Projects and Accomplishments in 2005-2006
Web Central Home Page and Templates
In January 2006, ITS upgraded the UT home page and second level templates to comply with published guidelines on Web standards and CSS. Staff collaborated with the Office of Public Affairs on this effort, and produced a cleaner, better organized home page with minimal disruption to campus. The new design also decreased the amount of code in the home page by 20% and reduced the number of graphics loaded by over 50%. This reduced overall hits to the server by 10%. In addition, new XHTML Strict CSS templates were created, but installation of these templates was delayed to October 2006 to avoid conflicts with other upgrades. Feedback on the changes were positive:
"Amazing. I love it. I view this site a lot, and I'm excited to see the changes."
"I think its great. Definitely looks and is more technologically advanced. Hope you guys keep improving it."
UT Direct
The UT Direct Portal is the other major web presence managed by the team that manages Web Central. While no substantive user enhancements were implemented during the past year, ITS did discontinue the Imported Navigation Service, a hold out from the original UT Direct 2.0 upgrade. This remained unnoticed by most, which was the goal. The service was removed from more than 30,000 UT Direct users and generated fewer than 10 Help Desk contacts. Some major batch jobs were optimized behind the scenes, which reduced database calls in those programs by 20%.
Web Central and UT Direct are by far the most visible services ITS manages. In 2005-2006 the UT Home page and the UT Direct Home page received an average of 10 million page views per month, which is a 10% increase from 2004-2005.
PHP Configuration Changes
Several ITS groups coordinated two large PHP upgrades. In Fall 2005, the PHP Register Globals setting was changed to improve system security. In response to developer demand, ITS also coordinated an upgrade from Apache 1 and PHP 4 to Apache 2 and PHP 5. This major upgrade improved functionality, system security, and was well-received by the developer community. One Webmaster shared the following about the upgrade:
"Smooth as silk. That describes this entire process, from wwwdev to wwwtest to www with PHP 5, at least from my perspective as a client. Congratulations to you and your team on a very well-executed upgrade, and many thanks for communicating and responding to the needs of the developer community."
Download UT
Part of the mission is to make the UT Web an engaging place to visit. ITS collaborated with the Office of Public Affairs to produce screen savers and wallpaper for the Download UT site. Over 8,000 screen savers have been downloaded from the site in the past six months.
WebXM Quality and Security Scanning
WebXM is a scanning tool that reports on quality assurance and security issues on the Web. In Spring 2006, ITS implemented the "Issue of the Month" challenge to campus Web Developers to help them focus on remediation of particular issues identified through WebXM scans. Three specific and measurable improvements resulting from these challenges:
- Reduced number of our pages with broken links from 30% to 1% and reduced overall number of pages with broken links from 46% to 23%
- Deleted or updated over 5,000 old pages (greater than 24 months)
- Remediated over 6,000 pages to comply with Section 508 accessibility guidelines
ITS also implemented the AppScan Enterprise software to scan Web applications for vulnerabilities. 56 security scans have been created and numerous servers and applications have been improved as a result of these scans.
Metrics
Below are some figures that illustrate the usage of some of the tools and content we provide.
| Resource | 2005-2006 Usage | 2004-2005 Usage | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Web Guidelines. The Web guidelines provide recommendations and best practices for Web design and development on campus. In 2005-2006 new guidelines were written for use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and mobile devices. | 226,306 page views | 149,759 page views | 51% |
| Video Guidelines. Similar to the Web guidelines, the video guidelines present best practices for digital video on the Web. | 125,101 page views | 45,171 page views | 177% |
| Learning to Publish. Tutorial and help information for campus Web developers. New sections were created on Usability and Web design process and sections on MS Office, FrontPage, XML, and Server administration were retired. | 1.6 million page views | 1.6 million page views | 0% |
| Campus Maps. Online maps to help people find their way around campus and locate buildings. | 4.4 million page views | 3.7 million page views | 19% |
| htdig. This tool enables developers to create customized searches that are specific to their Web sites. | 560,000 local searches | 540,000 local searches | 4% |
| mobile.utexas.edu | 285,000 page views | N/A | N/A |
| Streaming Video/Audio. We work with ITS Systems to administer the RealMedia Helix server to stream digital audio and video in Real, QuickTime and Windows media formats. | 1.2 million views on over 7,000 unique media files | N/A | N/A |
| Cold Fusion Fat Cookie middleware. This Perl script enables Cold Fusion applications to authenticate with the EID system and the fat cookie. | 726,529 logins | 860,000 logins | -16% |
| UT Direct non-webAgent API. This functionality enables applications written in languages other than webAgent to use the UT Direct framework and templates. | 3.4 million calls | 3.2 million calls | 7% |
