Webmasters Committee Meeting Minutes

December 12 , 2006

Present: Jamie Bethel, Tom Harmon, Jill Lenz, Erin Napier, Linda Tarnoff, Sallie Varner, Merry Wright

Erin Napier, Co-Chair started the meeting at 9:00 am

New Business

1. Should the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences (CVMBS) Web design guiding principals (as stated by Marty Fettman outlined below), be linked from the Webmaster Homepage:
   
   
   • We have certain standards for web page design that must be adhered to as closely as possible, and to facilitate that process, templates have been developed.
   • Our standards are based on important issues such as Accessibility, Style, Security, and Consistency so that as a public institution, we reach the largest number of constituents with a legally-compliant and straightforward approach to navigation and presentation of verified information.
   • We have responsibilities to maintain the security of our web sites, and especially the servers that support them.
   • Only authorized College employees who currently maintain web pages, and who have been validated for their webmastering duties, should be allowed direct access to our web pages - both the development server pages and the production server pages.
   • If an outside consultant is hired, we can share our templates, validate pages developed by the contractor, and load those pages to College servers, but the contractor should not directly conduct any of these activities on College servers.
   • ACNS maintains a development server, and outside consultants should use that server - not our own College servers.  College employees may contact Joe Voleski (13752) in ACNS to request development server access for consultants.
   • If any units are found to have given access for outside consultants to College servers without Computing Resources Group approval, the CRG is authorized to rescind that access.
   • If any units are found to have loaded non-confirming or non-validated web pages (especially regarding Accessibility, Style, or Security), CRG is authorized to remove those pages.  Several individuals in the College, most notably Jill Lenz and Tom Harmon, are available to assist in validating new web pages for essential features.

   Discussion followed. Jill mentioned these points came about after the Equine Hospital and Clinical Sciences Continuing Education hired an outside web designer to rework their sites and Dr. Fettman gave Jill these guidelines to follow to act as "gatekeeper" as she evaluated then published these sites. The committee agreed to having an additional link on the Webmaster home page left navigation to this information. Jill suggested we add Dr. Fettman's name and some variation of the date the email was sent (February 2006). Erin will post this update.

Old Business

1. The new green and gold color values designated in the new “communications toolbox” (http://ccs.colostate.edu/files/pdfs/CCS_GS-06-for%20print.pdf).
   
   Erin created an example of the current CVMBS redesign using the “new” CSU green in the hyperlinks, navigation bar, and <h3> headers; see http://www.cvmbs.colostate.edu/mip/index_test.htm. See screen shot below.
   
   
   Jill incorporated the new colors in the Emergency and Critical Care Medicine Web site she recently updated for Dr. Hackett, see http://www.cvmbs.colostate.edu/clinsci/ccu/. See screen shot below. This site includes the same changes as Erin did, but also includes changes to the images in the top navigation: Jill replaced the old "yellowy" CSU logo with one of the new "official gold" CSU logos (available at http://graphicstandards.colostate.edu/index.asp?page=download_logos_web), recolored the gold horizontal line and the caduceus image in Photoshop.
   
   
   Should we make changes to all our Web pages or leave “as is”?
   
   Discussion followed. The committee agreed the green fade behind the text was close enough, but everyone would have to change their Web pages to link to the new images after Jill updates all the unique images for the top navigation in Photoshop, specifically the gold horizontal line. It was decided that so much work this year was put into the new redesign, that this small change in look will wait until the next redesign.
2. Check out the new Student page at http://www.cvmbs.colostate.edu/cvmbs/student.htm and remember to send Linda Tarnoff links to your department student Web pages.
   
   Discussion followed. The committee agreed the information is now better organized to target different "Student" audiences (PVM, undergrad, graduate, etc.).
3. Election of new committee Chair. Linda nominated Merry Wright. Jill read off the duties of the Webmaster Chair, see minutes from September 2004 for the complete list. The nomination was seconded and unanimously approved. Jill agreed to continue to serve as Secretary. The committee thanked Erin and Tom for co-chairing this past year and wished Merry congratulations.
   
   Tom will give Merry access to the Webmaster page now and the College home page later. Erin will update the Chair designations on the Webmaster home page and send Merry the password to maintain the listserv. Tom will switch one of the listserv owners from Erin to Merry.
4. Side note: Tom mentioned the new web server scheduled to go live in January/February, will provide support for Cold Fusion, ASP, .Net, and server-side includes (No PHP). Tom said the move will be transparent to the webmasters and users, but a lot of work for the Computing Resources Group (CRG).

The meeting concluded at 9:50 am.

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

Minutes submitted by Jill Lenz.

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