Updates for the following areas:  

• FDMS rebuild   
• Project portfolio   
• FAQ makeover

New items:   

• Section Management Tool   
• www2 application migration

FDMS rebuild

The FDMS hit a snag on the administrative front. Something about paperwork for a part time employee no being finished yet, I don't really have any information in that area; but most work on the FDMS has stopped until the paperwork goes through.

Project Portfolio

After sending out the inital email calling for projects a few weeks before the last blog entry and not getting any responses (about a month and a half or so), I suspended work on this project since there didn't seem to be any interest. We'll hopefully get another chance to pick this up, maybe something this summer.

FAQ makeover

This was finished and lauched before the holidays. You can view it on the DELTA FAQ page.

Section Managment Tool

We are currently revisiting the user interface and design of the SMT. No news quite yet as there have been some complications in moving the APP to development space for testing.

WWW2 migration

There was a message from sysnews last week sometime that our www2 space was going away. Since we have a fair amount of applications that live there, they all have to be migrated to the new DELTA app directory (if we want then to work). Some applications that need to be moved are: filesys, infofacts and ideagrants.

That's all i have for now.

with ease,
tim

For the past week DELTAweb activity has included:

• FDMS rebuild 
• Project portfolio 
• FAQ makeover

FDMS rebuild

1. remove, by hand, all the broken dreamweaver template code 
2. sync up all header and footer information 
3. sync up all the navigation 
4. clean the table codes of all inline styles 
5. upgrade to XHTML 1.0 
6. remove all layout tables 
7. convert to CSS layout 
8. check everything 
9. implement agreed upon design and UI changes

I'm currently working through steps 4-7, going at a pretty strong pace; the admin section is the largest, and consuming most of my time right now. Every once in a while my eyes get blurry from all the code so if anyone in the FDMS sees something that looks wrong or messed up, please let me know. I have the majority of the site converted to CSS layout and have removed most of the tables.

Project portfolio

We sent out an email as a call for project submissions for this a few weeks ago, didn't get any in return. So we sent out a reminder email to department heads yesterday. Hoping to get atleast 10 before we start development.

FAQ makeover

This is just a quick conversation I had with Charlie about making the FAQ section more efficient. We've been gathering search data in here for a couple month now. Hoping to release a beta version of the FAQ browse function by next friday.

*pardon any spelling errors*

with ease,
     tim

For the past few weeks DELTAweb activity has included:

• Project portfolio
  
• FDMS rebuild 
• vista.ncsu.edu upgrades

Project portfolio

We had a kickoff meeting for this project a few weeks ago that went pretty well. The goal of the meeting was to set a timeline and a template the could be used to gather content.

Both goals were met and then we took to template and sent it out to managers of the various DELTA sections and are hoping to get content back to populate the portfolio by mid-January. If not, we will have to site down and re-evaluate the project.

FDMS rebuild

I've been spending the majority of my time in the FDMS cleaning code, bringing it up to current web/accessibility standards and revamping the front end. This is my current agenda with the FDMS: 

1. remove, by hand, all the broken dreamweaver template code 
2. sync up all header and footer information 
3. sync up all the navigation 
4. clean the table codes of all inline styles
5. upgrade to XHTML 1.0 
6. remove all layout tables 
7. convert to CSS layout  
8. check everything 
9. implement agreed upon design and UI changes

So that's the whole process I have ahead of me right now, it's doing pretty smooth so far and I don't see any large road blocks in the way. I'm working hard on this and hope to have it finish....maybe february? But I'll keep posting and letting everyone know where I am in that list.

vista.ncsu.edu upgrades

The first thing I did when taking over the "VISTAweb" (as I call it) is, I went through all the code and cleaned up anything that wasn't necessary (mostly things like: <p> </p>). I also removed some extra div tags I had added in early development stages, improved accessibility with super-clean semantic markup and using a <body> ID to tag the site as "vista-ncsu-edu" for custom user style sheets.

After all that was done, I synced up the navigation, did some image optimization which reduced page load time by about 2-3 seconds (doesn't sound like a lot but 20,000 hits a day is quite a load on the server, so every little bit helps).

The last thing that was done to the vista web site was an announcement manger interface. The announcement manager lets anyone (who we give access) to add/delete announcements on the vista homepage and it gets fed into an RSS feed for students/users to subscribe to. Hopefully this will cut down on site hits-per-day for anyone who just checks the announcements.

