Computer Science and Software Engineering Capstone Presentations
Fall Quarter
December 18, 2020
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Dakota Sagredo "Travel
Website Creation & Development" (Individual Project - Student Defined) Faculty Advisor: Dr. Bill Erdly |
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Abstract My capstone project revolved around designing and implementing
a website that focused on helping users find and plan out hikes. I find that
websites dedicated to hiking, trips, and tourism are lacking in many aspects,
and wanted to make a site that would handle everything I require when
planning a trip. While there are many future plans
for the site, the first stage was focused on hiking in Washington State. There are three major components of the website that
help users do this. The first is an interactive map that displays hikes in
Washington. This map allows users to filter what is shown depending on what
features are found on a particular hike. The second is a curated list of
recommended trips designed to provide the user with an easy and pre-made plan
for a single or multi-day trip in Washington. The last is a trip planner that
allows the user to take available hikes and add them as a new, editable trip so as to create their own trip. This page will tally up
the total hiking distance and elevation, as well as the drive time and
mileage. Which can then be ported to Google Maps, so the user can download or
return to their planned trip at a later time. Initially, my site was being developed on Wix and used the API MapBox for
the interactive map. However, after weeks of investment into Wix, I learned that it is incompatible with the
complexities that the site needed. I stopped all work on Wix, and switched
everything over to WordPress. With WordPress I used Google Maps' API, as it had
more functionality and documentation than MapBox.
This allowed me access to Google's locations, the ability to track drive
times, and convert GPS coordinates. Another major component in designing my
site was Elementor, which is a plugin that allows
for quicker customization of a site's UI than what Wordpress
normally offers. With Elementor I was able to
create template pages, such as for a specific hike page, and then use that
template as a starting point for future hike pages, which cut down on
production time significantly. In the end I have a site that covers
Washington's best hikes, allows users to see this on an interactive map,
recommends pre-planned trips, and when that's not
enough allows users to create their own trips. |
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Updated December 15, 2020