Recommendation for IFAS course website structure:

• Status: approved by ICC, January 2007

 

• Background:
  

  Past practices have not encouraged any overall structure or organization to our web sites. This has caused maintenance issues, particularly with secured course websites where permissions must be reapplied each term in order to support the next set of enrolled students.

  Such permission updates would be greatly facilitated if we were to reorganize IFAS course websites beneath a single folder structure. This would allow the creation of automated processes which could update those permissions more efficiently and accurately.

• Recommendation:

The ICC recommends that a policy be created which would permit our web server administrator to reorganize all centrally-hosted IFAS course websites into a more maintainable structure.

Such a change would necessitate changing the URLs of current sites and would consequently be done between terms. Implementation would permit a single structure for finding and viewing course websites and would be accompanied by documentation on the changes and best use of the new structure.

• Dissent:

None, though a number were concerned that there might be a move towards forced centralization of web services. Some units prefer to manage web resources in-house. This recommendation is neutral on that subject, pertaining only to course websites hosted on IFAS IT's central facilities.