You Tell Me

• What makes up a Web site? What components are needed?

Hardware

• You need a computer that will act as a server.

• That computer can be a UNIX or NT machine, a Macintosh, or a Windows machine.

• It should be powerful, fast, and dedicated to the purpose of being a Web server. It should perform no other function.

• Macs and Windows servers are easy to set up and many new publishers are tempted to do just that.

• Often, however, the publisher selects a machine that is not up to the job, or the publisher lacks the long term commitment to run a server.

Software

• Web server. There are dozens of Web servers available today on many different platforms.

  The UT central server runs both the NCSA server and the Netscape Commerce Server, which we will use for secure transactions. You will find the secure server at:

  https://www.utexas.edu/

  Please note: You are hearing the first public mention of the secure server.

  How can you tell that it's a secure server?

  What does a secure server protect?

• Web server software is not the last piece of software you need. It's the first.

• You need programs for forms and maps. You need statistics reporters, content indexers, and link checkers.

• Running a Web server is a full-time job. Do not undertake it lightly.

Network

• No Web server is an island. The server must, of course, be connected to the Internet.

• Or, if it is a restricted-access server, it must be connected to some internal network or Intranet.

• The size of the pipe connecting the server to the Internet will influence or even limit the speed and responsiveness of the server.

Content

• No one visits a contentless Web site. At least not more than once.

• A successful Web site is a site with a great depth and breath of content.

• The quickest way to maximum content is to have as many people, content providers, contributing to the Web as possible.

• At UT Austin, we are lucky to have thousands of people in hundreds of departments contributing to the university's Web.

• Early days were loose and free. Controls are tighter today, but still allow great freedom.

Support

• If you want lots of people contributing to a Web, you must support them.

• No other university I've seen has the mix of support services that we have here at UT Austin.

Users

• There is no point publishing content if there are no users reading it.

• Users must of course be connected to the Internet. This is not a problem.

• At UT Austin, there are more network-connected computers than there are telephones.

• At UT Austin, over 26,000 people have TELESYS accounts, for access to the Internet from home.

• In the U.S., there are over 10 million people connected to the Internet through online services, such as America Online, Prodigy, and CompuServe.

• Millions more are connected through one of the over 3,000 Internet Access Providers worldwide.

• For example, Netcom has over 500,000 subscribers, and AT&T has over 300,000 on a service that is only 6 months old.

• In 1995, the UT Austin home page was connected to 2,503,271 times.

• In 1996, that figure was surpassed on 9 July. As of 29 July, the home page was connected to 2,758,213 times.

• UT content is being read, again and again.