Minutes (Feb. 7, 2008) Web Advisory Committee

Present: Dr. Nedal Arar, Alan Miller, Brian Bell, Dr. Barry Norling, Heather Cura, Dr. Robert Badgett, Dr. Keith Krolick, Lynda Howell, Roseanne Hurst, Doug Hartzler, Rene Torres, Tim Presley, Dr. Ivon Foster, Dr. Christine Burke, Kat Myers, Jim Barrett and Mary Yanes.

Dr. Nedal Arar, the chair, called the meeting to order. Committee members approved the Jan. 3 minutes.

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

• Web traffic on the two institutional servers rose 43 percent in January, to 2.7 million pageviews, over the same month in 2007.
• A new version of the campuswide calendar is being prepared for production on June 1. He said the calendar would provide RSS feeds that contain event listings. Schools and departments would be able to include the feeds on their web sites. The feeds update every 24 hours. The calendar is being integrated with the software system used to reserve rooms so users could reserve space and post to the calendar in one step.
• An upgrade to the Microsoft SharePoint server software is being considered by the Systems and Network Operations Department. Mr. Barrett said there are 23 SharePoint sites on the institutional server. Dr. Arar and Tim Presley remarked that they have had good experiences with SharePoint.
• Public release of the new Faculty Profiles web site is expected by the end of February or in early March. Mr. Barrett said the site would list the research interests of faculty members, and give web sites the capability of displaying a directory of faculty members by department or school. Dr. Ivon Foster said there are plans to create teaching profiles for faculty at a later date.
• The larger of the two institutional web servers will be replaced in part to handle Microsoft .NET 2.0 scripting. The existing server is unable to handle scripting beyond version 1.0.

The webmaster's report led to discussion of two additional topics:

1. Dr. Barry Norling said he would like a web-based inventory of research equipment available on campus. Dr. Arar said she thought Dr. Victoria Frohlich of the Office of the Vice President for Research may be making such a list. Mr. Barrett said he would contact Dr. Frohlich.
2. Dr. Robert Badgett said he had a way to combine the search function of the two separate directories of students and faculty-staff members. He said it required .NET. Lynda Howell said she thought she could write a script that would do the same but without the need for .NET. She said she would send it to the group.

In old business, Mr. Barrett said a mock-up of a redesigned university homepage had not been submitted by the vendor. Rene Torres of the Office of External Affairs said he expected the mock-up soon and would notify the committee. Dr. Foster asked whether the accompanying style guide had been approved. The guide is still being edited, and has not become official, Mr. Barrett said.

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

-- Minutes prepared by Mary Yanes and Jim Barrett

-- Approved March 6, 2008