cheap travel insurance, and cheap flights. There is a very limited amount of actual content on the site, and what content there is, is quite complicated to get to!

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Gapyear.com - This site has had a big redesign since it was first looked at it back in July 2007. The site then, was difficult to navigate, and had, in some people’s opinion, an ugly interface. However now, after the re-design the site looks very attractive, and has easy navigation. The sections and categories are neatly listed down the left hand side, and the search function works very well. One criticism of the site, still, however is that membership to the site, and registrations is still, quite complicated. Downloadable PDF documents add to the site’s offline content, and compliment the site very well, as extra print-offs to take away from the computer with you.

Tutorsworldwide.org - This is the only website that was found which concentrated on students teaching in schools for their gap year. The website itself however is only two pages - an index page and a downloads page. The design is bland, yet simple and basic, however for it’s purpose it does the job.

Site ContentDesignDuring the initial design process it was decided that there were certain things that were paramount to integrate into the site. These things included: A forums area, where students could chat, and share ideas, the ability to have useful news related to gap, and the ability to split up categories of news so that you could easily find news relating to where in the world you were. For example, to create English News, and Australian News, etc. A login system was decided to be useful, for two reasons: firstly so that we could limit certain features of the site for logged in, registered users only, but mainly so that we could encourage users to register and then have their details in a database to help us with research. The details that we would find useful are all on the registration pages.

The page layout started from a page template from Joomla Art (http://www.joomlart.com). This template comes with an index page and a number of Cascading Style Sheet (css) files. After editing the css files to suit the pages, and to aid with the extra design of the site, the logo was chosen, as a simple PNG (Portable Network Graphic) file, that could be ported to any format, on paper, card, or media. The site name had to change from the original “Gap Students Online” to “gappies.net”, because of a wider effort to make the whole project as an open organisation, the number of characters involved in “Gap Students Online” was too long to fit neatly at the bottom of a promotional t-shirt, so the purchase of a new domain name was necessary, thus how gappies.net came to being. The tag line in the logo was thought of because it was felt that the gappies.net name on it’s own was a bit bland, so a exciting tag line

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was needed. The word ‘Community’ was felt appropriate to establish the fact that it is a shared website and has predominately user generated content. “Legends” was a colloquial term that at the time of launch gap students were saying a lot, referring to how much friendship there is between them.

ProfilesDeciding on what initial information needed to be gathered to create the profiles was tricky. There is a balance between getting a bit of information for enable signing up to a website, and taking too much information, making users scared for their privacy.

To find the middle ground, the only details that are forcibly taken (ie required for registration), are: a username, password, email address, date of birth and the name of the school that they attended for their education. This is so, if needed, cross checks can be made. Once signed up to the site, users will be diverted to their profile where they are encouraged to upload a profile picture, and edit the rest of their profile, which includes data about their school at home, their gap school (if they know it yet), and their personal interests.

By way of an interaction and an aid to help users find more about gap and meet new friends who are on gap with them, instead of having a completely comprehensive profile within gappies.net, a Facebook Application has been created to merge your gappies.net profile and your Facebook profile. This process is currently still in development, however currently, there is a link created via Facebook that recognises a gappies.net user and will place their Facebook user id on their profile, thus from that a link can be created to go straight to the users Facebook profile (assuming they have the access).

After testing the site and receiving some opinion feedback, it was noted that the home page template needed to be re-designed. The most important thing about the home page is to put as much relevant content on there so users can easily see at a glance what is on the site for them to browse through. Because of this the whole of the home page got redesigned and it now contained in 4 separate <div>’s. To give the website manager the most flexible use of the space. Also it was at this time that the content slideshow was installed. The clear benefit of this is that it puts numerous items of content into just one small spot at the top of the homepage. This first page that people see, and the most common page that people look at, needs to be shown to change quite regularly otherwise users think that the site has not been updated. MacDonald, A. (2008). 10 Must-have features for your Website. Retrieved: March 11 2008. From. http://tinyurl.com/4acpky. For this reason, there are three modules that are installed on the

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home-page that automatically, update their content to reflect what is happening within the site. These modules, firstly show what new content has been added to the site, but also show profile pictures of the users that have been most recently active on the site.

