EEB Webmaster

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Revision as of 15:38, 20 February 2007 by PaulLewis (Talk | contribs) (Improvements made to the EEB web site)

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The current EEB webmaster is Paul O. Lewis, a faculty member in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department.

Services provided by the webmaster

  • maintain the computer hardware and software for serving web sites maintained by EEB department faculty, staff and graduate students
  • create computer accounts for faculty, staff and graduate students wishing to create a personal web page or manage a course web site
  • provide password-protected access to specific course or project directories as needed
  • create and maintain the PHP programs that manage the database supplying information about courses, events, people and publications to web pages created on the fly
  • ensure that nightly backups are performed so that data housed on the web server can be fully restored in the event of hacker intrusion or hard disk failure
  • maintain a second server mirroring the main server so that in the event that the main server goes down a replacement can be put in place within minutes
  • Note that creating web pages for individuals is not part of the job description of the webmaster

Improvements made to the EEB web site

  • Static web pages were replaced by PHP-driven dynamic pages that utilize information supplied by a MySQL database to ensure consistency and accuracy of information (the old web site often had conflicting and/or out-of-date information about courses and people because in order to update information, numerous static web pages had to be edited)
  • Administration pages were created allowing Kathy Tebo and Jen Murphy to easily update the database. Kathy manages information about people, events and publications, whereas Jen manages information about courses
  • The EEBedia was created in January 2007 to allow easier creation and editing of web pages. The Central Authentication Service Wikipedia:Central_Authentication_Service CAS was implemented for authenticating users. This allows authorized users to login using their UConn NetID, removing the need to remember yet another username/password combination, and has the additional benefit of preventing vandalism (a common problem with Wikipedia). This is the first such "CASsified" Wiki to be created on the UConn campus.