Webmaster's Presentation

to

TWP Conference

18 July 1996

• Brief History of central CWIS/WEB at Monash

  
  

• Proposed changes to the Monash web structure

  
  

• Webmasters' responsibilities

  
  

• Monash web page standards

• 1992 - Library and CC agree to develop a CWIS around gopher

• May 1993 - Initial gopher established

• May 1994 - Central web server established

• September? 1994 - Initial caching proxy turned on

• February 1995 - Netscape available in student labs

• August? 1995 - Communications, Computing & Multimedia Advisory Board established

• January 1996 - First "dedicated" wwwdev staff member appointed

• April 1996 - More wwwdev staff appointed

• May 1996 - gopher de-commissioned

Proposed changes to the Monash web structure

• Present www.monash structure is becoming unworkable

• It is only going to get more complex, not less

• The only sensible way to do this is to introduce a hierarchy

• We propose moving to faculty-based 'virtual' servers

• No matter how we do this, some URLs will need to change

• www.arts.monash.edu.au has already been created. Until the pages work under the new structure, the old one will be retained

  
  

Webmasters' responsibilities

• Faculty Webmasters

  • Will be responsible for server administration (real or virtual server) - in the case of virtual servers this will involve maintenance of one or two configuration files and allow more flexibility than the present structure.

• All Webmasters

  • advising WWW developers on appropriate standards and guidelines applicable at Monash
  • arranging training where appropriate
  • notifying breaches of Monash WWW guidelines on appropriate use
  • security and issues relating possible infringements of the various Communications and Copyright Acts;

Monash web page standards

• Not designed to control content

• Not designed to limit style except in prescribed areas such as use of Logos, footer information and consistency in naming the top-level file in any directory as index.htm or index.html

• Ensure pages are complete (or almost so) before going live. That is, it is unacceptable and unprofessional to have just one or two completed pages and a series of broken or 'under construction' links

• Trying to ensure professional presentation of web pages at Monash by creating pages which have been tested to conform to appropriate html standards and where all hyperlinks have been shown to be active

• Ensuring that Monash web pages are properly accessible to the appropriate target audience group