The Library has already invested in excellent Web maintenance software in Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver has site testing, publishing, maintenance capabilities including checking for broken links and orphaned pages, version control (page check-out and check-in), separation of testing site and production site, management of recurring elements across the site, and page templates.
So that these features can be exploited, staff using Dreamweaver need a shared working area to make full use of Dreamweaver for collaboration and site maintenance. A working copy of the site should be established in an area on the server shared via Samba accessible only to staff using Dreamweaver. This area should be delivered by the Web server via a virtual host to see the impact of changes before they go live but the working area should not be included in site indexes.
Staff should be allowed to contribute finished pages directly to the main site themselves but educated in proper Web publishing procedures and policies. In particular, they should be aware of two issues.
Personal public_html areas should not be used to publish information relevant to the Library's main site, since it is then outside the reach of site maintainers and will not appear in site indexes. Staff should not implement personal Web servers on their desktop machines without consulting Systems about security considerations.
We should investigate HTML authoring software for general use by staff. Dreamweaver is too expensive and too elaborate for this purpose. One possibility that should be investigated further is Allaire's HomeSite. Another excellent possibility is the free HTML-Kit. HTML-Kit's functionality is very similar to HomeSite, except that it does not yet support WYSIWYG editing. HTML authoring software should allow authors to create easily maintainable HTML and it should integrate well with the current and future Web publishing environment for the Library.
For whatever software is chosen, one issue is Systems support for the software. A list should be prepared by Systems of HTML editors that are available and approved for staff use and a list of editors that may cause problems for site maintenance. For instance, many WYSIWYG HTML editors, such as Netscape Composer, Microsoft Word, FrontPage, and FrontPage Express generate large amounts of HTML that is difficult or impossible for a human being to understand or edit and which Dreamweaver would have difficulty updating. A procedure could be established for staff to make changes or additions to these lists.
The Library is currently considering a move to a Web development platform that incorporates some sort of HTML template language for server-side processing such as SHTML, ASP, ADP, PHP, CFM, or DTML. All three products (Dreamweaver, HomeSite, HTML-Kit) can be extended to work with any of these options and have this extension already built in for most of these template languages.
We should devote sufficient time and other resources to ensure that staff designated as site maintainers are fully trained in the use of Dreamweaver and experienced in exploiting its functionality. This will help the smoother running of the Web site and reduce staff time devoted to routine maintenance chores.
We should identify staff who contribute Web content and train them appropriately. Such training should include:
In addition there are certain issues that Systems staff should have more training in to improve the Help Desk support. Such training should cover at a diagnostic level: