Content and Structural Design for Virtual Pilgrimage Portal of Shia Holy Shrines

Nowadays, with the growth of the new communication technologies such as Internet, many people respond to some of their needs like religious needs by this media tool. One of these religious needs, that used by muslims and particularly by Shia, is pilgrimage. ‘Shia holy shrine virtual pilgrimage’ needs to design special services in the internet. So the purpose of this article is study of internet sites with religious-pilgrimage subject to design the virtual pilgrimage portal of shia holy shrine in content and structural dimensions. Hence 23 religious-pilgrimage internet sites chosen selectively and were studied with qualitative content analysis method. Results show that there are 89 content and structure dimensions in religious-pilgrimage internet sites. These dimensions include 21 structural and 69 content dimensions that classified in 12 categories. These categories include: 1. Pilgrimage, 2. Interactions with site, 3. Providing service to the shrine, 4. More acquaintance, 5. Media, 6. Notification, 7. Pilgrimage groups, 8. Time and programs management, 9. Education and research, 10.Softwares, 11.Business, and 12.Structural factors. According to these dimensions, tow content and structure models are introduced and, after repeatedly reviewing of the sites structures and locations of services in the studied sites, we have proposed three structural model for ‘Shia holy shrine virtual pilgrimage portal', that include: 1. Preface page, 2. Home page, and 3. Site map.