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
Advantages
If 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
Disadvantages
Lag 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?
Scaling
Traffic
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 are
Simple
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 process
Menen would send out the e-mail
I would add it to the news
Caused delay problems
Now Menen uses a form in Portal
Sends 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 audiences
Prospective 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 Hand
tail, head, cat, less, more, etc…
grep
awk / gawk
sort, uniq, wc
Automate
Custom 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 step
The development of a medium sized website involves
many other aspects
Large website share similar challenges but add
hardware complexities and cost of mistakes is much
higher
Best way to learn is to get out there and do it
For more information visit
http://www.cs.dal.ca
http://aboutawebmaster.com