College of Engineering Web Solution Suite

In Planning

This is a planned project, bringing together some exsiting and yet to be developed tools and applicaitons.

This document is a roadmap from the current state of web technology provided and used by ITECS Web Serivces Group to a goal state we would like to reach by 2006.

Curent Web Services

Currently, ITECS' role in college web development is defined as follows:

http://www.itecs.ncsu.edu/services/ : ITECS provides web services to the College of Engineering and develops both the college's home site at http://www.engr.ncsu.edu and the Eos computing site at http://www.eos.ncsu.edu. ITECS also provides web space, tools, and technologies to support the many college and department domains and the web sites and pages they encompass.

http://www.eos.ncsu.edu/web/ : [...] Special college templates, created in Macromedia Dreamweaver MX, are available for use and adaptation. PHP is the supported scripting language, with a test server available for staging sites and testing scripts before live delivery. Google's University Search is the recommended search engine, and site statistics (through AWStats) are available to all web sites. Access control of the web locker and quota is handled through a locker portal web tool.

The college web infrastructure is designed to scale to a large number of users and employ cost-effective technologies, such as those from the open-source community. The web services built on this infrastructure extend and add to NCSU web resources; it does not duplicate them.

http://www.eos.ncsu.edu/web/maintainer.html : ITECS supports 150 administrative Dell Windows computers in academic departments and administrative offices throughout the college. The people who have these computers should know who they are, but if you have questions about whether or not your computer is a supported "admin desktop," contact ITECS.

Among the applications on this computer is Macromedia Contribute 2. Contribute makes it possible for web-site maintainers to update, add, and publish content to existing web sites without knowing HTML or using Dreamweaver. The Contribute application is a smart browser built on Internet Explorer and works in much the same way that Netscape Composer works. It can also be described as an ultra-lite Dreamweaver.

The services which the university provides that ITECS specificly currently aims to not duplicate are:

http://www.eos.ncsu.edu/web/ncsuweb.html

Wolfware - Course Web and Non-Web Space, File Submission, Roll Management/Grade Book?, Mail-Lists/Forums

Web CT - Course Web Space, Online Homework/Quizes/Tests, Grading/Grade Book , Calendar/Collaboration/Forums

Web Assign - Online Homework/Quizes/Tests, Grading/Grade Book , Calendar/Collaboration/Forums

Certain services that the university provides that ITECS augments include:

ITD provides web and non web space for organizations within the university with PHP. ITECS provides web and non-web space for free to college units, also with PHP.

ITD provides personal space for all faculty, staff, and students in AFS. This service is augmented for Faculty, Staff, and soon Graduate Students by Personal Space Lockers

ITD provides work space for courses. Web enabled space in in Wolfware, non-web space is elsewhere, botha re in AFS. The non-web space service is augmented by Course Workspace Lockers

inForm, ITECS' web services are incompatible with this tool because of certain security measures. ITECS plans to provide ENGRform as an alternative.

WRAP, ITECS' web services include WRAP support and authentification is handled through ITD web servers.

Services that neither the university nor ITECS currently provide include:

ITECS is starting to provide MySQL database services in conjunciton with PHP scripting for some special applications.

Goals and Objectives

• The ENGR Template for Macromedia Dreamweaver MX, Contribute, and Text Editors
  • Dreamweaver HTML Templates
  • Fireworks Graphics Templates
  • Addresses Accessibility Concerns
  • Webtop Image Gallery
  • Documentation
  • OSI Compliant (Open Sourced)

• Consultation/Production for Academic and Administrative Departments
  • Initial Consultation and Assessment
  • Working with a Departmental Contact to get content migrated
  • Image/Look Production
  • Post production checkups
    
• Google University Search
  
• Provided PHP Scripts
  • Templating and Printable Version
  • Town Crier Enhancements
  • Directory Listing
  • LDAP Lookup
    

Remaining pieces to be developed or finished:

• Provided PHP Scripts
  • Form Scripts
    • Inform Compatibility
    • E-mail/File/XML/DB
    • Multi-page Branching Logic
    • Pseudo Web App Capabilities
  • Web Stats Package
  • Web Indexing/Mapping
  • Content Management
  • Media Management
  • Graphics Generation
    
• Proactive Web Accessibility Assessment
  
• Web Forms/Application Services and Consultation
  
• Campus Community Building at the Student and Faculty/Staff level.