Final Year Project - Social Networking Site

Hi

Firstly I apologise for not posting the URL as my title but I needed to explain a few things before giving the URL.

Over the last number of months I have been developing a Social Networking Website in PHP (and a number of other technologies) for my final year university project.

It's aim is to use imaginary ID Cards to verify who you are and to ensure under 16's are kept relatively safe in comparison to other social networking sites.

As you may notice it has quite a resemblence to Facebook and its name kind of sounds like MySpace but it's been developed from scratch using many of the techniques used within these sites.

TO SIGN UP - PLEASE READ

There are an unusual amount of steps to sign up to my site.

1. Create an imaginary ID card - This step is usually hidden from the user and completed by myself however given that I am now posting on a forum then it will be easier to ask the user to create their own
   In real life (when ID cards become available) this step will already be done for you
2. Actual Sign up - The only step you would usually see
3. Finally email verification - Must be completed by a parent if under 16 (although for testing purposes I am allowing you to specify yourself as a parent).

Many people who have signed up with this method have complained it takes too long and has too many steps however PLEASE REMEMBER that the ID card step is something you would not usually see.
This step simply gives you an ID card and security (PIN) number for your imaginary card. Which is needed to register on the site.

The site is held on my university server and requires a username and password

The username is: wallaceb
The password is: mispelte

Firefox can save these details for you but IE won't for some reason.

To create the ID card go to:

Make ID Card

You should recieve an email linking you to the ACTUAL sign up page once this step is complete.
Please follow the instructions from there onwards.


I apologise for the amount of steps needed however without real ID cards this extra step is necessary.



Once on the site you can add me as a friend if you search for Bill Wallace.
Go for any 23 year old one as I have been doing some testing under a number of email addresses.


Please Attempt:

• Adding friends
• Sending Messages
• Posting on Profiles
• Uploading Images
• Anthing else you would like to try and break

There are a few things that you may believe to be at fault however they may have been done differently to Facebook or Myspace so that users have alittle more privacy.

Please also note that this is a university project and by no means a finished product.


Once I have completed the testing phase you may recieve an email with a feedback form within. If you do recieve this email in the near future then please respond with your thoughts.

Thank you very much for anyone who trys out my site.

Design is

I rushed back to Devshed thinking "WOW! Somebody has reviewed it already......"

But thanks for the

One thing I forgot to point out:

The emails may appear in your SPAM bucket.

Please check before raising a fault with the site.

THanks

The process was too long for me to try out unfortunately. I personally don't like the design as it looks like something Frontpage would produce.

Maybe it's just me though.

Are you getting judged on the functionality or the aesthetics?

RE: HTML - 1313 validation errors alone on the first page.

Running it through the validator also show "undefined" PHP notices -
this should be ironed out....

Javascript can be by-passed -
what happens if user doesn't have JS enabled at all?

Although the JS validation did work, it didn't validate the date... or name length.

If you are wondering who "asaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaasssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss sssssssssssssssssssss" is -
look no further.

You should really sort out your e-mail too.
HTML isn't the best as images are often blocked and the fact that the mail did indeed end up in the junk folder is more likely to do with your actual PHP coding for the mail() function.

'cos my name was too long, I couldn't go any further.

Design of the site, look wise, is OK - looks a bit dated.
Even emulating Facebook or using a Drupal based theme would be more up-to-date.

I know the registration process wouldn't normally be as painful,
but painful it was.

TBH I don't think you are actually that far away from what I have seen of the one/two pages.

Design and HTML code are the only things I can comment on at the moment.

Good luck.

Cheers for the comment. I didn't put that much work into the design as I knew it would get me very little marks as such.

Its completely coded from scratch, no front page etc.

Its my first php website and I guess im a LOT more of a technical coder than a designer.

Thanks for the comments.

With regards to the name and date of birth that you created your ID Card for.....I don't think I explained well enough.

As this would be your ID Card setup by the government......you wouldnt be able to put in aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa....etc.

So that was really down to you to provide your correct details. The registration page that my site would then use would validate you against your ID Card. Therefore the aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa....would never have worked.

I'll definately have a look at the validation errors. It was something I did constantly at the start of the development however have not done for some time now.

I put very little thought into whether or not the browser would have Javascript enabled which is definately a bad point.
That will be a good point for my review so thank you.


Cheers for your thoughts!

It would make sense though to have a character count via PHP and see if it's too long.

Again thanks for the feedback but it still appears that no one trully understands the aims of this site.

If you have to match your details to a government database of details it would not matter what you entered into any fields, as if you didn't enter them correctly you are simply denied access to the site. (Including your secret ID Card details)

Therefore making the site (conceptually) free of fraudsters posing as someone else and potentially free of known paedophiles if the ID Card database refuses to verify them.

So you should eventually form a pretty good database of disallowed emails? That's not a bad idea...?

it would be a bit more complex if using a government database API to verify your users but I guess the same idea could be implemented using email addresses until this conceptual idea becomes a reality......if it ever does.