Figure. 1 (The Registration Pages, http://www.gappies.net/register)

Questions such as “What school are you from back home?”, “How was your gap year organised”, and so on. Questions like these were specifically devised to help us find out what schools, organised gap years for their students, and which schools let the students do it off their own backs. It also helped us create a map, of where students were regularly coming from and going to.

The main purpose of the site was always to make it informative and as resourceful as possible. Because of this we needed an extensive way of categorising news stories, including a nice way of showing them. Joomla! Was perfect for this, as it’s built in news items features (com_content), is neatly set up in Sections, and then Categories.

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Figure. 2 (Shows the Detailed Categories in the Admin Backend, http://admin.gappies.net)

So for the purpose of gappies.net we could simply set up a section called ‘News’ then under that section, you could create categories such as “UK Gappers”, “Aussie Gappers”, “Related Gap News”, etc.

When this content gets to be displayed, it helps users too see exactly what applies to them. For example, if they are a UK Gapper then they know they need to see the UK Gappers news, as the most relevant. There is then Latest News category. This is the first news category that users see when the open the home page. It shows all the latest added news from all news categories. One related benefit of Joomla! Is that you can set publish up and publish down dates, so that news can be automatically classed as new or old, even when you are not connected to the internet.

Social NetworkingSocial Networking has come on leaps and bounds since the introduction of Myspace. Myspace - widely considered to be the first Social Networking site - however has not

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developed that much. The introduction of Facebook, and especially their introduction of utilising the Facebook Application Programming Interface (API) so widely and freely, to any developer that wishes to use it, has truly increased Facebook’s usability and effectiveness as a social networking website. However according to a study by ‘Computer Which?’ Bebo is Better than Facebook, Says Study. Retrieved From. tinyurl.com/5fn44l. BEBO, is still the UK’s number one most popular social networking site, and is third in the world, behind Myspace and Facebook respectfully.

Data ProtectionThe Information Commissioners Office. Retrieved March 24, 2008 From http://www.ico.gov.uk., This is a paramount issue for any kind of social networking site where users give information. This was clearly something that needed research. The site needed to be trusted by it’s users that it would not sell, or give out personal information that is stored on the site. To ensure users of this a Terms and Conditions page was written, as well as a Privacy Policy page. These, currently are both written with help from (http://www.tele-pro.co.uk/pages/legal/privacy.htm) However with the increase of users, and the seriousness behind the website, there will become a need to produce formal document with assistance from legal personnel.

TechnologyTechnically the site is hosted in America with a company called SiteGround (www.siteground.com), it is run from a shared server that uses PHP5, uses a MySQL database. In order to protect and secure data it has been necessary to write custom code to backup the database(s), and backup the raw files. This was done using CronJobs, which is an industry standard, set up for this type of procedure. There are four domains that are hosted with gappies.net. This is so that the domain name, and organistation name is protected. The other domain names are: www.gapstudentsonline.com www.gapsdontdream.com www.gappies.com www.gappies.net

www.gapsdontdream.com was bought as a development server with the intention for it to be used as a blog hosting service giving gap students the chance to have their own blogs, hosted on our website.

The email for the website is not hosted on the main server. The email was chosen to be hosted by Google (google.com), this means that one does not have to worry about server space being

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taken up by emails. It also allows for a much easier way of communicating, easily being able to add new users, and create extra groups if needed. - this function can be found at: http://mail.gappies.net

Research and AnalysisData CollectionLetters were sent out to over 30 schools in England and Australia. These letters detailed the outline of the project, the potential number of users we had already - at the time, this number was around 90 - and how the project would potentially help them as a school, their gap students, and their senior students who are our main audience. From these letters there was a poor response. Just over one in six replied, which was very disappointing. This result is likely to be due to the fact that schools either don’t get involved in their gap year choices, and therefore don’t worry about it at all, or they already have a system in place that seems to be working well.

The argument from this project was that this website will assist students to make a better, informed decision about their gap year choices, and will give them a community to be part of for when they are planning their trips, and when they are in a foreign country. There is also a huge potential for alumni gap students to stay in touch with old friends, and shed advice for the younger ones who want to know where all the good places to visit are.

ResearchSecondary research has been found from competitor websites, plus educational sources, giving facts and figures about gap years, and trends that have been set.

