1995-10-18: Software and tools for Web servers

Summary of October 18 Web-Walkers meeting (UNC-CH)

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

To Web-Walkers:

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 at 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 at email.unc.edu

Rodney Bishop, Registrar's Office, rab.our at mhs.unc.edu

Andy Broughton, Sch. of Social Work, abrought at email.unc.edu

Harry Bulbrook, Law School, bulbrook at email.unc.edu

Paula Carson, SIS Office, plc.our at mhs.unc.edu

Mike Conway, ADP, mcc.admin at mhs.unc.edu

Donna Cornick, Davis Library, cornick at email.unc.edu

Frank Di Mauro, AHEC, fadim at med.unc.edu

Pam Dutcher, Davis Library, pam.davis at mhs.unc.edu

Erika Grams, history/WUNC, erika at email.unc.edu

Judy Hallman, OIT, judy_hallman at unc.edu

Tom Hocking, Morehead Pltm., starman at unc.edu

Kevin Hunter, FPR Design & Stats, hunter.fpg at mhs.unc.edu

Bob Kessler, Chemistry, bob_kessler at unc.edu

J.J. Kim, Sch. of Social Work, JJ_Kim at unc.edu

Tong Liu, CPC, tongliu at xerxes.cpc.unc.edu

Tim Murphy, Dentistry, tmurphy.dentce at mhs.unc.edu

Jim Murrell, OIT, jim_murrell at unc.edu

Lynne Neill, ADP, lcn.admin at mhs.unc.edu

Roger Nelsen, Alumni Association, roger_nelsen at unc.edu

Greg O'Rear, ADP, jgo.systems at mhs.unc.edu

Gary Pattillo, Davis Library, pattillo at email.unc.edu

Jon Pishney, IAT, jon_pishney at unc.edu

Jason W. Purdy, student, jason_purdy at unc.edu

Brenda Roberts, ADP, bnr.admin at mhs.unc.edu

Tom Rutledge, OIT, rutledge at unc.edu

Bill Schley, Davis Library, schley.davis at mhs.unc.edu

Barbara Semonch, Journalism, semonch at gibbs.unc.edu

Ranjeev Singh, Journalism, ranjeev_singh at unc.edu

Kathy Thomas, OIT, kathy_thomas at unc.edu

Penny Ward, Research Services, crunchy at email.unc.edu

Rob Withers, Academic Affairs Library, rob_withers at unc.edu