Charge

Improve the technical experience that all Web visitors encounter on all UIC websites. These technical issues include, but are not limited to, minimizing errors and duplication of information, identifying best practices for web security, and minimizing maintenance effort.

Membership

Timeline

Standing Committee

Content for Webmasters

Best Practices

Develop sites

• Ensure pages use valid code (HTML and CSS). W3Cs Unicorn is a handy all-in-one tool.
• Ensure pages are accessible. See UIC’s Digital Accessibility Committee
• On each page, include a way to contact the webmaster for feedback. You can prevent spamming by including a form with a captcha.
• Design for browsers that are currently supported by their makers. Don’t feel obliged to design for older browsers, particularly if the user experience on the latest browser suffers.
• Set up encrypted connections even for information-only websites to reduce  snooping. Websites in the uic.edu domain may request SSL certificates from ACCC.

Maintain sites

• Periodically audit pages for bad links or permanent redirects then update links.
• Audit logs for http status codes 4XX, and 5XX and make appropriate updates to minimize problems (like setting up redirects). Use the proper codes – see meanings at Wikipedia’s list of HTTP status codes

Participate in the community

• Subscribe to the UIC Webmasters listserv and post and reply to messages.

Sharing Data

Strive to minimize copy and paste on your websites. Instead publish data your office maintains, and get data directly from other data publishers. Here are some projects underway:

• term calendar dates will be available from AITS (include JSON code with term as parameter, and begin / end dates are returned)
• Catalog data is available from AES_webmaster@uic.edu in JSON or XML format.
• There is a WordPress REST API for sharing data, Kim Charles may investigate.

Tutorials

• Lynda.com has many useful videos, including a series (learning path) called “Become a Web Designer” and courses in responsive design.