Requesting Bids for TICA Website Development/Maintenance

TICA is looking for a team of people to develop the association's website:

Requirements:

Excellent spoken and written English. Ability to communicate in other languages is also preferred

During website development, communication will be necessary with the following parties:

TICA Executive Office
TICA Board of Directors
End users of the website. These individuals may be experienced with TICA or may be new to TICA or to the cat fancy as a whole.
Server administrator

The following projects are part of the overall association’s website plan. You may bid on one or more of these projects:

1. Design of the TICA website

a. Look and feel to reflect a professional image, but still easy to use by a novice.

b. Requires multi-language support

i. Both single- and double-byte languages

ii.English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese initially. Possibly others in the future

c. Easily extensible navigation structure

d. Site-wide search capabilities

2. Website content transfer

a. Selection and setup of a suitable Content Management System (CMS)

b. Migration of existing pages and forms to new design and CMS

i. Existing website contains approximately 100 pages

ii. Existing forms are authored in ColdFusion

3. Website content development

a. Authoring of new content and reauthoring of existing content to improve readability and understandability

b. Working with website translators to create different language versions of authored content

New content will include the following:

1. Show reports

2. Interactive standings (by name, breed, region)

3. Detailed scoring records for own registered cats (award, date, judge, points, total)

4. Interactive show calendar (by month, region, club, country, state)

5.Interactive Breed statistics (registrations, show entries and awards)

6. Interactive Hall of Fame (International, Regional, and Breed Winners of past show seasons)

4. Website content translation

a. Needs to be fluent in written communications in English and the language they are responsible for translation

b. Needs to understand the tool used to author website content

5. Selection, installation and setup of an Issue Tracking System (ITS)

The ITS would be used to track all queries and requests for services received by the TICA Executive Office by email, via the web, by phone, fax, or mail. ITS requirements are:

a. Communication and tracking of items received in all media.

b. Assignment of a tracking number that can be queried by the originator of the request.

c. Support of binary attachments on individual requests.

6. Selection of a web hosting service meeting the following criteria:

a. The new hosting service will need to offer solutions meeting the requirements of the CMS and ITS. Should the requirements of the selected CMS and ITS be incompatible they could be hosted separately.

b. The hosting service must be able to handle the current size of our existing website (20,5 MB) and allow for significant increase as new multi-lingual topics and e-business applications are developed and made available.

c. The hosting service must be able to handle the current traffic volume with the ability to exponentially scale over time.

7. Development of new E-business services

This includes payment processing (credit card / PayPal) and identity verification where applicable. Services to be offered include:

a. Membership application/renewal

b.Change of address

c. Cattery name registration/search

d. Litter registration

e.Individual cat registration

f. Confirmation of titles

g. Ordering of certified pedigree

Bids should contain:

Team members' resumes.
Links to websites created, designed, or maintained by team members where similar solutions have been implemented.
Specific technical details of the proposed solution for TICA. For example, mySQL, Perl, Cold Fusion.
Mock-up design details if appropriate.
Time line for implementation (after initial analysis)
Cost for implementation (including licensing of software if applicable)

You may put in a bid for one or more of the specified areas. Bids received by 15 January 2006 are guaranteed to be considered. Electronic applications are preferred. You will be contacted by 05 February 2006 whether or not your bid is under consideration.

The final candidates will be presented to the TICA Board of Directors at the Semi-Annual Meeting in Hauppage, NY, 15 - 17 February 2006. The Board of Directors will then start the decision making process on project assignment.

Please send your bids to

David Thomas
4103 Sugar Crossing Court
Sugar Land, TX
77478-5305
thomcats@flash.net