Performance and User Experience Improvements to the ASU/NASA Space Grant Website

1. Performance and User Experience Improvements to the ASU/NASA Space Grant Website Sean.Malley@asu.edu

2. Presentation Structure • Input Validation • Database Improvements • Toward Drupal

3. Input Validation Preventing XSS and SQL Injection

4. General Process

5. Benefits • Reduces Potential of Successful Attack • “Exploits of a Mom” XKCD.com • Helps user properly complete forms • Saves time correcting user error

6. Implementation • Research acceptable data for each field • Official Specifications • Previous Data • Educated Guesses

9. Implementation • Create filtering function library • MySQL escaping functions • Regular expression functions • Basic type testing functions • Test • Sample applications

10. Database Improvements

11. Database Modifications • Cleaning out previous bad entries and depreciated tables • Creating a new database structure to simply data storage and extraction • Working on structures to better incorporate past data and data sharing between Space Grant Programs

12. Toward Drupal

13. The Current Framework is Complex • Over 710 PHP Files • 826 Images • 465 Folders • 2 Databases • 53 Tables

14. Benefits of Drupal • One display system makes standards compliance simpler • Time tried CMS means less errors and the benefit of many skilled developers • Skinning the website is simpler • Modular setup makes adding features much easier