Removal of CE websites from Search

Some changes have unintended consequences...

With the makeover of the University website to the new outward-looking approach came another change that was only recently discovered. It appears that UCOnline unilaterally made the decision to stop indexing the comedu websites that hadn’t been migrated to the Web Content Management System. Inflect, the TSU site, and uctv are not coming up in searches using the University’s Panoptic Search engine.

The issue has been raised with UCOnline through the Director of ICT Services, and by the time you read this the sites should be restored in the search, and won’t be removed until they are migrated to the Web CMS (if ever: sites like Inflect will probably never be hosted by ICT Services so the Division will be required to host them as long as they are required to be hosted. Same goes for some of the more dynamic content in the TSU website and uctv.).

Websites on Divisional Server

More centralisation: Divisional websites.

Some 40 websites have been identified on the Divisional web server that will need to be migrated to the University’s Web Content Management System before the Divisional web server is decommissioned towards the end of this year. Any websites requiring specialised technologies to operate that are not available from UCOnline will be migrated from the Divisional web server to other Divisional servers as required before the server is decommissioned.

Divisional staff will be contacting people responsible for websites still active on the Divisional web server to see what they want to be done with their websites.

Divisional Web Hosting

Centralising of Web services in the University will mean the Division will no longer host websites.

The Division currently hosts a number of websites that are more or less to do with Divisional activities: some examples include the Inflect magazine, the University of Canberra Centre for Writing [website removed], and The People’s Voice [website removed].

With the transition of the Division’s web presence to a central server, the Division will no longer be in a position to host these additional services. It is proposed to cease hosting these web services in December 2006: where possible the Technical Services Unit will contact those responsible for the various sites and ask them to make alternative arrangements for the hosting if the sites are still required. UCOnline should accept hosting of most of the sites that relate to current UC activities.

Schools, Centres, and other units with Websites currently hosted on the comedu server will be moved over to the central server over the next year or so: the comedu server won’t be decommissioned until all the services are either transferred or closed down (no longer required or moved elsewhere).

Divisional Web pages to the Content Management System

Progress on migrating Divisional Web pages to the University Content Management System.

ICT Services has advised that the comedu Divisional Web pages (not the Schools, but the Divisional pages) will be able to be included in the UC Web Content Management System in the near future.

Any comments of the existing pages are welcome to inform us of how the migration is handled: whether the existing pages are more or less moved to the new system or changes are made in the structure and content.

One item of concern is the Majors and Minors section of the existing site. It will be difficult to update and transfer that part of the site in its present form so it may have to be dropped. University approved majors and minors are published on the University website, but it appears at this stage they can’t be displayed by Division. Is this a suitable alternative?

Web Content Management System

The University now has a Web Content Management System (CMS) to help keep UC web content current.

PVC Research and Information Management launched the University's new Web Content Management System last Thursday in the Council Room. The first site to go live using the Web CMS is the CELTS site, available at http://www.canberra.edu.au/celts/.

PVC R&IM made some interesting remarks at the launch about the need for Universities to be online for prospective students to do some research on where they might like to go: if you are not online, you don't exist for these cyber-generation students. One member of the Division's staff had such an experience in China in January this year when her Chinese hosts could not find the School of Education and Community Studies on the University's website, even though it was on the staff member's newly-printed business cards.

The University's Web Content Management System was built with the open source software MySource Matrix developed in Australia by Squiz.net. The system will simplify and automate the way web publishing and management takes place at the University: allowing content owners to edit their web pages in a browser-like environment rather than having to learn Dreamweaver or another complicated web-page editing system, or having to rely on others with web-editing skills to make the changes for them.

The Division's "marketing" websites will be transitioned to the system over the next year or so, but the timetable and strategy are still be determined by UCOnline Manager and the ICT Services team (ICT Services will take over the responsibility of hosting sites using the Web Content Management System, and will help with training, coordination and supervision of the sites hosted there).

TSU Team are aware of the future transition to the Web CMS, and, while our role in any changeover is unclear at the moment, any work that has been done on websites recently has been done in the knowledge of the new system coming in, and sites have been designed to transition easily to the Web CMS once this is required by ICT Services.