UIS Website Creation and Hosting Services: Current Offerings and

Future DirectionNick Mattin

Jon Warbrick

Topics for today• Project Light • Website creation and migration

• Drupal • SharePoint • Falcon

• Managed Web Service (v3) • Managed Wiki • Other components • Discussion, networking

Where should we go with…• Content management systems?

• Web server hosting?

• Project light?

• Authentication?

• Lookup?

• Collaboration?

• Anything else…?

UIS Services

Project Light• 2/3 years old • Commissioned by the

Office of External Affairs and Communications

• Excellent for certain types of content, less so for others

• Does not support applications well

• Known missing functionality

• Can be evolved

Q – Where next for the house style ?

Drupal CMS for websites• Drupal 7 • Powerful, flexible but needs careful

consideration. • Requires time, knowledge, planning to get the

best from it. Power = complexity and cost. • 3 routes to a Drupal website

• Work with UIS to deliver something • Use the UIS profile to kick start your own development • Download the theme

Drupal CMS for websites• Project Light Drupal theme - github • Complete Cambridge Drupal Profile

• Comes with a large range of modules pre-configured

• ‘Lite’ Cambridge Drupal Profile • Minimal set of modules - useful if you want to

start to build your own profile • Regular updates to theme and profile

Drupal CMS for websites

More website services• UX Services

• Discovery studies - audience needs, personas, site owner requirements etc

• testing of site design.

• Information Architecture.

• Surveys.

• Card sorting. Tree sorts.

• SEO

YouwillbejoiningtheUniversityasanundergraduate intheMichaelmasTermandwanttofindoutwhatITservicesareavailabletoyouinadvance.

EFFECTIVENESS

88%

EFFICIENCY

2.6m

PARTICIPANTS

8REPRESENTATIVEPARTICIPANTCOMMENTS

Ohdear.Iamstupid.Ithinkthatyouaredrawntotheiconsinthemainpage.IsupposethattendstobethewaythatIwouldusethesite.Onelinktoit[audience key]isnotgoingtobeenough,ifitisgoingtobesomeonewhoisnewandwhostrugglestofindthingbutIdon'tknowhowyoucouldmakeitstandoutmore.

ThatwasmuchlesspainfulthatIthoughtifIhadhadtogothrougheverything.

Iamnotaveryin-depthpersonandifIwasgoingtoattendtheuniversityandlookedatalloftheinformation,inmyheadIwouldjustthink,oktheydothat,theydothat,theydothat.Idon'tthinkIwouldworrytoomuchwhatisandisn'tavailabletostudents,Iwouldjustassumethatitwas.

Thisisreallygoodinformationatthislevel,whetherittakesustosomethingusefulfurtherdowntheline,Idon'tknow.Peoplewhoarenewindon'tactuallyknowwhattheywantsoforthemtocometoasimplelistthatsays'thisisthebasics'thebasicstuffthatyoucanhave.Ithinkthatisreallyhelpful.

Completed with ease

SUCCESSPERECENTAGEOFPARTICIPANTS

0% 25% 50% 75% 100%

ATTITUDERATIORatio of participants’ positive and negative comments

Mean: 2.6Minimum: 0.79Maximum: 8.55 TIMEONTASK(Minutes)

12.50

Positive75%

Negative25%

0.820.798.552.072.314.311.130.83

12.50

Completed with difficultyFailed to completeScore not set

”

75.00

12.50

T6

“

USAGETRENDS

BROWSE

SEARCH

Low

High

UsabilityTesting

What did we learn from you?

1

• 52%abletocompletetaskssuccessfully

• Threekeyissuesidentified:

• Toomanytop-levelcategories

• Importantkeywordsmissingfromservicetitlesandnavigationlabels

• Servicetitlestoo‘technical’

• Anumberofcoreservicecategoriesoverlapandcanbemerged

Iteration2:

77%success

Iteration1:

36%success

TreeTesting,InformationArchitecture

Drupal CMS for websites

• Help is available for any stage of migration

• Drupal training is available (from us or there is plenty online and 3rd part companies)

• The UIS can help plan and cost any website development

Q – What do you need from a UIS offered CMS service ?

