Update of Humanities Sites

Analysis of current content and proposed new structure for Humanities site, with particular emphasis on targetting all and only relevant information to each of three audiences: students, faculty, public/alumni

deadline moved to Feb 12 to allow for meeting with Jennfier and Andrew a few days earlier

INITIATION:
Dean Rippin's request

OBJECTIVES:
Goal is to update the website for the Faculty of Humanities to ease maintenance and to optimize the content and structure for each of three specific audiences

PARTICIPANTS:
Andrew Rippin to set objectives and review prototypes, Jennifer Lefler to review for maintainability as she'll be maintaining the content of the site.
Robin Sutherland of web coordinator's office providing templates for UVic standard site.
Stewart will take those templates and create site within them to meet objectives. Will also use project to become familiar with the templates and with the Contribute editor, specifically testing Contribute's abilities with php. Content similar to current, but updated where necessary and centralized where possible.

COMMITMENT:
Andrew Rippin and Jennifer Lefler already maintaining current site (using Contribute) and intend to continue to do so as much as possible.
Jennifer and Andrew willing to apply their current knoweldge of content editing to this new site and to learn enough to do that.

TECHNOLOGY:
Based on UVic standard template, though may be modified to support php includes.
Site will be hosted on unix.uvic.ca

FUNDING AND RESOURCES:
HCMC time and resources out of normal operating budget.

MILESTONES AND END OF THE PROJECT:
Analysis of content and proposed new structure: end of Dec 06
Research into Contribute and how best to use it for this site: end of Dec 06
Prototype approved: end of January 07
Completion of site: end of February 07
Training on maintenance of content: March 07
Likely target date for end of project: March 2007

CRITERIA FOR CESSATION OF PROJECT:
In the unlikely event that the web coordinator announces new templates during the course of this project, this project will be suspended to determine which templates to use.

FIT WITH EXISTING WORK:
Will allow Stewart to become refamiliarized with templates and in better position to comment on needed changes for new templates
Will allow Stewart to become familiar with capabilities and limits of Contribute, and with writing pages (in whatever editor) that are amenable to content editing in Contribute

Met with Andrew Rippin on his requirements for the Humanities website:

• maintain 3 target audiences
• target information more precisely at each of three
• scope of current content about right
• site was based on UVic templates but a lot of bits and pieces have been added, making maintenance difficult
• use templates for new site
• investigate centralizing blocks of information (possibly php) in way compatible with DW/Contribute
• Aim for new version completed by Mar 31, 2007

Having problems getting templates from Robin Sutherland, once I do I'll investigate how they support modularization themselves and with php, and will see how DW/Contribute deals with php.
Also need to go through current content and work out how to reorganize it suitably

Went through Humanities site to find content, structural and presentation features and issues in preparation for meeting with Dean Rippin. Made notes and questions to ask Dean, and am as prepared as I can be with one exception: Still no word from Robin Sutherland on providing the UVic standard templates. I had hoped to look through the templates before meeting with the Dean, but that doesn't look likely now.

After a couple of emails back and forth, met with Robin Sutherland:
- he will send me templates later this week
- he wants me to participate in reviewing new design for templates
- CASS is setting up a "Web Services" office with campus-wide scope, currently has 3 staff. Robin said it would interact with the Faculty support team, and the central communications office and would be doing the redesign.