Web Advisory Committee meeting (March 21, 2012)

March 21, 2012– Needles Hall (NH) 3001 – 3:00 pm

Present:

Bill Baer (Guest), Marta Bailey, Kirsty Budd, Janice Campbell, Chris Carignan, Chris Francis, Brad Galway,  Chris Gray, Marlon Griffith, Bob Hicks (Guest), Jonathan Kemp, Pat Lafranier, Colin McIntyre, Liam Morland, Isaac Morland, Don Duff-McCracken, Kris Olafson, Megan Saunders, Terry Stewart (Chair), Jonathan Woodcock, Jeff Voskamp (Guest).

Absent:

Amy Aldus, Dave Annable, Michelle Douglas-Mills,  Sarah Forgrave, Guillermo Fuentes, Eva Grabinski, Nigel Henriques, Tammy Marcinko, Paul Miskovsky, Kevin Paxman, Wendy Philpott, Virginia Young.

​1. Chair’s Remarks

  • The Chair welcomed guests: Bill Baer, Bob Hicks and Jeff Voskamp
  • Regrets were received from Michelle Douglas-Mills, Nigel Henriques, Eva Grabinski
  • Karen Hamilton (Finance) sent message to uw-web mailing list regarding e-commerce;  Karen has agreed to present to WAC at May or June meeting;
  • Heather, Kris and Eva spoke at Friday morning seminar on March 2 on the WCMS and Digital Initiatives;
  • Many of you may have received a message from a Matt Sheridan regarding an auction of domain names (eg, waterlooengineering.com, waterloohealthsciences.com); he’s looking for $5,000 per domain. Do not reply to this message.
  • WAC Website is being migrated to the WCMS; Go-live date March 27, 2012; preview at: https://uwaterloo.ca/web-advisory-committee
  • Related: discussions with Eva, Pat, Terry re: moving http://web.uwaterloo.ca to https://uwaterloo.ca/web-resources ; no timeline yet;
  • Discussions regarding vanity domain names have re-surfaced;  we’d like to accommodate and have forwarded the request to Web Steering;

2. Approval of Minutes of February 22, 2012 

  • approved as distributed

3. Mobile Apps at UW (Bill Baer)

  • See Mobile Application Strategy Draft (pdf). Members are encouraged to share this draft of the Mobile Application Initiative with their constiutencies.  In particular, are there any other stakeholders that should be consulted.

4. WAC Mandate Review (Terry Stewart)

  • The Mandate for Web Advisory Committee was approved as distributed.
  • Web Steering has formalized a membership and meeting schedule. Members are: Alan George, Bob Hicks, Ellen Rethore, Eva Grabinski, Terry Stewart.  Chair will report at next meeting on progress.

5. CPA Update/Digital Initiatives Office (Jonathan Woodcock, Chris Carignan)

  • Four of five positions filled.  Maintenance of "Search" is moving from CPA to IST. DI is looking at costs for Google Appliance and the possibility of a demo.  Approximately 23 projects on the go. Developing training and support functions. Current priority sites are the MUR and WCMA. UW Home page, About and Featured Stories are close to completion

6. Waterloo CMS Project Update

  • Project Update (Pat Lafranier) 

    • Currently offering six WCMS and web courses. 
    • SEW will continue through July and August with web courses only.
    • Lily Yan joined the team on March 8th (replacing Lauren Harrison).  Lily is from the University of Guelph and has Drupal experience.
    • Chris Carignan replacement position has just been posted (Front-end Developer).
    • Three WCMS team members are attending DrupalCon in Denver.
    • Migration – lots to do but lots done; 19 completed with School of Pharmacy and the Mid-Cycle Review going live tomorrow.

  • Discussion on http vs https on web sites (Kris Olafson)

    • https: would only be on Drupal sites;
    • Needed this for Forms; may be safer if all pages are secure;
    • Trying to prevent man in middle attacks;
    • How can it be ensured that all links have been completed? Can Drupal do this automatically? Not sure yet – mixed mode of pages may be problem but will investigate.
    • Better to do this conversion now while there are fewer sites than wait until after all sites have been migrated. 
      Encourage versus mandate;
    • Will https shut out some visitors?  e.g., Internet cafes, countries were encrypted pages aren’t allowed.
    • To roll this back would only take a few minutes but it would take some work to set that up.
    • Members were asked to take this back to their areas and consult widely.
    • Issue will be discussed again at next meeting.

7. Next Meeting 

NH 3004, 3:00-4:30p.m., April 18, 2012

8. Meeting Adjourned at 4:30.