[Csped] FW: PED Project Input From Dr. Lewis

[Chea, Nickolas]

________________________________

From: Mark Lewis [mailto:mlewis at trinity.edu]
Sent: Sun 2/3/2008 12:58 PM
To: Chea, Nickolas
Subject: RE: PED Input


Nick,
 
This is something that I haven't really thought about much.  To be honest, I don't care exactly what it looks like as long as it looks good.  The most significant aspects though are probably going to be having it be easy to maintain while looking good.  No one in this department has a lot of time to maintain our website.  That's a bad thing though because it is the first aspect that many prospective students see.  We need our web site to be functional for our students, but also be appealing to our potential students.
 
I think Howland as already thrown out the idea that there need to be different areas that are editable by faculty and students.  Students can create much better contant in some areas than faculty can, but obviously we don't want students editing all parts of the web page on a whim.
 
I'd also like to see a section of the webpage basically dedicated to prospective students who are trying to get a feel for our department.  A place where we could put information that we think is significant for prospective students to see.
 
For the whole page we should also have it so that stale content can be identified and removed.  Having something that tracks how long certain things have been there without change or viewings and notifies a system administrator if too much time has passed could be really helpful.  Actually, having it notify the primary user responsible for that content would be ideal.
 
So we'd basically have a system that works like user logins with groups in Linux.  However, each section of the web page would have an administrator set for it as well as a group of users that can edit it.  There might even be multiple administrators for some areas.  I like the idea of something Wiki-like, but for dealing with stale content and editing rights in different parts of the site we might want more functionality than a normal Wiki.  I'm not certain.
 
Feel free to pose follow-up questions.
 
Dr. Lewis
 
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Dr. Mark C. Lewis
Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science
Trinity University
San Antonio, TX 78212-7200
210-999-7022
mlewis at trinity.edu
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________________________________

	From: Chea, Nickolas [mailto:Nickolas.Chea at Trinity.edu] 
	Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2008 3:35 PM
	To: Lewis, Mark C.
	Subject: PED Input
	
	
	Hey Dr. Lewis,
	     For our PED project for Dr. Howland (as you probably already know) we have to re-design the CS department website.  As future department chair, Howland recommended that we consult you to find out what exactly you might be looking for in a new site for the CS department.  Although I would like to meet with you to discuss this in person, due to my current school/work schedule, I am not going to be able to be on campus very much before our next PED meeting.  So, if possible, could you give me an idea of what features/functionality you would be interested in seeing in a new site? Thanks!
	     Nick