WebTeam -- University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio

Minutes (Jan. 31, 2007) Web Advisory Committee

Present: Dr. Alison Beck, Debbie Valle, Katie Prentice, Dr. Nedal Arar, Dr. Vid Desibhatla, Heather Cura, Alan Miller, Kat Myers, Doug Hartzler, Mary Yanes and Jim Barrett.

The chair, Dr. Alison Beck, called the meeting to order. Committee members approved the Nov. 11 minutes.

Jim Barrett gave the webmaster's report. He said:

Server traffic in 2006 rose 25 percent, to 24.4 million page views.
Google removed an erroneous listing in its "local results" search that showed a phone number for the Department of Medicine when users searched the term "university hospital san antonio." This is the second time in a year that a university department has been victimized by Google search results.
He welcomed any comment on the product BrowseAloud, which enables web pages to have audio and "read" themselves to users. The members recommended having a second demonstration period, enlisting the Faculty Senate and Academic Council, and seeing what the final price would be for all subdomains.
The university branding and marketing campaign had convened about 10 focus groups of employees who responded to questions about the nature of the university and how it should be perceived in the community.
The Office of External Affairs has decided to take a larger role in the university web portal, and would supply content for the introductory page of the portal.

In new business, Mr. Barrett asked for suggestions about handling domain registrations for non-uthscsa.edu domains. He said the university hosts 20-30 outside domains, which generally are for professional organizations and associations. There is considerable trouble changing a domain's registration if its primary contact leaves the university, Mr. Barrett said. The registration specifies DNS servers, and contains billing and contact information. Domain owners use their e-mail address and personal password to get access to the main registrars, GoDaddy.com and Network Solutions. If the primary contact leaves, Mr. Barrett said, it takes extra work to prove to the registrar that someone else should have access to a domain's account. After some discussion, the group suggested that the owner of any site using the university to host its domain should be required to provide the webmaster with the username and password needed to access the site's registration.

In other new business, the group discussed how well various media worked during the icestorm and subsequent campus closure Jan. 16-17 in San Antonio. Visits to the "campus status" weather-closure page rose sharply, from an average of about 30 page views a day on a normal day to 9,366 and 8,255 page views, respectively, for the two days of the storm. The consensus:

It was quicker and easier to read about the campus closures on the university homepage than the mass e-mails sent to the staff and students.
Orientation for new students and employees should include mention that the university homepage will carry all official information about any campus closures.
The closure announcements need larger, more prominent play on the homepage. The group suggested a crawl or replacing an element on the page to give the announcements larger display.

Mr. Barrett said he would forward the comments to Mary Etlinger DeLay, chief communications officer, and develop some sample homepage designs with more prominent play for closure notices.

There was no other business, and the meeting was adjourned.

-- Minutes prepared by Jim Barrett
-- Approved Feb. 21, 2007