WML Tech Updates

In case you weren’t aware, the Vanderbilt homepage and top level pages undergo a major redesign every two years, with smaller design changes and updates in between. You can take a trip down memory lane here.

Basically the redesign crew, which includes the Office of University Web Communications and Creative Services,want to include more images on the homepage and pull more information from the VUCast (Vanderbilt’s News Network) and the recently designed University Calendar site. They are making the page more standards compliant, accessible, and stylesheet driven.  They also want to include more Web 2.0 technologies to meet the needs of our users.  Here is part of their philosophy in the redesign process:

As for the actual look of the new site, we’ve taken a cue from several newly redesigned sites on campus, such as Law, Owen and Admissions. Rather than recreating the wheel and then hoping other Vanderbilt sites will follow our lead, we saw what we liked in some current Vanderbilt sites and are following their lead. We’ve never striven for, or wanted, a uniform Vanderbilt Web site where every page looks exactly the same – that just doesn’t make sense at a large institution. But we’d like the various Vanderbilt sites to look similar.

If you would like to read more information about this process, view larger and additional considerations of the new homepage, or even subscribe to the feed from the blog that is tracking the web design process, please visit the Vanderbilt Homepage Redesign blog.

This month’s Spiders Meeting was standing room only.  Michael Martin from ITS (and formerlly of WML)  talked about the new Web architecture project ITS is doing.  They are moving from Solaris to Linux machines.  Helios, which is very old and slowly dying, is a file respoistory and what most folks on campus use, and the new servers are web servers. I don’t think that this will affect us here in Owen at all. Owen maintains their own servers.  Mike said that their estimated timeline is to have this project completed by March 1st, although he admits that is very unlikely since they are trying to let EVERYONE on campus who might maintain a website or user Helios  know that they have to migrate their stuff.

Vanderbilt ITS now has a blog server.  People can create their own blog on the new VUblog website.  I asked Mike if he was familair with the University of Minnesota’s UThink Project, and sent him information about it after the meeting.  I wanted them to be aware of the potential and possible escalating problems that could happen from creating a blogging service for campus use.

Jim Parker, VU’s webmaster, talked about the upcoming VU homepage redesign.  He said it is going to be a radical change from they cuurrently have, there will be more images, more stories, more events pushed towards the first and secondary level pages.  They are also paying close attention to serach engine logs to determine if that can help with usability.  If you have suggestions, feel free to forward them to Jim.  They also have a redesign blog set up (almost).  Creative Services will be doing the redesign and hope to have a reasonable working version by April.  Over the summer they will work out the bugs and by August when school starts have a totally new site.  Jim said that they are struggling with the 2nd level pages, so again, email him if you have ideas.

The Spiders group has a new blog!  Jim and others will be posting things to it.

There is a new University Calendar that launched last week.  It’s done using Sitemason.  You can add photos to events, subscribe to various RSS feeds from the Calendar (like academic, sports, etc.).  There are lots of ways to pull the data from it.  It should be much more helpful for users.  Questions about it?  Send them to Tim.

John B. also talked briefly about Camptasia and how it can be used. He also demonstrated using a nifty little Logitech ultravision camera that has a built in microphone ($114).  He talkaed about the new pricing for bulk orders.