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cs.dal/

http://www.cs.dal.ca/. by Marc Comeau. About A Webmaster. Developing a website goes far beyond understanding underlying technologies Determine your requirements Plan for the future Automate Most importantly - Know Your Audience. Requirements. What does it need to do?

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cs.dal/

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  1. http://www.cs.dal.ca/ by MarcComeau

  2. About A Webmaster • Developing a website goes far beyond understanding underlying technologies • Determine your requirements • Plan for the future • Automate • Most importantly - Know Your Audience

  3. Requirements • What does it need to do? • What kind of information will be on it? • How / Who will update that information? • How often do will we make major changes? • Who are you trying to reach? • Other considerations

  4. Requirements - Example • Uptime • Resistant to database downtime • Fast • Accessible • As standards compliant as reasonable • Distribute information effectively • Long term distribution of content responsibilities

  5. Requirements - Example - CMS Design • Our CMS writes out complete files to the filesystem • Advantages • If DB fails or network connectivity between DB and webserver is lost, web site remains intact • Delivers plain files, no processing involved, very scalable • Maintains all key features of a content management system • Disadvantages • Lag between change in CMS and update • Due to lag, it’s impossible to provide certain features within this architecture

  6. Future Planning • We all know it’s important to plan, but what does that really mean? • Scaling • Traffic • Server load from existing or new features • Disk space & bandwidth • Good software development practices • Proper database design is critical

  7. Future Planning - Example (Good) • Portal • User login, group management, restricts tools by group • Focus on data re-use • New challenge of our “Big Board” allowed us to re-use our data in a different manner

  8. Future Planning - Example (Bad) • Thesis Defences • To simplify development we took a shortcut • Adding guest lectures forced us further into our problem • Now that we’re trying to re-use this information, we’re looking at a significant overhaul.

  9. Automation • What can be done by a computer should be done by a computer • Look for tasks that are • Simple • Repetitive • Follow a fixed set of instructions • Automation is at the very core of expansion

  10. Automation - Example • News system • News are set with start and end dates • Simple right? • Results of this simple automated step • Don’t have stale items on the web site • If I’m sick or on vacation, news will take care of themselves • Can preview for slow news days and avoid dead space

  11. Automation - Another Example • Thesis Defences • Used to be a manual process • Menen would send out the e-mail • I would add it to the news • Caused delay problems • Now Menen uses a form in Portal • Sends out the e-mail • Publishes to website • And shortly with publish to Big Board

  12. Know Your Audience • The web requires a good understanding of those with whom you want to communicate • Who you’re trying to reach contributes to your design decisions • Also contributes to the language you use on a website • Will be the ultimate measure of your success

  13. Identify Your Primary Audiences • This will either come from your intuition, your business plan or the website owner • Consider the Primary Audiences of • www.webmasterworld.com • www.google.com • Important to really understand the primary audiences because subtle differences can turn into significant design choices.

  14. Related Sites Still Have Different Audiences • Even when very closely related • www.cs.dal.ca vs www.dal.ca • www.cs.dal.ca vs www.medicine.dal.ca • Our primary audiences • Prospective Students • Current Students • Faculty Staff • Community / Friends

  15. How Do We Know If We’re Succeeding? • Web Logs • Gives raw data on usage • Needs to be interpreted somehow

  16. How Do We Interpret Web Log Files? • By Hand • tail, head, cat, less, more, etc… • grep • awk / gawk • sort, uniq, wc • Automate • Custom scripts • Web stats packages are simple and effective

  17. Problems with Statistics Packages • Many statistics are interpreted and as a result aren’t 100% reliable • Won’t get always get very detailed information on your audience (unless you spend a lot of money) • Can’t tell you anything about people who aren’t coming to your site

  18. Conclusion • Understanding technology is a necessary first step • The development of a medium sized website involves many other aspects • Large website share similar challenges but add hardware complexities and cost of mistakes is much higher • Best way to learn is to get out there and do it • For more information visit • http://www.cs.dal.ca • http://aboutawebmaster.com

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