CollegeSigningDay.com is a premier recruiting database for college bound athletes.
The company was created with the goal of giving high school athletes a way to showcase themselves to the colleges looking for talent. It is a unique way for an athlete to get recognized by the college coaches online. The company offers an array of options to both the athletes and the coaches, ranging from getting the athletes certified by the CollegeSigningDay.com staff to showing video footage in their online profile and storing coaches' favorites to get an extensive search ability to find a match.

CollegeSigningDay.com came to Softway Solutions as one of a few vendors to help them develop their idea into a fully working web application that will be automated and will need very little intervention. Softway Solutions was responsible for the complete backend development. This included content management as well as the ability to manage coaches and athletes to review the videos and certify the athlete. Each step needed to be planned and the best course of action required was to be decided. CollegeSigningDay.com wanted to launch a full-scale web application that would not only be user-friendly and work for novice web surfers but also to utilize the best techniques for security and integrity of the program.

Beginning with the basics, Softway Solutions prepared a carefully constructed project management plan with a detailed strategy. Softway Solutions implemented the plan with the development of the prototype that would put the idea into perspective and help the client decide what needs to be done. Softway Solutions reviewed the prototype with the client and made the necessary changes to start the development phase. Prototype development helped both Softway Solutions and CollegeSigningDay.com to identify problems and come up with a list of solutions. Problems such as clearly defining the steps required for the athlete to be certified and if the athlete should be charged for uploading a video before CollegeSigningDay.com approves it. How will the coaches register and if they were to confirm their registration? Other problems included shopping cart integration as well as session state and transaction summaries.

Solutions to the problems identified in the prototype phase were implemented during the development phase which required minimal input from CollegeSigningDay.com representatives . Softway Solutions worked with other vendors for quality assurance as well as graphical designs. There wouldn't be a development phase without a testing phase. During the Testing Phase, CollegeSigningDay.com and the quality assurance team identified minor errors and user friendly issues. The Shopping cart integration turned out to be a big problem as Miva Merchant shopping cart required many different modules. Integration of each with the site and allowing user-friendliness was a big issue.

Softway Solutions came to the rescue when we were able to develop code which would solve problems integrating Miva Merchant. Each problem was carefully documented and discussed with CollegeSigningDay.com representatives as well as other vendors working on the project to find the best solution.

We customized the CollegeSigningDay.com website using page template modules for the products, category, and integrated them with their existing web design. The site made use of OpenUI Supermod and host of other Miva modules.

A Single sign-on for both the database backed site and the Miva user login was incorporated.

Technologies Used:

Scripting Language: PHP Database: MySQL Shopping Cart: Miva Merchant