8. DELIMITATION OF THE STUDY
This work is for all people, Cameroonian or not interested by
sustainable development.
It intends to create a web portal for the following :
- An information space;
- An online library with downloadable documents;
- A page for useful links;
- A registration and connection space;
- The ability to registered user to propose content;
- Discussion space or forum with private space for registered
members;
- The capacity of members to send private message inside
forum;
- A specialized search engine;
- An administration space for the webmaster to update the
website, and to manage the forum.
9. IMPORTANCE OF THE DISSERTATION FOR
EDUCATION COMMUNITY
By putting in place a web portal of sustainable development we
may improve communication and information amongst all the actors and person
interested by sustainable development in our country. This subject is also an
opportunity to master the tools and languages related to web programming.
For educational community it can be a tool for improving
knowledge and exchanging of point view.
10. DEFINITION OF
TERMS
To conclude this study the definition of key concepts comes as
of first need.
· Sustainable development
The United Nations World Commission on Environment and
Development in its 1987 report Our Common Future defines sustainable
development as the : "Development that meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." Under
the principles of the United Nations Charter the Millennium Declaration
identified principles or pillars and treaties on sustainable development,
including economic development, social development and environmental
protection. Broadly defined, sustainable development is a systems approach to
growth and development and to manage natural, produced, and social capital for
the welfare of their own and future generations. The concepts of sustainable
development and sustainability derive from the older forestry term "sustained
yield", which, in turn, is a translation of the German term
"nachhaltigerErtrag" dating from 1713. Sustainability science is the study of
the concepts of sustainable development and environmental science. There is an
additional focus on the present generations' responsibility to regenerate,
maintain and improve planetary resources for use by future generations.
Sustainable development is defined as development process that
balances ecological, economic and social and establishes a virtuous circle
between these three poles: it is a development, economically efficient,
socially equitable and ecologically sustainable. It is respectful of natural
resources and ecosystems, life support on Earth, ensuring economic efficiency,
without losing sight of the social purposes of development such as the fight
against poverty, against inequality, against exclusion and search for equity. A
strategy for sustainable development must be winner of this triple point of
view, economic, social and ecological.
Sustainable development requires that human decisions and
behavior in reconciling what appears to many irreconcilable, manage to expand
their vision: it requires to open our time horizon over the long term, that of
future generations and our spatial horizon in taking into account the
well-being of everyone, whether a resident of the South or the North, a nearby
region of the city or neighbouring district.
Different domains have been identified for research and
analysis of sustainable development. Broadly defined, these include ecology,
economics, politics and culture as used by the United Nations and a number of
other international organizations. As a working definition, sustainability can
be defined as the practice of maintaining processes of productivity
indefinitely (natural or human made) by replacing resources used with resources
of equal or greater value without degrading or endangering natural biotic
systems.
Sustainable development is based on research integration and
alignment of sectorial policies set imposes joint processing of economic,
social and environmental effects of any policy or human action. Such an
approach requires integration of multi-partnership approaches and
interdisciplinary. Its success is based on partnership and cooperation between
actors from different disciplines (economics, sociology, ecology) from
different sectors (transport, water, waste, natural environment, social
development) and different environments (entrepreneurial, associative,
institutional, administrative, commercial, trade union), acting at different
territorial levels, from international to local level.
Sustainable development is in fact based on a new form of
governance, where the mobilization and participation of all actors of civil
society in decision-making should take precedence over the mere exchange of
information. Sustainable development aims to promote participatory democracy
and restore civic approach. Access to information and transparency are
prerequisites.
· Internet
Internet is a world system of interconnection of network,
using a standardized whole of protocol of transfer of data. It is therefore a
network of network, composed of million networks as well public, private,
university, commercial and governmental. Internet transports a broad spectrum
of information and allows the development of applications and services varied
like the electronic mail, the instantaneous messenger and the World Wide
Web.
Internet having been popularized by the appearance of the
World Wide Web, both is sometimes confused by the public. The World Wide Web is
however only one of the applications of Internet.
