CFR Web Advisory Committee Minutes
November 15, 2007
Attending: Diemer, Lutz, Mehlin, Morrison, Panza, Paul, Trudeau
Absent: Moskal, West
The numbers below correspond to the numbered items on the agenda for this
meeting.
1. Committee members are:
Jon Diemer (chair) Information Manager/Webmaster
Jim Lutz
Graduate (PhD) Student/former IT professional
Tracy Mehlin
Information Technology Librarian, UWBG
Marc Morrison
Information Technology Director
Monika Moskal
Assistant Professor
Jeff Panza
Undergraduate Student (senior)/former IT professional
Cecilia Paul
Communications Director
Michelle Trudeau
Student and Academic Services Director
Steve West
Professor/Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
2. We discussed the present state of the CFR website and some history, and agreed
that it is inadequate to meet our needs, and that rather than rehash what’s wrong
with it, we should move forward to make necessary improvements.
Jim noted that this is not a “minor” redesign as Jon had indicated in the agenda, but
rather a large project that will need to be supported indefinitely beyond the initial
redesign and implementation of the new site, for which planning must be done to
ensure that adequate resources are available. We all agreed that this is true, and
also discussed the challenges of getting faculty and others responsible for content to
keep their parts of the site up to date. Also, the new site must be tested in all the
current popular browsers, including Windows Internet Explorer, Mac Internet
Explorer, and Firefox.
3. We recognized that it is important that the developers at UW Publications Services
make every effort to build our website to be maintainable over the long term by CFR
personnel. Jon said that he had already emphasized this in his meeting with UWPS
last week, and that this will be a top priority.
4. The draft design presented by Jon was generally accepted, but committee
members will read it over and make comments at the next meeting or via email.
5. The following design criteria were agreed upon, in addition to the specs in Jon’s
document (in no particular order):
- photos should be included on most pages, but not necessarily videos (not yet,
anyway), and they should all have captions
- faculty photos should be up to date
- faculty and research pages should be kept up to date, and the list of faculty
members should be the first page displayed when a visitor clicks “Faculty” from any
menu
- basic page layout should be based on that of the UW Biology Dept.
- all documents will be in pdf format (NOT Word!)
- there should be a page that lists courses and has two links for each course: the
course website, and the entry for that course in the UW catalog (Jon has already
started work on this)
- no dropdown menus (because they cover other content)
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CFR Web Advisory Committee Minutes
November 15, 2007
- color scheme should be greenish/brownish (“earthy”), with some purple thrown in
where appropriate (Husky color, plus many flowers)
6. Those present agreed that Tuesdays from 10-11 AM would be the best times to
meet, and Anderson Hall is the preferred location. Jon will schedule a conference
room there through the end of January.
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