Website Sustainability

About  Truly Awesome Tactics to Gain Traffic from Twitter - YouMoz - Moz : This post named above, written by  Nichole Elizabeth DeMeré , includes so interesting statistics such as 500 million tweets a day with 92% of the interaction being click links - so Twitter is a good social marketing tool for a sustainable website. If used well; the blog goes on to describe some of the basic considerations for doing this. My own personal opinion is Twitter is great for sharing information about the sustainable websites, don't be scared of using it. A lot of sustainable websites are not about making money, but sharing information and making sure the information is available; so sharing is a positive thing. I also link sharing relevant content whether your own or that of others, is vital (this was also #9 on  Truly Awesome Tactics to Gain Traffic from Twitter - YouMoz - Moz ) To read the blog post:  https://moz.com/ugc/truly-awesome-tactics-to-gain-traffic-from-t...

I have a variety of places I use when reading around for this blog but I would like to highlight the five best. 1. Creative Bloq ( http://www.creativebloq.com/tag/web-design ) In particular the web-design part of the blog. The articles can well written with a strong practical flavour, and written by practitioners for practitioners.  2. Moz.com ( https://moz.com/blog ) This is a three-in-one source from Moz and yes they are promoting their product but that is ok, they provide some insightful posts around Search Engine Optimisation and Social Media Marketing. Both are important for sustainable websites - if people can't find the site you have a problem. Earlier I described it as a three-in-one site, there are three blogs there all very much worth a read. 3. RazorSocial ( http://www.razorsocial.com/blog/ ) Again it is promoting services; but it does provide a nice collection of easy to read articles in a similar vein to Moz. 4. JISC The original project that started...

As an example of the ideas of web sustainability can be used for local and small charities: Hartwell Home and Garden Produce Show - a village produce show run entirely by volunteers:  http://hartwellproduceshow.weebly.com/ Principles - Free web hosting; - Easy to implement and relatively quick to produce; - Web skills are likely to be basic - no HTML knowledge - Easy to maintain - it must be relatively easy to give control of the site when or if the original person leaves. For more information on the tools being used:  http://websitesustainability.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/hosting-how-to-get-it-out-there-for.html

As a different spin on the idea of web sustainability, the link below shows examples of some of the sustainable tools being  applied to education: Educational Technology and Mobile Learning: 5 Excellent Tools for Creating Academic Portfolios : 'via Blog this'

A list of free web hosting advice postings including guidance on how to use some of them.:  Dropbox  (see: http://websitesustainability.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/alternative-hosting-approach-1-dropbox.html )  Google Sites (see: http://websitesustainability.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/google-sites-for-sustainability-week-3.html  ) Hosting options: http://websitesustainability.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/hosting-how-to-get-it-out-there-for.html Free tools: http://websitesustainability.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/the-best-free-tools-for-website.html Amazon S3 (see: http://websitesustainability.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/thoughts-about-using-amazon-s3.html ) Google Drive see  http://websitesustainability.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/hosting-on-google-drive-case-study.html

Previously I looked at using other tools    to host sites sustainably (or even free)  such as:  Dropbox  (see: http://websitesustainability.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/alternative-hosting-approach-1-dropbox.html )  Google Sites (see: http://websitesustainability.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/google-sites-for-sustainability-week-3.html  ) Hosting options: http://websitesustainability.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/hosting-how-to-get-it-out-there-for.html Free tools: http://websitesustainability.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/the-best-free-tools-for-website.html Amazon S3 (see: http://websitesustainability.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/thoughts-about-using-amazon-s3.html ) In this post I look at a real web site being moved to being hosted on google Drive as a case study of moving sites that need preserving on to Google Drive as a hosting option. 1. First step is to capture the static HTML files. We need to copy all the files we want, this has been discussed previous see ...

Another sustainable web hosting option: Host a Website on Google Drive - ProfHacker - The Chronicle of Higher Education : "Now, maybe I just hadn’t had enough coffee when I was working on implementing “site publishing,” but it seems to me that the instructions provided by Google are not as helpful as they could be. It’s actually pretty easy, so I put together what may be an excessively detailed, step-by-step guide for under-caffeinated people like me. (This guide assumes you already have some HTML content you’d like to publish. And, as always, be mindful of the stability and security–or lack thereof–in the cloud. )" 'via Blog this' For a  worked practical example of this approach for a live website go to:  http://websitesustainability.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/hosting-on-google-drive-case-study.html Related sites Article on Web Sustainability -  http://websitesustainability.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/article-on-web-siustainability.html Hosting – How to get it ou...

