AbstractsComputer Science

The goal of this final year project was to build an experimental website that would provide an interactive community for both foreigners and natives in Finland. The main functionalities were planned to include a blog function, social function, groups and events function, buy and sell function, jobs function and question and answer function. The task was to build a content management system website using the open source software Joomla application. The project also required knowledge and many skills in different areas of web development. PHP was used as a server side scripting language, MySQL was used for database design and Apache was used as a web server. The web application consisted of simple HTML pages with CSS. The results of the thesis show that Joomla content management system is an efficient method of building a content management system website. The results also show the advantages of various aspects of the Joomla software. The website provides the users with an integrated network to communicate with each other, and to share experiences and knowledge of how they survive in Finland. The website can also help users to find information for solving particular problems in their life. Many things were learnt during this project, such as how to plan a project concept based on requirements, how to configure the server back-end and how to use Joomla content management system to create a website. The project also taught how to deal and manage the challenges encountered at the workplace.