Webmaster's Presentation
to
TWP Conference
18 July 1996

Contents
Brief History of central CWIS/WEB at
Monash
- 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
- 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
- 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;
- 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
Sue Steele
17 July 1996