A new article has been published in  Ariadne  on the work done at the University of Northampton on web sustainability. Turner S (2012) . "Case Studies in Web Sustainability".  November 2012 ,  Ariadne  Issue 70  http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue70/turner   ISSN: 1361-3200 At the moment organisations often make significant investments in producing Web-based material, often funded through public money, for example from JISC. But what happens when some of those organisations are closed or there  is no longer any money or resources to host the site? We are seeing cuts in funding or changes in governmental policy, which is resulting in the closure of some of these organisations. What happens to those Web resources when the organisations are no longer in existence? Public money has often been used to develop these resources - from that perspective it would be a shame to lose them. Moreover, the resources might be needed or someone may ...

Just a quick bit, but a Alexandra (can find more at Alex's reflections ) talks about her time as a student and includes her work on the JISC funded  Web Sustainability project as one of the things that helped her career. 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

Ahsan Anderson has being working with Scott Turner from the University of Northampton on issues around Web Sustainability using a website designed to promote STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) outreach activities as the vehicle. The work is being funded through a  Nuffield Science Bursary .  The project has been in three parts: Investigating possible tools and approaches for web sustainability; Developing a sustainable website to specification. Investigating possible tools . Details of this are available through these blog posts Best free tools for website sustainability -  http://websitesustainability.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/the-best-free-tools-for-website.html How to get it out there for pennies -  http://websitesustainability.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/hosting-how-to-get-it-out-there-for.html STEM site The site was the first we developed using the principles of web sustainability. Developed and hosted using  Weebly  beca...

The final report for the web sustainability is now available from:  http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/563/2/EMKN_final_report_output4337.doc Project Summary: East Midlands Knowledge Network (EMKN) is an online resource which is at risk, due to the demise of regional development agencies, the imminent closure of the company upon whose server it sits and the closure of the East Midlands Universities Association (EMUA), who created the resource. However the information held on within the site (technologies, business services and facilities within EMUA’s institutions is valuable, particularly as face-to-face Business Link (BL) services are being axed and the government has indicated that the channel for publicly-funded business advice (information, advice and guidance) will be on-line. The site contains an image (“Tube Map”) that links to various parts of the site showing various service, this was felt especially important to keep. Therefore this project looked at options on how to...

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

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: ·          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. ...

1. Introduction The project started by looking at 'rescuing' a site (www.emkn.org) by copying content to a Google Site version. The advantages and disadvantages have been found for this approach, and some suggestions have come out of the project. 2. Why Google Sites? Google Sites (www.google.com/sites/overview.html) was investigated initially as a suitable platform for several reasons: • It is a freely available resource, allowing this approach to be replicated with other at risk resources. • It allows changes for individual pages or the entire site remotely by subscription • It supports native RSS feeds for: o Announcements pages o Comments o Recent site activity • It integrates with a number of Google-based tools (such as Analytics, Webmaster tools, YouTube, Google Docs and Picasa). 3. What we found? As each page essentially needs to be provide individually (producing templates of portions of the site help, but each page does need to be produced i...

Adam Ostrow: After your final status update | Video on TED.com Not really about web sustainability directly...but the whole idea about digital legacy. Taken from TED.com: Many of us have a social media presence -- a virtual personality made up of status updates, tweets and connections, stored in the cloud. Adam Ostrow asks a big question: What happens to that personality after you've died? Could it ... live on?

A  survey  of these features on the site  http://www.web-sustainablity.net/  was carried out. To get a sense of the areas of interest of the respondents they were asked to select the occupations that best reflects them. Managers, students and Other coming out the strongest. All agree that the layout was right for them. All agree that the navigation was easyfor them. All agree, for them, it was easy to find what they were looking for. When asked   Please add any comments or suggestions you feel appropriate on the navigation.    1. Find the site easy to navigate, easy to find the information that I am looking for, would be happy to see further devleopment of site    2. Material was easier to find and navigation flowed well. Layout clear and not cluttered with too much info. When you have selected the services menu it displays a further menu of the options available under services. It may be useful to also to display the further...