SharePoint• Powerful collaboration tool

• Excellent for document management, document sharing and collaboration

• Workflow, version control, document level security, audit-able.

• Drupal integration (very new)

• Consultation services and help available

• Doesn’t have to look like SharePoint

Q – What would you like from SharePoint ?

ProjectLight for SharePoint

Falcon• A multi-tenant content management

service

• Templated with the University House Style

• We provide and maintain the servers, OS and CMS

• You provide and maintain the content

• Currently about 350 sites

• Charged service, currently £100/year

• http://www.ucs.cam.ac.uk/falcon

Q – What do you need from a UIS offered CMS service ?

Managed Web Service• A multi-tenant managed Unix/Linux hosting

environment for your content

• We provide and maintain the OS and web server

• You provide and maintain the web content or application

• Currently in a state of flux…

Current Service (Aka MWS2)• Elderly and old-fashioned, Solaris-based

• Due for retirement, probably Summer 2016

• Apache, PHP, MySQL

• Unofficial 1MB filespace limit

• About 200 sites

• No charge

• http://www.ucs.cam.ac.uk/managed-web-service/

Future service (Aka MWS3)• In development, probably released early

2016

• Based on standard Linux distribution

• Almost all the features of the current MWS

• Environment like that in commercial web hosting

• Largely self-service

• Charged service, expected to match Falcon at £100/year

• https://wiki.cam.ac.uk/mws3/Main_Page

Q – What do you need from a UIS offered MWS ?

Managed Wiki Service• Multi-tenant Wiki service

• Based on Media Wiki (as used on Wikipedia)

• For University Institutions, research groups, etc.

• Raven authenticated

• Read and write assignable to users/groups/world

• All management web-based

• No charge

• http://www.ucs.cam.ac.uk/managedwiki/

Q – What do you need from a UIS offered Wiki service ?

DS Web• Web pages for individuals, societies and groups

• Part of the UIS 'Desktop Services' offering

• Standard Apache-based web serving of static files

• No charge

• http://www.ucs.cam.ac.uk/desktop-services/ds-web

Other website components

Electronic payments• Two systems:

• WPM - ‘online shop’. API. Can do repeat billing.

• eSales - API only. Simple. Quick.

• Contact Finance

Mapping with the University Map

• Embed live maps and other geographic information about the University into your web pages

• http://map.cam.ac.uk/

• https://wiki.cam.ac.uk/university-map/Main_Page

University Search• Add search functionality to

your web sites

• Search University-wide or on a configurable set of servers

• Includes most 'University only' content

• http://www.ucs.cam.ac.uk/web-search

Lookup• LDAP or web service API access

• Person, institution, and group data

• e.g person data for customisation

• e.g. group information for access control decisions

• http://www.ucs.cam.ac.uk/lookup

Raven• Identify users on your site

• Service include

• The Raven service itself

• Documentation and best practice guides

• Web server plugins and programming libraries

• Advice and consultancy

• http://www.ucs.cam.ac.uk/raven

Streaming Media Servive

• Upload, transcode and store video content on the Streaming Media Service

• Embed the content in your sites by iframe or using oembed

• http://www.ucs.cam.ac.uk/audio-video

TLS Certificates

• Obtain TLS certificates at low or zero cost

• Use these to protect your users privacy with HTTPS

• http://www.ucs.cam.ac.uk/tlscerts

Summary• Mailing lists (ucam-drupal-users)

• More information about this at:-

http://www.uis-cms-services.admin.cam.ac.uk/

And now your bit

Where should we go with…• Content management systems?

• Web server hosting?

• Project light?

• Authentication?

• Lookup?

• Collaboration?

• Anything else…?