The result of this diploma thesis is a productive internet portal for alumnae and alumni of the Zurich University of Applied Sciences Winterthur ZHW.

Looking at the picture gallery lets you reminisce about past times and evolves into the urge of finding out what happened to a former school buddy. The extended search function leads straight to the people you are looking for. Registered users are able to communicate using the internal messaging system. Furthermore there is a guestbook to sign, interesting forums to discuss different topics or a bibliography to post your book recommendations. Are you feeling like seeing men in tailcoats or women in a 'Biedermeier' costume again? The events calendar stores important dates of the ZHW such as the traditional 'Techumzug'. As a member of the 'Neptun Project' convenient prices for hard- and software can still be guaranteed. Those are only a few of the many functionalities and benefits the 'Ehemaligen-Portal' offers to its members.

A former project work is the basis for our diploma thesis. The rough concept deriving from it has been adapted and requirements have been defined. The goal was a portal which can simply be administrated without causing a lot of costs.

To realize our portal we chose the open source content management system Joomla!, formerly known as Mambo. This already contains a lot of functions we needed and thus could perfectly be adapted to meet our expectations. To test the single components and their interaction a prototype was built for evaluation purposes. The environment could then be implemented on the productive server with all the necessary features.

As a start, this portal is intended for alumnae and alumni of the department T. It shall be further expanded though; a ZHW wide access is planned. A lot of administrative clarification had to be accomplished on topics such as internal hosting, legal aspects and the import of user data.