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?

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

Requirements - Example

Uptime

Resistant to database downtime

Fast

Accessible

As standards compliant as reasonable

Distribute information effectively

Long term distribution of content responsibilities

Requirements - Example - CMS Design

Our CMS writes out complete files to the filesystem

AdvantagesIf 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

DisadvantagesLag between change in CMS and update

Due to lag, it’s impossible to provide certain features within this architecture

Future Planning

We all know it’s important to plan, but what does that really mean?

ScalingTraffic

Server load from existing or new features

Disk space & bandwidth

Good software development practices

Proper database design is critical

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

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.

Automation

What can be done by a computer should be done by a computer

Look for tasks that areSimple

Repetitive

Follow a fixed set of instructions

Automation is at the very core of expansion

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

Automation - Another Example

Thesis Defences

Used to be a manual processMenen would send out the e-mail

I would add it to the news

Caused delay problems

Now Menen uses a form in PortalSends out the e-mail

Publishes to website

And shortly with publish to Big Board

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

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.

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 audiencesProspective Students

Current Students

Faculty Staff

Community / Friends

How Do We Know If We’re Succeeding?

Web Logs

Gives raw data on usage

Needs to be interpreted somehow

How Do We Interpret Web Log Files?

By Handtail, head, cat, less, more, etc…

grep

awk / gawk

sort, uniq, wc

AutomateCustom scripts

Web stats packages are simple and effective

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

Conclusion

Understanding technology is a necessary first stepThe development of a medium sized website involves many other aspectsLarge website share similar challenges but add hardware complexities and cost of mistakes is much higherBest way to learn is to get out there and do itFor more information visit

http://www.cs.dal.cahttp://aboutawebmaster.com