In order to start the organistional website there needed to be come useful primary research as well. This was conducted in February and March in both England and Australia. From three separate questionnaires devised, each specifically designed to be aimed at Current Gap Students, School Staff, and Prospective Gap Students, respectively. The questions were focused at getting an idea, firstly of what students would like in a website like the one proposed, secondly of what would have been useful to know before starting their gap year, and thirdly, to find out where all these gap students came from, and what the connections are like between schools internationally from current relationships.

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SchoolsBecause of the low response rate from the initial email sent to schools, our sample for questioning schools was low. In the UK there were three Schools asked, these schools were:- Worth Abbey (http://www.worthschool.co.uk), Turners Hill, West Sussex; Whitgift School (http://www.whitgift.co.uk), Croydon, South London;and, Woldingham School for Girls (http://www.woldingham.surrey.sch.uk), Caterham, Surrey.

Specific questions for schools ranged from those that would enable us to create a rough profile of each school, for example: questions like “How long have you been employing Gap Students?”, and, “How is accommodation sorted for your gap students?”. Then on the second page there are some longer more descriptive questions, asking their thoughts on how useful the site could be, and what they would like it to be used, for plus a space for any concerns that they have.

The interview for the schools were conducted with the Line Manager for gap students in each school, it consisted of filling out the questionnaire, and then a short interview type discussion about the ideas of the project, and raising any concerns that either party might have. Questionnaires are in the Appendices. The average number of gap students per school is 4. And the normal jobs of gap students always include, sports coaching and some kind of office admin work. These results also concur with the answer that have been received colloquially from schools, and gap students, off the record. In other results, two out of three schools gather their gap students from school to schools links with specific schools, but also 2 out of the three also allow students to apply via formal application. Also one of the schools employs 2 former students from the school to also be on the gap student team.

In Australia we received contact from two schools in Sydney, after sending an email to 10 schools, in Sydney, Brisbane and the Gold Coast area. In Sydney area alone, there are in excess of 20 schools who each on average take 5 gap students. [Source: Personal Experience from author’s own Gap Year] The two schools, in Sydney that gave a response to the email were Greater Private Schools (GPS) Schools, (these schools are classed as ‘elite’), both St Joseph’s College (Joeys) (http://www.joeys.org), and St Ignatius College, Riverview (Riverview) (http://www.riverview.nsw.sch.edu.au).

Brother Anthony Boyd of St Joseph’s College was interviewed in the second week of March. Unfortunately the interview with Mr John Newey from Riverview had to be cancelled at late notice, due to an unexpected event at the school, on the day in question.

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Brother Anthony, praised the idea of the website, and the possible functionality of the website. However he did not think that it would be a venture that would be worth his while. The concern was: “It will make more work for me”. It will result in ore emails from applicants to his office. Because the school operate only on a school to school linked basis, they can accept no other applications. It is interesting that this comment was not made while talking with Simon Smith at Worth Abbey. He did not mention this potential down-fall. After informing him [Simon Smith] of this issue the response was: “If an applicant was exceptionally good, Worth would consider employment of this candidate in addition to the school to school links, that were already in place.

Even so, during the implementation of the Schools pages, there is now a setting the the admin back-end, which will allow you to take your email address of the page, and contact form off the page.

Other concerns brought up by all schools interviewed, were that the site wouldn’t simply end up as a forum for students - who are, after all, still teenagers - to complain and put negative comments about the schools or any of their associates, including employees.

With this in mind, the question of ‘advertising parties’ became topical. This is particularly important, and expected to be a high point of use for the website, as the site is designed to be a community and a way of meeting and making new friends who all share a similar thing in common. When asked, all schools agreed, that Gap Students should be sensible enough to realise what they can say on their and what they can’t. For example, if they are wanting to meet a number of students that are similar to them at the local pub, then that is fine to use the website, however if a large number of students turn up at a school expecting a party, then the Gap Students at that school should consider their jobs in question. This example, and more details will clearly detailed in the Terms and Conditions, and Privacy Policy, on the website, as well as a reminder on the Forums.

Questioning the GapsSimilar to how the schools were questioned, the gap students were given a questionnaire and then interviewed afterwards. In the gaps questionnaire they were asked some simple data gathering questions on the first page, such as: How was your employment organised?; What are your intentions after your gap year?

