Advice on Web Strategy

[Bill Jupp]

Apologies for cross posting.

Hi,

The library at Leeds University is at the stage where it is moving
from a small number of pages maintained by one person to a much larger
site (to include library guide, library catalogue and contributions
from library departments).  We want to get this change right so we are
looking for advice. 

The issues that seem to be problems to me are:

1) intuitive navigation for the user
2) maintenance of links etc by the webmaster
3) codes of practice for the contributors

1) intuitive navigation for the user

My thoughts are that we will have to come up with some logical map of
the information we want to represent in the website.  At any point in
the map the user needs to have some sense of where they are and have
the ablity to get back to a known point.  Methods for achieving this
will probably involve a different look and different menus for the the
logical sections within the site.  For example different sections
could have a different logo so that the user knows when they change
section.  The menus could provide links the fixed points in the
particular section (eg section home page, section index) and to known
points in the main website (eg homepage, gateway).  The intention is
that these logical points will remain fixed throughout the life of the
site (although the representational technology may change).

2) maintenance of links etc by the webmaster.

I have a nagging fear that we may end up with so much spaghetti that
any restructuring could cause collapse.  My thoughts for overcoming
this are something like this:  each logical subsection of the site
maintains a list of URLs that they guarantee to maintain, so that
other subsections may link to them with confidence.  This needs to use
some form of aliasing to allow sites to expand and still maintain
these URLS. In UNIX I would think that each subsection would maintain
a directory of UNIX links.  So, for example,  they would guarantee to
maintain for example the relative URLs.

library/openinghours.html#opening hours
library/charges.html#charges

In fact library/openinghours.html and library/charges.html would be
UNIX soft links that may in fact point the the same file, perhaps
libinfo.html.  However as the site grows, the person who maintains
this subsection may wish to split them out into separate files. They
would simply change the UNIX links to point to the new files and all
other sections that reference these URLS would not be affected. 

Although httpd server software will support aliasing, I believe that
it would need root access, so is not usable by web contributors.  I
would be interested in any thoughts on the mechanics of aliasing (what
about to externally referenced sites?) particularly on other
platforms,  for example what happens if we want to move aliasing on to
NT?

3) codes of practice for contributors

I am aware of the desirability of separating style from structure, and
also the need for us to decide what we want to be truly platform
independent (eg can be read by a braille browser).  I also think it is
probably desirable to separate navigation from content, so the
contributor just provides the content following partictular structural
rules.  This means that if the site is significantly restructured, we
would simply need to change the navigation bars which may be stored in
a single file.  What is the best method for doing this. I've heard
that server side includes have a large overhead, perhaps CGI would be
better (which means that every page would be come a CGI script - a
scenario which gives much greater flexibility (eg aliasing could be
done within the CGI script, so could intelligent collation of
statistics) but this may preclude the use of high level tools such as
RTF to html converters for complete document structures etc which
would simply create standard page links.  I am conscious of the fact
that tools will become more and more high level as things develop.)  

We are at the point where we need to make some long term decisions.  I
would be very grateful for advice, particularly from those already
managing large web sites with many contributors, but especially from
those with a crystal ball.

Many thanks in advance,  Bill Jupp

***************************************************
From:  Bill Jupp   
Edward Boyle Library - University of Leeds  
Direct Line 0113 233 5565
libwpj at library.novell.leeds.ac.uk