User Interface Group
Staff web redesign project
Goals:
- To make the staff web site more accurate, navigable, and up-to-date
- To clarify responsibility for managing the staff web as a whole and for individual sites and pages.
- To make these improvements without creating a major time-consuming project for anyone.What will stay the same:
- Use our regular methods for web authoring such as Dreamweaver, etc.
- No strict guidelines or templates (because the staff web site doesn't need to be as strict or formal as the public web)
- Use Athena space for storing pages.
- Pages are open to the world by default. A few pages that need to be private will be protected with MIT certificates in the usual way.What will change:
- A new home page with a new URL
- Managed by User Interface Group and the Web Manager
- New server
- Guidelines for ownership and responsibility for pages
- More proactive updating and removal of old pagesTimeline:
- Flexible, so we can adjust around other big projects
- Hope to go live with new staff web in September, with cleanup to continue until January 2007
Implementation plan:
- Announce upgrade plans to staff. (December 2005, with a reminder closer to the time the work begins)
- Contact staff about moving their existing pages to the new server during a predefined time period. (instructions go to staff in August 2006; window for moving pages to new server August – September 2006)
- Brief informational meetings during this period via Web Contacts meetings and at least one brownbag lunch ( September 2006)
- Make a new home page (project led by User Interface Group, with input from interested staff). (Page to be completed by Sept. 2006)
- Distribute new guidelines. (Sept. 2006)
- Go live with new site (sometime in Sept. 2006)
- Put a redirect file in place on Macfadden to point old URLs to new URLs for a few months (since many pages are linked from all over and people need time to update links). (August - Sept. 2006)
- Include a page on the new home page that links to old sites that we want to keep around for a while, but aren't being actively updated.
- After some time has passed and we've had time to live with the new arrangement, delete the old files from Macfadden. (freeing up lots of space on Athena) (January 2007)
- Identify things that got overlooked during the initial move, identify the old sites we want to keep around but aren't being actively updated, and at the very end, get rid of
everything else. (May 2007)
Plan for maintenance
- Web Manager and the User Interface Group have overall responsibility for maintaining the staff web site
- When the need arises for a new area on the staff web site (for example, for a new committee) people will be asked to complete a web form, indicating who is responsible for the site and how long to keep its contents
- STS staff will receive the form input, set up new directories and assign permissions for uploading files for new people and groups.
- At least once a year, STS will update the home page to remove links to old sites and move them to the "old" directory or delete them.