These kind of questions were simple to answer so, psychologically, the students would be happy to answer them, and thus put in a sense of ease about the questionnaire. The questions:

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What do you hope to get out of Gap?, and What are your intentions after your gap year? Give a chance to understand why students want to do this type of gap year. It also helps us to find out what their intentions are after their gap year, for example if they want to go into teaching full time, or if they are going to do something else.

Further questions go on to delve deeper to ask about if a website like the proposed would have helped them make a decision. Then it asks about their trends, technical ability, this helps us aim the site at the correct type of person. The questions, are, for example:- How do you currently relay information about what you are up to back to friends and family at home?: Phone, Groups Emails, Single Emails, Facebook, Podcast/Vodcast, Personal Website, Other Website/Forum, Other[].; This tells us what kind of features the site should be emphasising and concentrating on.

Out of the sample questioned, 1 in ten said that they were intending to have a career in teaching. 100% said that their main aid of communication was Facebook and single emails, with 50% also using the telephone. 2 in ten said that they also send group emails. With one person saying that they use BEBO rather than Facebook.

In other questions we asked whether they would be willing to share their experiences online, so as to benefit others in years to come. This questions received a 100% yes rate. Also receiving a 100% yes rate was to the question: Would it have benefitted you to know a little about the area you were going to gap at, and the school that you are gapping at. The question: What kind of research did you do before choosing, this type of gap year at this particular school. 60% of the answers said that they ‘Googled’ the school(s) in question, and only that. The remainder said that they knew others who had been on gap before and they asked for their opinion. When prompted that a possible feature to include on the website was to incorporate Google Maps (http://maps.google.com) into the site, all questioned stated that this was a fantastic idea, and would be really helpful, especially with Google’s “Satellite” Mode, where you can see close to live satellite images of the place you choose. This would have been particularly helpful to a group of girls who are gapping at Woldingham School, in Surrey, who stated if they knew how secluded the school was they might have had a second option in mind. (The driveway at the school is 2-miles long)

The 6th Form StudentsUnfortunately due to complications with schools’ timetables, it was uneasy to get a large sample of 6th form students to analyze for any benefit. I was able to questionnaire a group of

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girls, from those questionnaires it was established that there is not enough communication with the school and their 6th form students wanting to go on gap. When I questioned the Deputy Head whether the school helps their 6th form students to find placements on gap year programs, she assured me that they did, however in the questionnaire all girls (they answered the questionnaires separately) stated that the school couldn’t help them, or they didn’t know if the school could or couldn’t.

In order to try and find out what the reason was for the increase in students deciding to go for a gap year, before university, the first question was simply: “Why Gap? What do you hope to get out of it?”. The answers for this was very interesting, some answering: “I’m not ready for university yet”, or “I would like to travel more”. For this, it is fair to say that if you are wanting to travel the world, it is probably quite wise to travel before university at the age of 18, this would mean that you travel before you start creating a large debt as most students often do.

Other questions asked to this group of students was “If given an easy way to apply to a gap school via an online submission, would this interest you?” There was a 100% yes rate for this question.

For this particular group of people I wanted to find out what design aesthetics were important, or if they weren’t important at all. Unfortunately this question was badly worded on the questionnaire sheet, so the results are a little skewed. However 100% said that ‘Useful Info’ is most important when looking at designing a website. With one sample candidate stating that Functionality is most important, “but within functionality there has to be a good design”.

AnalysisFrom the data collected, the site was then able to be particularly perfected to match the requirements of the users from the type of answers that they gave. A high focus was put towards, informative content, and ease of use. With an action to look into the Google Maps API, and the Facebook API. It is also imperative to the site’s development that ongoing questionnaires are dispatched, these questionnaires would be online, so that users could then rate their experiences once they are logged in. This will be done by online forms, and polls integrated into the various applications that the users can enter.

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ModerationAs this was a key concern from all the schools involved, the following, is part of the release that will be sent to all the schools involved, at the time of the official launch in September 2008.

