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Case Study: Boathow.com
Launched at the height of the dot-com boom, Boathow.com was a play on 'know-how'; as an expert service for boating enthusiasts, the founders were looking to fill a gap in the leisure market with a subscription-based on-line service.
Amethyst responsibilities: project manage all technical aspects. This became; programme manage the whole launch activity
The project: conceive, build and launch an entire e-commerce, subscription web-site.
The timeline: 13 weeks, beginning October 1999, for delivery Jan 4th, 2000
The deadline: immovable; Jan 4th was press-day for the London International Boat Show at Earl's court
The concept: a boating expert service; articles, weather reports, harbour guides, ask-an-expert, on-line subscription and payment. 
The scope: perhaps the most comprehensive project we have ever carried out!
- web-site design and build;
- content management design and build;
- online payment service selection, set-up and testing;
- hosting supplier selection, set-up and test.
- Content database testing; content load;
- Earls Court stand design, construction;
- Web kiosk instal, cabling and equipment installation;
- multi-media presentation design, authoring, installation;
- sales staff training;
- Earls Court internet link set-up and test;
- Earls Court (facilities) liaison;
- Boat Show organisers liaison;
- Marketing Agency liaison;
If that wasn't enough, we were trying to launch First Choice e-commerce at the same time, for their January peak-selling period!
Development platform: MS-SQL server and Coldfusion
CMS: bespoke, based on platform developed for Freeserve
CMS model: remote authoring and editing.
Initial upload: XML upload, at a time when XML was barely understood by most technical people; we provided the authors with XML templates to upload articles ready for launch (see below)
Constraints: all of it! Like the millenium work also going on at the time, the Boat Show was an immovable deadline. We also had to build install and test over Christmas and new year.
Client staff: 4
Development shop: external supplier, Design-UK
Hosting Supplier: Globix
Boathow CMS - an early XML delivery
Introduction
Owing to the tight timelines on the Boathow project, articles needed to be commissioned and written before the system was completed. Therefore a system was been developed to allow these articles to be written within an XML template, which could then be directly imported into the system.
Authors were commissioned and sent an XML template, which they populated with the article text. These populated templates were then mailed back and imported directly into the Boathow database.
A breakdown of the procedure:
- The Chief Editor generated a file name for a commissioned article. This is an encoded naming structure which identifies its target location and classification when imported into the system
- The Chief Editor sent the named template via e-mail to the commissioned author
- The Author populated the template with the article content
- Authors returned articles to The Chief Editor via e-mail
Editing Templates
Authors were given a set of blank templates; all they needed do was type in the article content using any text editor in the appropriate place in the template: this was in the early days before XML editors, parsers and authoring tools; we also had a remote, distibuted community of non-technical authors.
Example
When the user populated an article it looked like this:
<article>
<name>What is a GPS</name>
<headline>What is a GPS</headline>
<byline>All you need to know about GPS</byline>
<Strapline>The 21st century way to navigate</Strapline>
<aBodytext>This is a really interesting Article relating to the extremely
interesting topic of GPS systems for Boating. It contains all you would ever
want to know but were afraid to ask!</aBodytext>
<addendum>Addendum Text</addendum><keywords>GPS Navigation
Sailing</keywords>
<authornotes>this article should be updated every six months due to the
high level of development within this field</authornotes>
<authorname>Captain Pugwash</authorname>
<versionno>1.00</versionno>
<creationdate>15 Nov 2000</creationdate>
<amendedon>16 Nov 2000</amendedon>
</article>
What are XML tags and what do they mean?
XML Tags are markers, which enable the system to identify areas of text and how they should look when displayed on the web page.
Tags mark the start and end of the element they control i.e. the headline;
<headline>What is a GPS</headline>
which is tagged, or delimited start and finish, with the tags identifying that element as a headline.
Only the tags marked in blue below will be seen on screen others are just reference information Presentation was applied to each tagged element according to the stylesheet for the site; font, size, weight, colour, spacing.