The access to Internet can be obtained through an Internet
service provider via various means of communication: either telegraphic (ADSL,
optical fiber to the residence), or without wire (WIMAX, by satellite).
· World wide web
The World Wide Web, commonly known as the Web, sometimes the
Web, literally the "web (spider) World" is a public hypertext system operating
on the Internet that provides access with a browser, uploaded pages in sites.
The image of the web has hyperlinks that link web pages together.
The Web is only one of the Internet applications, with email,
instant messaging, Usenet. The Web was invented several years after the
Internet, but the Web has made the mainstream media attention to the Internet.
Since the Web is often confused with the Internet; in particular, the word is
often used Canvas very ambiguously.
The World Wide Web is and has been designated by many
synonymous names and acronyms: WorldWideWeb, World Wide Web, World-wide Web,
Web, WWW, W3, Web of Spider World, World Wide Web, Web.
The name of the original project was WorldWideWeb. The words
were quickly separated into World Wide Web to improve readability. The name
World-Wide Web was also used by the Web inventors, but now recommended by the
World Wide Web Consortium name separates the three words without a hyphen.
Spelling World Wide Web and the Web abbreviation are now well established.
Surfing the web is like walking into an endless jungle. We
never see the end so there websites, and found it absolutely everything.
Anyone can publish information on the web.
· Web site
According to Wikipedia a website is a set of related web pages
typically served from a single web domain. A website is hosted on at least one
web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local
area network through an Internet address known as a Uniform resource locator.
All publicly accessible websites collectively constitute the World Wide Web.
A website can be defined as a set of linked websites together
by hyperlinks, accessible through the Internet using a web address (URL) from
the same domain name. Sometimes the term is used website, which is equivalent
(Internet is the network which supports the web, but the shade is not of
fundamental importance in this case).
A website consists of web pages as' they are in a computing
resource available on the Internet and read by a web browser (Firefox, Chrome,
Internet Explorer). In general, when talking about web page, we think of a html
document containing text, images, videos or any other type of resources.
However, a simple image with a URL (therefore accessible through the Internet)
may be considered by extension as a web page. The web is primarily based on the
connection between multiple pages that make references to each other. This is
called hypertext links (or hyperlinks). We find these links in the navigation
menus or in the body of web pages.
It is possible to make connections between the pages of a
website in the same way we can to point these links to web from other websites
pages. We talk in a case of internal links in the other external links.
· Web portal
The web portal term draws its origin from Latin Medieval
"portale", meaning the main entrance of the city.
Portal sites are websites whose primary purpose is to provide
users with resources and services related to a theme, a profession, a
geographic area or community.
Resources may be links to other sites reference discussion
forums or blogs, but can also consist of editorial content specific to the
gate. These services can be of different types: Engine Specialized searches;
email.
The term portal is a good metaphor to describe these web
portals to a "dedicated universe."
We still define a web portal as a web site trying to offer the
broadest pallet of information and possible services in only one site. It is a
web site which offers a single door of entry on a broad range of resources and
services (electronic mail, forum of discussion, spaces of publication, search
engine) centered on a field or a particular community. The users have most of
the time the possibility of being register and to connect later on and use the
whole of services suggested to them. A web portal provides also services such
as the capacity for the user to personalize his workspace. The user thus has
access to the activity of current purse, the weather report, the profiles of
other users who use the gate, and several types of information according to the
individual interest of the user.
We can distinguish 02 main classes of web portals: vertical
web portals constitute an entrance point specialized in a specific place of the
market or a domain of industry, it is the case of forbes.com. Horizontal web
portal is used like a platform for several organizations and covers a variety
of information in various sectors (yahoo.com for example).
So, according to Wikipedia we have many types of web portal:
personal portals, government web portals, cultural portals, corporate web
portals, stock portals, search portals, tender portals, hosted web portals,
domain-specific portals.
The web portal is distinguished from the web directory on two
aspects:
- It does not offer only links to third party websites from
one category but offers related services and editorial content it owns.
- Allows usually (but not always) the user to register in
order to be able to customize its interface and use the associated services.
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