OK, I think that's all I have to today, I know it doesn't seem like it, but I AM trying to post on here more often, it's just been really hectic lately. :o)

*pardon any spelling errors*

with ease,
  tim

Current activity

Currently on the DELTA website the majority of the work has been lumped into getting the new FDMS up and running. Other areas of activity are the Marketing page and the Staff resources.

Marketing

All branding information has been moved from http://delta.ncsu.edu/about/departments/marketing/ to http://delta.ncsu.edu/about/branding/ in a further attempt to centralize content and cut out unnecessary pages buried within the site. So, right now, the DELTA branding and DE branding live on the branding page rather than in the maketing department directory.

Staff resources

I removed the user lookup tool and replaced it with a link to the people section, since they serve the same purpose. Also, there was a remedy solution form link added to this page a couple weeks ago that I forgot to mention

FDMS

The front end development for the FDMS is finished other than some CSS tweaks which will be done once the back end is completed and I run it through my browser testing suite [Firefox(PC), Firefox(MAC), IE6, IE6, Opera 9, Netscape 8, Safari 3(PC), Safari 3(MAC)]. After that we should be able to launch, hopefully it won't break and people will like it.

other than the usual change requests, thats about it. We're trying to fine-tube the FAQs too.

With_ease,
Tim

Current activity

Currently on the DELTA website we have been working on the related resources section for a couple weeks now and it's being reviewed by the team and should be progressively launched monday -> wednesday of next week, so look for that soon.

At this stage of the related resources it is made up of 2 sections:

   
1. current workshop offerings
   
2. faqs related to the section of the website you are currently in (keywords: teach, learn, help, distance, vista, tools, news, delta)

There was a 3^rd section for service that got temporarily dropped because we don't have any dynamic content for it. It was basically all help links and we werent sure how to visually separate it from the active area. There's also been a light push lately to to do some LearnTech branding (an icon) for the website

FDMS

We are redesigning/realigning the FDMS to make it more user-friendly and bring the technology up to date. Right now, progress for that is in early development, and we are hoping to have a fully functioning prototype in 2-3 weeks

Other stuff

There really hasn't been too much going on with the site lately, other than the regular influx of change requests, I've been busy developing the related resources and new FMDS.

Just as a reminder, if anyone wants their profile updated on http://delta.ncsu.edu/about/people/ let me know, because the profile editor tool isn't up and running yet (no timeline for that right now).

I'll try and post on this more
with_ease,
Tim

Current activity

Design templates added

Two CSS design templates have been added, based on the new ncsu homepage. They can be viewed at delta.ncsu.edu/teach/web_development/templates/ and are named "NCSU red" and "NCSU blue" at the bottom of the page.

CSS upgrades

CSS upgrade are a constant on the website, right now I'm still trying to catch all the external links and remove target="_blank" from when the decision was made to let the user choose whether or not to open something in a new window. As I find them I'm tagging them all with class="external" to produce the external site icon, this will eventually evolve to using rel & rev tags rather than classes which will mark the beginning of delta.ncsu.edu progressive enhancement.

Related resources content development

Related resources are down the right side of almost every page (example: delta.ncsu.edu/teach/) and we are currently in development of content that will related to the page you are on, rather than having static links for every page. There will be areas that have default content if no related material is available.

Currently the 'in-development' related resource categories are: 

• related/upcoming workshops 
• related FAQs 
• related teaching solutions

Standard form styles

A standard form style was implemented, you can view an example of this on the website feedback page. Nothing too special, but its nice to have a convention in place for new forms. I'm still catching some order forms that haven't been updated yet (they work fine, but jsut have the old look to them).

People section upgrade

This in reference to the previous post. Microformats were added to the people (employee directory) section of the website this week. I'm also working on a profile edit function.

This week in content changes (September 3 - September 7)

This week was calm for content changes with only 2: 

• Annoucement added to the homepage: delta.ncsu.edu 
• An edit to the Idea Grant college reviews page: delta.ncsu.edu/ideagrants/reviews/college_instructions.html

Until next time,
Tim

I added microformat capabilities to the people section yesterday, so if you use a desktop mail application that supports hCard formats (iCal, Outlook, Outlook express -- that's all I know of right now) you can download contact information for DELTA employees rather than entering it into your address book by hand. You can read up on microformats on their website at http://microformats.org/

http://delta.ncsu.edu/about/people/

with_ease,
Tim