Summary of October 18 Web-Walkers meeting

Date: Fri, 10 Nov 1995 13:16:00 -0500
From: Judy Hallman 
To: web-walkers@unc.edu
Subject: Summary of October 18 Web-Walkers meeting

Summary of October 18 meeting on software and tools for Web servers.

I headed up this discussion. Jason Purdy demonstrated several pages he developed for this meeting. See http://sunsite.unc.edu/purdy/walkers.html. [Note: Jason has since accepted the student position of Web Wizard, working with me, Kathy Thomas, and Jim Murrell on the campus Web pages and software and tools available on the www.unc.edu machine.]

-- Server software: Most of the servers on campus are running NCSA software.

-- Indexing and retrieval: Chris Colomb (OIT) has installed Glimpse and Harvest on Ra; to try it out, see http://www.unc.edu/Harvest/brokers/UNCWWW/; instructions need to be developed on how to maintain indexes.

-- Statistics and reporting: Jason Purdy showed the statistics and reporting links (getstats and wwwstats) from his page at http://sunsite.unc.edu/purdy/walkers.html. wwwstats comes with a file of country codes.

Tom Rutledge showed wusage, simple stats he is using for the help desk server.

-- Testers for dead links, mappers, and similar tools:

Tim Murphy described the URL-Minder service at http://www.netmind.com/URL-minder/URL-minder.html. The Web pages say:

The URL-minder keeps track of resources on the World Wide Web, and sends you e-mail whenever your personally registered resources change. You can have the URL-minder keep track of any Web resource accessible via HTTP, FTP, or GOPHER, (anything you like!) including searches on many popular Web databases!

Someone mentioned WebWatch on Windows, and Web Manager was also mentioned.

Jason mention MOMspider (http://www.ics.uci.edu/WebSoft/MOMspider/), which is linked to from Jason's page at http://sunsite.unc.edu/purdy/walkers.html.

MOMspider is a web-roaming robot that specializes in the maintenance of distributed hypertext infostructures (i.e. wide-area webs). The program is written in Perl and, once customized for your site, should work on any UNIX-based system with Perl 4.036.

I mentioned that Carolyn Kotlas (carolyn_kotlas@unc.edu) likes the link mapper Web Page Manager from Silknet Software, Inc. -- http://www.silknet.com/products.htm. Costs about $80. You can get it for a free trial.

PageMill and SiteMill were also mentioned. See http://www.ceneca.com/.

Adobe PageMill Web page authoring software was specifically designed to address the needs of non-technical people who want to create or maintain content on the Web.

Adobe SiteMill provides an integrated application for web page authoring and web sitemanagement.

-- CGI scripts: --Page counters: There was considerable discussion about page counters. Bob Kessler mention a counter that's available from http://www.webtools.org/ and says that some stat packages are available at the same site. Tom Rutledge showed how he is using software from http://www.semcor.com/~muquit/Count.html. [Note: Jason Purdy has put this software on Ra. He announced it to the Web-Walkers list via e-mail on November 9.

"http://www.unc.edu/about/provider/cgi/counter.html

You can only access the Count.cgi binary, though, from the UNC WWW Server, so if you want to use UNC's Count.cgi, and your pages lie on another server, you need to send me mail, so I can configure the binary."]

-- Mailers: Jason demonstrated a mailer he has developed (see General Purpose WWW Comment Gateway Idea at http://sunsite.unc.edu/purdy/walkers.html). It gives an immediate reply back to the sender and puts the question/comment into a dbm database. A similar system could be developed for the campus. Departments could have their own sections of the database; several people in the department could have the password for accessing and responding to the department's messages.

I asked why we don't just use the mailto: tag. Response: It uses the address of the sending machine and doesn't have any flexibility.

Some people on campus would like to tailor their mail forms and not use the OITmailer. It looks like gforms (see below) will be helpful for them.

-- gforms: Kathy Thomas demonstrated gforms and described how she is using it to develop the Women's Issues Survey (http://www.unc.edu/staff/survey/). gforms is described in the book _The Web Server Book_. OIT (probably Jason) will develop a section on gforms for the "Information providers section" of "About the UNC-CH Home Page."

Attendees:

Deb Aikat, Journalism, daikat@email.unc.edu
Rodney Bishop, Registrar's Office, rab.our@mhs.unc.edu
Andy Broughton, Sch. of Social Work, abrought@email.unc.edu
Harry Bulbrook, Law School, bulbrook@email.unc.edu
Paula Carson, SIS Office, plc.our@mhs.unc.edu
Mike Conway, ADP, mcc.admin@mhs.unc.edu
Donna Cornick, Davis Library, cornick@email.unc.edu
Frank Di Mauro, AHEC, fadim@med.unc.edu
Pam Dutcher, Davis Library, pam.davis@mhs.unc.edu
Erika Grams, history/WUNC, erika@email.unc.edu
Judy Hallman, OIT, judy_hallman@unc.edu
Tom Hocking, Morehead Pltm., starman@unc.edu
Kevin Hunter, FPR Design & Stats, hunter.fpg@mhs.unc.edu
Bob Kessler, Chemistry, bob_kessler@unc.edu
J.J. Kim, Sch. of Social Work, JJ_Kim@unc.edu
Tong Liu, CPC, tongliu@xerxes.cpc.unc.edu
Tim Murphy, Dentistry, tmurphy.dentce@mhs.unc.edu
Jim Murrell, OIT, jim_murrell@unc.edu
Lynne Neill, ADP, lcn.admin@mhs.unc.edu
Roger Nelsen, Alumni Association, roger_nelsen@unc.edu
Greg O'Rear, ADP, jgo.systems@mhs.unc.edu
Gary Pattillo, Davis Library, pattillo@email.unc.edu
Jon Pishney, IAT, jon_pishney@unc.edu
Jason W. Purdy, student, jason_purdy@unc.edu
Brenda Roberts, ADP, bnr.admin@mhs.unc.edu
Tom Rutledge, OIT, rutledge@unc.edu
Bill Schley, Davis Library, schley.davis@mhs.unc.edu
Barbara Semonch, Journalism, semonch@gibbs.unc.edu
Ranjeev Singh, Journalism, ranjeev_singh@unc.edu
Kathy Thomas, OIT, kathy_thomas@unc.edu
Penny Ward, Research Services, crunchy@email.unc.edu
Rob Withers, Academic Affairs Library, rob_withers@unc.edu