“The whole site will have two global moderators, one based in Sydney, and one based in England, these two volunteers will control all content globally, and make sure the site is updated to a sufficient standard. The Forums will have more moderators that will be picked out as when a demand is reached, these will most likely be current or former gap students who are trustworthy with the responsibility.”

Usability for the new AdministratorsOne of the key features for developing the site, was to build it with a view to passing the project on to a future developer or developers, who know little about web design. For this reason it was imperative to re design the back, admin, end of the site. This has been done in such a way that you can easily ask for assistance by emailing the main developer. You can easily get to what you want by use of the quick button icons. The CSS is styled in such a way that matches the design of gappies.net’s whole online presence, and also has added security to ensure that a user with correct admin access is the only user to be able to access the admin area at: http://admin.gappies.net. In addition to these, items still in development that will be available in September 2008, will be the ability to add news, and other content directly into users Facebook profiles, using the Facebook Application. This is from a direct response from the questionnaires that have been analyised where there was a large number of people requesting interaction with software that they already use!

AccessibilityThis is an important discussion of any new website. The accessibility on gappies.net can still be improved. I have taken great care to ensure that the layout and text is accessible to all, but this can be improved further, and will be completely accessible to all users, by December 2008. The problem with web design is that you can’t completely guarantee that the site will look excatly the same to every user given the amount of circumstances that the user could be looking at your site through. There is the Operating System, the main three being Linux, Mac, and Windows, even under that there is still distinct differences between older versions of Windows and more current versions, (even between XP and VISTA). There is also the screen size, until a few years ago, it was common practise amongst web developers to assume that the standard screen was 800x600 pixels, even though some were larger, and some were smaller. Now, as the technology has developed, it has now been accepted that the majority of

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computer users have larger screens, so the size that most developers concentrate on is 1024x768. However, it is important to know that some browsers might still be smaller, and some might be bigger, while you may think that a bigger screen will affect your design, it will, as the examples of Canterbury Student Radio CSRFM, (2008) Retrieved May 1, 2008. From. http://www.csrfm.com, and the BBC One’s Apprentice minisite The BBC, (2008). The Apprentice. Retrieved May 5, 2008. From http://www.bbc.co.uk/apprentice show. In addition to this, there is great difference with browsers. While all browsers essentially do the same things, some interpret what they see differently to others. There is a common knowledge around web developers that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (MSIE), is a nightmare to design a page with, as it interprets code very differently, not only this there is also a difference in interpretation between MSIE 5, 6, and 7.

For Gappies.net it was important that the site was accessible to everyone, at the first test, when the site went live, there were problems with the <div>’s alignment in MSIE, however everything was fine in other browsers. After checks on various bits of coding, and scripts, and the design, the page was re-designed to fit with all browsers. Although no official on site test was completed, it was assumed that Gap Students would not be able to choose what browser they viewed the site in, least choose what operating platform they used. It was also assumed that most schools would still be running MSIE 6, on Windows XP or Windows NT machines. At the moment the site has been tested in: Mac OS X: Safari, Firefox, and(MSIE); Windows XP: MSIE6, MSIE7, Safari, and Firefox; Linux: Firefox. From statistical data pulled from our accounts with StatCounter (http://www.statcounter.com) and Google Analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics), we only had one viewing attempt from outside those testing areas. Other options for browsers and compatibility will be researched and completed, when demand increases.

IntegrationFacebookDespite national and international figures ComScore, (2007). U.K. Social Networking Site Usage Highest in Europe. Retrieved 24 April, (2008). From http://tinyurl.com/4ynxa2 Facebook is, according to research made by this project, the most popular social networking site to be a part of. Not only is ‘social networking’ good to meet friends, and chat, it is being vastly used as a premium marketing and advertising ground. ‘Viral Marketing’ - Marketing that spreads quickly from normal people sending links to their friends, and the topic snowballing into thousands of people seeing it - has become the new must have for every new business.

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Schools and Universities are being encouraged to ‘get on Facebook’ Leverett, L. (2008). Get on Facebook, Universities Told. Retrieved May 5, 2008. From http://www.upsu.net/p/3074. Advertising space on Facebook’s pages vary greatly depending on exactly what it is you want to do. To set up a ‘Fan Page’ is free, but to put a poll on every users homepage starts at $0.50 per response. This means for two hundred responses the cost would be around $51 pounds.

