Abstract:
This thesis reports about a project undertaken to develop a Kiswahili-user-centered
cloud-based website building platform. An extensive study based on literature review
built a basis for forming requirements for the platform. The desire to undertake this
project was triggered by a call by the government of the United Republic of Tanzania
on local content development, as documented in the national information and
communications technology policy of 2016. The project employed a combination of
certain research methodologies and system development methodologies. Literature
review, experimentation and observations played a vital role in helping the researcher
form a clear picture of how to develop the platform. The project employed ObjectOriented System Analysis and Design (OOSAD) approach, the incremental model of
System Development Life Cycle (SDLC), entity relationship diagramming tools, web
wireframes and a set of several Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams as system
design tools. System building was accomplished using a number of languages and
libraries: PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS, JavaScript/JQuery and Bootstrap framework.
System testing was done at different levels: the unit level, the integration level, and the
system level. Further, white-box, black box, and grey-box testing was conducted along
with dynamic testing technique. The main deliverable of this project was Kiswahiliuser-centered cloud-based website building platform that is meant to serve the local
community with higher level of convenience as compared to similar solutions available
in the market. The researcher ultimately conducted a test with 30 participants, results of
which indicated that the platform is friendly enough to serve the targeted users.
