Concerned with investigating appropriate methods to 'rescue' at risk web resources in a sustainable form.
Friday 14 October 2011
Work in expert's blog
Some of the work from this web sustainability project has been summarised in a recent blog entry at: http://blogs.northampton.ac.uk/expertsatnorthampton/2011/09/27/web-sustainability-its-gone/
The importance of sustainability of publicly funded web resources is considered.
This work has been supported by funding from JISC. The site can be viewed at https://sites.google.com/site/emknorg/ or http://www.web-sustainablity.net/emkn/ Survey about this material can be found at: http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=67775a0a-336f-45a5-a222-2f1a6615752c please feel free to fill it in or http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=cec22f0a-e467-4c15-a319-74d96bb8ed9d
Wednesday 12 October 2011
update: usage statistics for this blog
The most popular blog post was the previous blog about the usage statistics for this blog. I am not sure why this is the most popular but as it is, here is an update on that blog entry for the whole lifetime of the blog.
The figure above shows the summary of the usage overall over the lifetime of the blog. What isn't shown clearly here though is several people are coming to the blog from social network sites such as twitter and Facebook.
This work has been supported by funding from JISC. The site can be viewed at https://sites.google.com/site/emknorg/ and www.web-sustainability.net.
This work has been supported by funding from JISC. The site can be viewed at https://sites.google.com/site/emknorg/ or http://www.web-sustainablity.net/emkn/ Survey about this material can be found at: http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=67775a0a-336f-45a5-a222-2f1a6615752c please feel free to fill it in or http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=cec22f0a-e467-4c15-a319-74d96bb8ed9d
Monday 3 October 2011
Lessons Learned 2: Sustainability Challenge
The area of sustainability of websites should be an
important consideration for any funding that involves public money, both during
the life-time of the project and after it. Especially when government funded
agencies are being rationalised finding ways to keep the sites going even if
they are not updated further, they still provide a ‘snap-shot’ of the resources
at a particular point in time. This project looked at possible sustainability
options and has the following recommendations:
Some of this has been disseminated on a
posting on a University of Northampton blog of ‘expert opinion’ (http://blogs.northampton.ac.uk/expertsatnorthampton/2011/09/27/web-sustainability-its-gone/)
aimed at disseminating ideas from the
university to the wider community.
This work has been supported by funding from JISC. The site can be viewed at https://sites.google.com/site/emknorg/ or http://www.web-sustainablity.net/emkn/ Survey about this material can be found at: http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=67775a0a-336f-45a5-a222-2f1a6615752c please feel free to fill it in or http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=cec22f0a-e467-4c15-a319-74d96bb8ed9d
·
A sustainable web solution should be considered
for funded projects. There are a number of free options.
·
Google Sites is an appropriate solution if the
number of pages is small, the formatting of the pages is not too complicated
and it is a new web site.
·
Amazon is appropriate for both new and
previously developed material is being migrated.
·
Dropbox is as in the Amazon solution appropriate
for new and previously developed sites and is appropriate if only basic
tracking tools such as Google analytics are needed.
·
Sustainable web solutions proposed are good as a
back-up or archiving solution; but also can be used as the main site if the
domain name is redirected to the new site.
As with all sites (or perhaps even more so due to these sites not necessarily having support, but still useful), following good Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) principles are important. The site, we hope, is going to be use by others but the resources behind the site are likely to minimal. Following good SEO principles at least gives the site an improved chance of being picked up by the search engines. One possible advantage of the Google Sites approach is URL produced as standard is a little easier to interpret than some of the other techniques, which could have some benefits from a Search engine optimisation perspective.
This work has been supported by funding from JISC. The site can be viewed at https://sites.google.com/site/emknorg/ or http://www.web-sustainablity.net/emkn/ Survey about this material can be found at: http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=67775a0a-336f-45a5-a222-2f1a6615752c please feel free to fill it in or http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=cec22f0a-e467-4c15-a319-74d96bb8ed9d
Thoughts about using Amazon S3
Suitability
Amazon is appropriate for both new and previously developed material is being migrated. Again static web content is easier to migrate.
Integration with tools such as Google Analytics and WebMaster tools is relatively simple, especially if you start by adding Google Analytics first (you can use the Google Analytics account) to verify the web account.
Things to remember
Uploading files is relatively easy but I have been caught a couple of times:
Adding users
Other users can be given access to the website by using the permissions. This can be found by going to the list of buckets and right click to get permissions.
Add new permission and enter the email address of the new person with the appropriate permissions set. They must have an AWS account set-up first though.
This work has been supported by funding from JISC. The site can be viewed at https://sites.google.com/site/emknorg/ or http://www.web-sustainablity.net/emkn/ Survey about this material can be found at: http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=67775a0a-336f-45a5-a222-2f1a6615752c please feel free to fill it in or http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=cec22f0a-e467-4c15-a319-74d96bb8ed9d
Amazon is appropriate for both new and previously developed material is being migrated. Again static web content is easier to migrate.
Integration with tools such as Google Analytics and WebMaster tools is relatively simple, especially if you start by adding Google Analytics first (you can use the Google Analytics account) to verify the web account.
Things to remember
Uploading files is relatively easy but I have been caught a couple of times:
- First way, and the most embarrassing, make sure the links actually point to the links within the Amazon site. It is fairly easy when migrating the site across in one go to have links to the 'old' site.
- slightly less embarrassing is when you upload the files you need to change the permissions to make public. It can be done late by right-clicking on the page in the AWS Management Console and selecting make public.
Adding users
Other users can be given access to the website by using the permissions. This can be found by going to the list of buckets and right click to get permissions.
Add new permission and enter the email address of the new person with the appropriate permissions set. They must have an AWS account set-up first though.
Concerns
How long is it going to be free for?
This work has been supported by funding from JISC. The site can be viewed at https://sites.google.com/site/emknorg/ or http://www.web-sustainablity.net/emkn/ Survey about this material can be found at: http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=67775a0a-336f-45a5-a222-2f1a6615752c please feel free to fill it in or http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=cec22f0a-e467-4c15-a319-74d96bb8ed9d
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