Gappies.net’s presence on Facebook includes a Fan Page, and an Application, the fan page is used as a general contact page to share ideas, are send updates to ‘fans’ from Facebook. The Application is a link between the website and Facebook, the end result of which is to allow users to completely control their gappies.net user details, from their Facebook account, and for parts of their gappies.net online presence to be incorporated into their Facebook Profiles. This is a long term development, however at the moment, users can link their profiles using a form at http://apps.facebook.com/gappiesnet/settings.php so that their Profile can be linked to from gappies.net. It has been found that Facebook creates lots of interest, and many more page views and user sign ups. As a test of this theory, a group message was sent out to 200 people: 100 in the UK, and 100 in Australia. The message only gave the web address, and a short 50 word description of who the site is aimed at, and what it does. For the week after that, gappies.net received a noticeably much higher page count than the month before.

Another key area in which the project uses Facebook, is due to a code hack that I made to the main content code display (com_content.html.php), this integrates a Facebook Button alongside the default Print, Email to a Friend, and Create PDF buttons. Unfortuneately statistics can not show how well it has been used, as Facebook require it to be a JavaScript Popup link, however many users have commented on how useful this is, when you see an interesting or funny story, one click on the Facebook ‘F’ logo will share it to all your Facebook Friends.

Maps IntegrationFrom the primary research that was conducted, it was made clear that a map to show where users are and where useful places are, like schools, airports, supermarkets, and such similar items. Currently this is being done by creating a map on Google maps, and imported using an IFRAME (Embeded Frame), to the project’s website. One user in Australia has been extremely useful in excerising the brilliance of User Generated Content, by adding loads of placemarks to the map. However by September 2008 the project hopes to move completely to using Google Maps’ API which allows for much better integration, and endless use

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possibilities. An example of a website that uses the API extremely well is Blobble (www.blobble.net), possibly the internet’s next Social Network competitor.

Google SearchWidely accepted as the world largest online developer, Burleson Consulting. (unknown) People v. Google - Could Google control the Internet?. Retrieved May 7, 2008. From http://tinyurl.com/43ckq7. and certainly the most used search engine, Google is an attraction to any web developer. Mainly for search results, at the beginning of the project development gappies.net was registered into Google’s search submission tools. Since then, because of Joomla’s excellent meta tag integration, and search engine optimisation tools, such as Artio JoomSEF (http://www.artio.net/en/joomla-extensions/artio-joomsef) search engine results have been very successful for the project. Since December 2007, when Google Analytics was installed, after good reports and advice from University of Portmouth’s Student Enterprise team, 11.84% of visits to the site came from search engines. Largely with search requests like: “Gappies”, or “gap students”. More recently hits have also come from a search request with relation to Eddie Gibson, a Gap year Student who has been missing for almost 4 years, after a news article about his disappearance was posted on the site.

Gappies.net also uses Google for it’s email handling. http://www.google.com/a/ is a service which would potentially build your whole website for you, but is most useful for become a mail server for your website, technically it is very easy to set up, you only have to change the MX records for your domain, and configure them to GoogleMail’s servers. Our mail server can be viewed at: http://mail.gappies.net

StatisticsWebsite Stats / Google AnalyticsAs stated, Google Analytics has been monitoring Gappies.net statistics since December 2007. Since then the site has had 2,947 visits, 28, 317 pages views (this includes loading the same page more than once, and browsing through the site), and throughout that time period has experienced 58.26% New Visitors (this figure identifies visitors from an IP address, it that IP doesn’t already exist in the stats database, then they are classed as a ‘new visitor’.)

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More StatsOther statistical information about the website, is that 55% of visitors, visit the site directly, through a new browser window; Over 15% of visits have originated from links on Facebook, this could include our own Facebook presence or the possibility of other users placing our Website address on a friends wall, or posted items modules. Approximately 5% of visits have come from online email accounts, such as Yahoo, Hotmail, Windows Live, and Gmail, or other private online webmail accounts. From the statistics offered we are also able to find out what type of platform, and what browser size users are view the site from behind. As expected 55.4% view the site using Internet Explorer, with Mozilla Firefox receiving 43.03%. The operating system statistics again, show a favour towards Windows, with 66.7% of the visits of which 85% use Windows XP, 11.45% use Windows VISTA; Apple Mac users have visit statistics of 33.03% of the total visits, with 84.4% of the visits being shown by Intel version Macs, and the remainder by “Power PC” (PPC) Macs. The most popular screen resolution, as suggested above is 1024x768 pixels this had 34% of visits. The 800x600 pixels sized screen came 5th preference with 4.95%.

