WEBMASTERS COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES

February 14, 2006

Present: Jamie Bethel, Tom Harmon, Charlie Kerlee, Jill Lenz, Erin Napier, Sallie Varner, Merry Wright. Guest: Susan Deines, Associate Dept Head for Undergraduate Education.

Tom Harmon and Erin Napier, Co-Chairs, began the meeting at 9:02 a.m.

New Business

  1. Jill Lenz - HTML based email. The Office of Development staff met with Carol Borchert, editor of E-Insight, to "pretty up" the notification e-mail that is sent off campus to donors and alumni. They requested that it include the College masthead from the college home page and photos to introduce each story to look more "produced". Here is a sample of the current plain text version with no images.

    Jill reviewed the scope of this project, tools needed, design samples, the approved design, and testing information with more details at http://www.cvmbs.colostate.edu/insight/2006/pretty-notification/project.htm.

    The "prettied-up" e-mail notification debuted with the recent February E-Insight issue and the group looked at it in "HTML view" in WebMail and in "plain text view" in Outlook. Everyone liked the new look.

  2. Charlie Kerlee - Links to NIH Pub Med website from faculty web pages. The group discussed different options to list publications on faculty web pages.

    For an example, on Dr. Morley's department faculty page, click on the link titled "Link to Publications" where Charlie used the link produced from doing a search for "Morley PS" on PubMed.

    Benefits of this approach are:

    1. the information is always updated, no need to track down current info from faculty who don't care if it's current or don't have the time to provide their updated information to the web developer
    2. no spell check needed
    3. less work for the web developer, they just have to do a search on PubMed, verify the search found the correct person, then copy and paste the link into the faculty page
    4. doesn't add volume to the web server by posting links vs. actual publications

    Merry Wright has an example of a faculty person who prefers all his publications listed and provides Merry with current information for updates, see Dr. Johnson's page. Erin Napier's MIP department faculty lists the most 5-6 current publications. Another option would be to offer a link to past publications if the faculty person desires and provides the information to the web developer.

    It was agreed that each faculty person may make their own decision on how to list their publications depending on content they make available to their web developer.

  3. Tom Harmon - Update from Executive Council regarding proposed CVMBS and Department top level page redesign. Executive Council liked the overall change of colors and buttons and the general look of the new look posted at http://www.cvmbs.colostate.edu/mip/reference/redesign/index.htm.

    Merry adopted the template for her ERHS department home page and many of the second-level pages linked from the home page. She is still working on menu links and doing some final testing. For her test department home page, she used an abridged version of their department mission statement, that is inline with the college mission statement, and linked student info in the text to the appropriate pages.

    Paul Maffey, Director of Development, requested a Development highlight link. Merry Wright mentioned she added an "online giving" link to http://giving.colostate.edu/index.asp?url=ways_to_give in her left navigation for the ERHS pages she reworked according to the new redesign template. Eventually this will link to a new giving page created by her department for ERHS-focused giving information.

    There was discussion on changing the top navigation banners for the four departments to delete the words "Department of" and allow the department name to stretch and accommodate the space horizontally. Sallie Varner asked if this change should be run by the department heads for their consideration. Merry said her department head was the one who requested it because their department name is so long and they want it to simply list their name like the Clinical Sciences's top navigation banner at http://www.cvmbs.colostate.edu/clinsci/.

    (After note from Jill: the reason Clinical Sciences does not have the words "Department of . . . " is my fault. The page is using a design circa 2001 when we had 8 departments prior to our reorganization to four departments in 2002. Clinical Sciences was the only department that retained it's original name and the upgrade in the graphic was an oversight on my part after generating all the variations for both pre and post-reorganization at http://www.cvmbs.colostate.edu/webmaster/style_guide/2004/topnav.htm).

    To do items:

    1. Sallie will get Dr. Sanborn's feedback as department head of Biomedical Sciences on removing "Department of" for departmental home pages.
    2. Jill will rework the top navigation banner for ERHS for now.
    3. Decide on migration plan and timeline to change pages to the new templates.
    4. Tom to decide on location to host 2 templates and 2 style sheets and accompanying images. On the development server to restrict bots from finding the pages or in a test subdirectory? For now they are at http://www.cvmbs.colostate.edu/webmaster/redesign/template2.htm and http://www.cvmbs.colostate.edu/webmaster/redesign/template_noflyouts.htm.
    5. Tom to decide on location to host pages in development. For now you can create a sub-directory on the web server in your own folder to play around with the new look. If you need any help converting to the new template, please contact Erin, Tom or Jill.
    6. Erin and Tom to rework the footer - font size is too tiny at certain text size view options in comparison to paragraph text font size.

  4. CVMBS Homepage Redesign – discussion and planning

    Susan Deines mentioned that prospective students have a hard time finding information on undergraduate programs. Currently, from the college home page the route is Academic Departments to MIP to Academic Programs flyout menu to Undergraduate Programs. Susan reports that many prospective undergraduate students have felt dissuaded from trying to find the information they need because it's not easy to find. The flyout menu on the MIP page is not obvious. The "Students" link from the college home page top navigation banner (first row) is heavily focused on PVM and does not offer a link to undergraduate information.

    Jill mentioned the college home page has always been organized according to the college's structure and maybe if it were organized by audiences (prospective students, current students, etc.) it would be easier to navigate. With this discussion came the desire to change more than the look, to change the organization of the college and department home pages.

    Susan has approached Ken Blehm about getting funding to help with the college web pages, possibly from an outside person. Susan asked the webmasters what they would want from an outside person that would help the most.

    The discussion resulted in needing someone skilled in the areas of planning and project management with a background in IT. We would love to have someone who would:

    1. organize, facilitate and gather data from focus groups representing various audiences inside (The Dean, administrators, department heads, career counselors, advisors, faculty, staff, research associates, webmasters, etc.) and outside (prospective students, their parents, the media, current students, peer institutions, etc.) to find out their navigation needs for finding info on our web site
    2. report these findings and offer recommendations for an easier-to-navigate "information architecture" of our college web site and departmental web sites
    3. perform usability testing after a prototype is built by the webmasters, report findings and offer recommendations for improvement
    4. be aware of compliance to the CSU Web Site Requirements, Guidelines, and User Responsibilities at http://graphicstandards.colostate.edu/index.asp?page=web_standards_guidelines and the CSU Web Access Policy at http://accessibility.colostate.edu/policy/webaccesspolicy.html and document the whole process and decisions made at each phase for future reference

    In the meantime, a meeting will be called before the next formal meeting to brainstorm ideas for what categories should be listed in navigation areas. Everyone is invited to participate.

Thanks to Susan for providing homemade Valentine's Day cookies.

The meeting concluded at 10:20 am.

The next meeting will be held on Tuesday, March 14 th, 9:00-10:00 am, W1 A/Z.

Minutes submitted by Jill Lenz.

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