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Back to Social Science Computing Services Guidelines
Department/Committee Home Pages:
We offer two website plans to all department and committees.
- Plan A (SSCS Design and Hosting): The department or committee provides all of the images and text for a webpage designed by SSCS staff. Clients can choose from one of several standard webpage designs (see below). SSCS hosts the site on the university's main web server, maintains the site, and updates it with current material or images provided to us by the department or committee.
Any department or committee wishing to take advantage of Plan A should appoint a faculty member as an approving authority or "department publicist" responsible for submitting changes and new material to SSCS. Forwarding these updates is as easy as sending a current Microsoft Office file as email attachment to the technicians.
- Plan B (Outside Design, SSCS Hosting): The department or committee has someone else design and build their site. The site is hosted by the University's server to take advantage of the technical and marketing benefits of the University's web hosting. However, since SSCS staff is unfamiliar with the design and programming of these pages, we will not maintain or update them. Maintenance and updating are the responsibility of the department or committee.
Web Design Templates
The current web templates are:
http://social-sciences.uchicago.edu/
http://test.uchicago.edu/psychweb2/index.htm
http://test.uchicago.edu/psychweb3/index.html
http://anthropology.uchicago.edu/
http://history.uchicago.edu/
http://humdev.uchicago.edu/
The pictures that are currently used as matting and the links are completely customizable. We develop a new template or two every summer.
General Guidelines
Successful implementation and maintenance of a website depends on collecting content and updating that content regularly. Portions of the web site's content which change often should be reviewed frequently by a faculty member or staff.
Regardless of participation with any of the above plans, the Social Science Division may require a link to be prominently displayed on a department's web site to serve certain purposes. For example, a link to the University's Graduate Web Admissions system should be on the home page of every degree-granting program during admissions season.
Personal Home Pages
Many faculty members who want to update their individual web pages stored on a department's web site find that requesting changes can be a lengthy process.
There is however a recent development that will go a long way in solving this issue. Anyone who has an account on harper, the central UNIX machine (anyone, that is, with an email account with the university), now can create personal web pages and serve them automatically through home.uchicago.edu. Faculty, students, and staff members can create personal home pages, and have departments link to them.
The creation and maintenance of personal websites, however, is an individual responsibility. At present, the University does not provide tools to maintain personal websites. However, such tools have been proposed, and will likely exist soon. More information on this subject and Central Web Services can be obtained from nsit.uchicago.edu/services/web.html.
Instructional Web Sites
A class website simplifies many administrative activities and can enhance classroom discussion. There is a rapidly developing need for the use of web technology for instructional purposes. Due to the complexity of the work and limited web assets, SSCS is unable to provide a service to meet these developing needs. However, all faculty members have access to Chalk, a centrally-administered, web-based, class-management system based on software from Blackboard. (You may have seen advertisements for Blackboard in The Chronicle of Higher Education.)
If you should have any questions or comments, or if you would like to discuss ways in which to implement these recommendations, please feel free to contact Mike Zachar (mzachar@uchicago.edu, 5-5921). All websites hosted by the University must comply with the Acceptable Use Policy.
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