Finally, the location of visits also helps the project understand who to direct information at, and what people might be looking for. [It is important to add that these statistics may be blurred by the fact that the stats are gathered from the requesting Internet Service Provider (ISP), it is possible - although rare - that a user might not be in the same location as the ISP.] The statistics have found that locations vary from the most popular, being the UK with 58% of visitors, from the most obscure countries, such as Finland, and Iran with just 0.4% of the visitors. The speed of network connections can also be detailed, the most common speed connection is “Digital Subscriber Line” (DSL), 45% of the site total, 3% of the site total were from Dial Up connections. Interestingly the average time on the site for Dial up users is considerably less at only 2 minutes. The whole site wise average time, is 11 minutes. This may be because users with dial up find it takes too long to load a page. This is possible as the homepage does have a lot to load. One of the possible solutions to this is to make a more basic copy of homepage specifically for slower connection users, this can be done relatively easily using JavaScript to recognise what speed is connecting.

User Stats on using the website.There are currently 324 users on the site. The majority of these users are students that have taken their gap years in England either this year or last year. However only 237 of those users have enabled their accounts by clicking the confirmation link in the confirmation email upon sign up. To date around 40% of of users have only logged in once - to confirm their account.

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ConclusionThe site is currently what developers would call BETA mode, meaning that the site is open for business but will be constantly improving and possibly changing things with the site very regularly. The number of registered users not only shows how useful the site is to members, but also shows how much potential there is to improve the site, and encourage more users to the site. It also shows that this kind of a website is useful to a group of people. The site will continued to be backed up each day, and more and more users will be given author permission to write content, as and when they like to make this a truly user generated content site. Since starting this project I have been approached by two companies who deal with Teacher Assistant placements, one specifically in London, and one worldwide but based in Sydney. These leads are going to be developed, with a possible view forging links with the companies to get a wider user base. In addition to this one school in, Northern Island, has approached gappies.net to enquire if the site could play a part in recruiting their gap year students. Also plans are being looked into for advertising space, this is one of the possible ways to create revenue from the site. Another idea that has been considered, and needs more research into, are restricting part of the site to paid subscribers only, - this idea is undesirable, as it is common that students do not like parting with money.

I will be developing the Facebook Application further over the summer with an expected launch date to be December 2008, purposely timed for preparation of new gap students to come to the UK. Each year there would be a big marketing drive around December, and around June, as these are the times of year when there is most movement around the world of gap students. The market research and questionnaires will continue as online developments, to constantly find out where the site could improve. In the future I hope that Gappies.net will be a successful development that: will help prospective gap students make an informed choice about their gap year; will aid current gap students by knowing what is happening local to them, and to gain advice on how to live throughout the year; and, will be a method of communicating between ex ‘alumni’ gap students, who also enjoy spreading their knowledge to help others, have one of the best spent gaps years they could possible have.

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ReferencesThe BBC, (2008). The Apprentice. Retrieved May 5, 2008. From http://www.bbc.co.uk/apprentice

Bebo is Better than Facebook, Says Study. Retrieved From. http://tinyurl.com/5fn44l

Burleson Consulting. (unknown) People v. Google - Could Google control the Internet?. Retrieved May 7, 2008. From http://tinyurl.com/43ckq7

CSRFM, (2008) Retrieved May 1, 2008. From. http://www.csrfm.com

(Higgins, T, Chief Exec of UCAS, 2001. From: http://tinyurl.com/4u6lte.)

The Information Commissioners Office. Retrieved March 24, 2008 From http://www.ico.gov.uk.,

Leverett, L. (2008). Get on Facebook, Universities Told. Retrieved May 5, 2008. From http://www.upsu.net/p/3074

Plomin, J. (2001). Gap Year Popularity Soars. Retrieved Jan 29, 2008, from: http://tinyurl.com/4u6lte

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