UCLA Linguistics Website Maintenancep. 1

UCLA Linguistics Website Maintenancep. 1

UCLA Linguistics Website Maintenance

by Bruce Hayes and others

Version 1.0, Sept. 6, 2013

basics

1.Setting policy

The Website Committee normally has two faculty, two grad students, and three staff.

The content of the website is determined by the members of the Website Committee consulting with the department as a whole.

This document represents policy as established 6/30/13, i.e. by a previous Website Committee.

It also includes some allocation by the current Chair of site update tasks to department staff who are best positioned to do them.

2.Who does what work

Committee as a whole, guided by its chair: set policy

Graduate SAO: see individual items below

Undergraduate SAO: not presently a committee member, but see individual item below

Front Office Coordinator: see individual items below

Faculty and student committee members: you are free to edit things yourselves; just get your logon and password from the Technology Coordinator.

Technology Coordinator:

Implement individual changes suggested by committee members

Issue server access through CDH (logon, password).

Back up the site.

Help all department members with all issues involving the department site and the individual sites.

Solve technology problems as they arise.

Department Chair:

ask Department staff to take on web tasks, following the policies of the Web Site Committee

Various tasks mentioned below.

3.The Shallow Server and the Deep Server

We run our website using two different servers, both operated by the Center for Digital Humanities in the PublicPolicyBuilding.

The Shallow Server runs Joomla, an “easy-edit” web system, encompassing:

Most of the main Linguistics pages, including the home page

Some of the smaller stored files.

The Deep Server is a traditional web server, encompassing:

Linguistics items too big to fit on the Shallow Server, like dissertations

Currently, all individual web pages (faculty and grad students)

4.Making changes on the Shallow Server

Not so hard; basis is “what-you-see-is-what-you-get”.

Directions: on the web at:

If you don’t have password access for the Shallow Server, consult the Technology Coordinator.

5.Making changes on the Deep Server

You need a humnet logon and password, which the Department Coordinator can give you.

You need access to the folders on the Deep Server, which the Technology Consultant can give you.

Committee members should be given access to the entire Linguistics folder.

You also need a program to move things up to the server or down from it.

I suggest WinSCP:

It sets up parallel windows on your computer and on the server, drag files around to move them.

You may (or perhaps may not) need a simple web-page-editing program.

I suggest PageBreeze:

Use PageBreeze to change a Deep Server web page. A web page is a file with the suffix .htm or .html.

Things we try to keep up on

6.Preliminaries

In a way, it’s easy to see what needs to be changed: just browse the site and keep clicking on the links until you see something out of date.

Assume anything below is on the Shallow Server unless otherwise stated.

The following is a list, arranged according to the order of the menu items on the main page of the site.

7.People

list of current grad students (Graduate SAO)

list of alumni ( (Graduate SAO)

list of faculty (Department Coordinator, checking with Department Chair)

list of staff (Department Coordinator, checking with Manager)

occasionally: list of faculty in other departments. Committee Chair sends out an email to the faculty asking how this ought to be changed.

current office hours: (Department Coordinator)

Department committees: Department Chair, perhaps with staff assistance. (S)he needs to be pestered if this isn’t updated.

8.Graduate advising; also Prospective Gradate Students

These pages belong to the Graduate SAO and DGS; they jointly keep these sections up to date.

The First Year Adviser is a good source of information and might be worth involving in this task.

9.Undergraduate advising; also Prospective Undergraduate Students

These belong to the Undergraduate SAO and Undergraduate Vice Chair; they jointly keep these sections up to date.

10.Research

Lab sitesare the responsibility of the lab directors; Psycholinguistics might need a bit of intervention from time to time.

MA theses and Ph.D. dissertations — Graduate SAO.

This is a bit tricky; ask for help if not clear. After a few times you’ll get used to it.

Find the recent MA’s and Ph.D.’s, send email asking them to donate a PDF of their MA or dissertation to post. If they are shy, ask the Chair to help.

Weird part: document goes to Deep Server (where there is room), listing and link goes to Shallow Server.

Method: upload the document to the Deep Server, use your web browser to make sure it’s really there, grab the link from your browser, then put it on the Shallow Server.

For dissertations,upload the dissertation to the Deep Server at but put the link on

For MA theses,upload to but put the link on

11.Teaching

Course schedule — Department Coordinator

This is high priority: we need to let everybody (students/faculty/staff/DGS/chair) to see the most accurate and current version of the schedule so they can plan.

Post link to

Post schedule to the Shallow site. (Ale knows how to do this.)

Proseminars — Department Coordinator

These are special topics courses.

You will see them popping up in emails to ling dept.

Take their content and paste them into

From time to time, look at the course schedule and pesterthe faculty who are going to teach a 25x course to provide their descriptions.

Advice for new teachers — Department Coordinator

Every year in February, pester the Chair to edit this page, in anticipation of the arrival of new teachers.



12.Talks and Events — Department Coordinator

Location:

This page has special software, so the talks show up on the home page as they come up.

Some groups who run talks do their own posting.

Others ask you to do it — please check at beginning of every quarter how they would like to do it.

To find the seminar organizers: look at the Course Schedule for Linguistics 26x series.

There is a how-to page:

Trickiest bit: every Phonology Seminar must be titled “Phonology Seminar: Blah, Blah, Blah”, so when it pops up on the Home Page it will be labeled as a Phonology Seminar. And so on.

The correct detail format is:

Phonology Seminar: Bruce Hayes, “Some phonological rules in Axolotl”

13.Blog

Currently very ably run by Adam Chong.

After Adam leaves for a nice job elsewhere and stops doing it, Web Page Committee find someone new.

14.For Department Members

Link is at bottom of home page.

Benefits and UCLA Quick Links: every summer, Department Coordinator should ask Manager to read and suggest changes.

Faculty Personnel Process: every summer, Department Coordinator should ask the Personnel Coordinator and the Chair to read and suggest changes.

Committees and Legislation: Department Chair

Department Reference Library: Department Coordinator (have work-studies scan, post to Deep Server at

Book a projector. Department Coordinator. Still needed?

ensuring reliability

15.Backup — Technology Coordinator

Develop and implement backup system. Criteria:

at least four times a year

whole site, including Shallow Server, Deep Server with individual sites

backup in a simple, easy a way so files can be quickly found

Notify department so they know they are protected

16.Server troubles — Technology Coordinator

Whenever the CDH staff changes the servers, check carefully for collateral damage:

Are all file types (pdf, doc, xls, docx, exe, txt, gif, etc. etc.) being served? Make a list of these types so you can check them again whenever the servers are changed.

Are all texts being transmitted correctly (no replacement of certain symbols with funny little diamonds)?

Has the server suddenly been made case-sensitive? In the past when this has happened, we’ve found technical fixes, so we know they are possible.

Server disasters, like getting hacked:

Participate in the defense and repair

Make sure that post-repair all functions are ok, as above.

Helping with people’s individual sites

17.Inviting them — Web Site Committee Chair

Egg them on — every modern academic should make all their research product available on the web, to boost our department’s reputation.

18.Starting them up — Technology Coordinator

Make a folder on the Deep Server, give them passwords

Gives some startup advice.

Note advice page:

getting help

19.The Technology Coordinator

The one we have right now knows a heck of lot and talks to you about it in plain English.

20.Old Website committee members

Hayes probably has the most institutional memory.

21.This document

I hope you will revise it as things change, for the benefit of future committees.

I will post it at in the paragraph describing the Web Site Committee’s duties.