Future Plans as of October 2004

Web Logs -- NetTracker

For years we have been attempting to get a campus wide solution for analysis of web log data. At present there is no systematic anlaysis of logs from all over campus. Logs from some servers are analyzed and some are not. This project will attempt to gather into a single database logs from at least the web servers with the handling the greatest traffic. The main server is probably about 40 percent with the Medical Center Server just slightly less. The product that will analyze these will be NetTracer from Sane Solutions. A demo version of this product can be viewed at NetTracker. Users of this system will be able to analyze just the logs for their particular site and will be able to customize reports. Hopefully this project will become reality the first of the year. Matt Hall from ITS has given his approval. Eric Hall and Jim Parker are heading up the project. Those of you running web servers will be contacted concerning getting a data feed for the project.

Possible search engine changes

At the present time we are in the last year of our two year contract with Verity for our Ultraseek search engine. Between now and the end of the contract in the summer we will be evalutaing whether to stay with Ultraseek, switch to the Google Search Appliance, or possibly move to an open source search engine, Nutch. Moving to the open source software would likely require more people time but would be considerably cheaper. Going to a more intelligent search enigine such as Ask Jeeves just is not practical at this time because of the number of hours required to make such a product useful.

Improvements in SiteMason Custom form tool

Tim Moses and the whole Moster Labs crew is presently working with another contractor to improve the Custom Form tool. One improvement that will be readily noticed is that this tool will be shareable like the other tools. The plan is to make the tool more flexible and also to make it much more friendly for use in actual surverys and questionnaires. At present the user can modify the tool to make it work for surveys but this requires an understanding of HTML. This requirement defeats the purpose of simplicity in SiteMason. Mary Dietrich and Jim Parker will be working with Monster Labs to insure that the tool will do what reserachers need. Whether the tool will include simple statistics is not know at this time. The improved tool should be availabe around the beginning of 2005

Additional tools for the web

The Office of Web Communications will be working with Office of Innovation Through Technology and ITS in an effort to make sure that tools for improving web sites like Blogs, Moo's and Wikis are available for the Vanderbilt community. At present we are using Moveable Type as our blogging solution. However since spam has recently become a problem with blogs there is the need to move to a newer version of Moveable Type which for the first time involves cost for instutites of higher education. Presently we have a couple of instances of enCore and open source MOO project running. At present there is no standard for Wikis. Those of you who are interested in seeing a Wiki project, which has really taken hold, please go to Wikipedia.

Content Management on main campus web server

At the request of the psychology, Web Communications and ITS are taking a look at some open source CMS software that may be installed on the main web server. This project is purely in the exploratory phase. SiteMason offers one content management solution. The Medical Center has their home grown content management soultion as does Peabody College. We will be looking at Mambo and Drupal at least.

Vanderbilt Home Page redesign

We have conducted focus groups concerning the redesign of the Vanderbilt Home Page and 2nd level pages. The project is on schedule for the relase of a new home page before studnets return next fall. Please let us know if you have any ideas for improving the home page and 2nd level pages.

For questions about this Web site, please contact Jim Parker.

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