The AIMS web site maintains its files on dante, one of the UW's official web servers (dante.washington.edu). Files are accessible either through secure FTP (SFTP) or secure shell (SSH). AIMS also maintains aimsuw.org, which is a simple URL redirect to the main address for the site (http://students.washington.edu/infomgmt/).
The web site was designed with a flat file structure to ensure maximum portability. The site could use a MySQL database backend provided via UW Technology, but this seemed like too much overhead at the time the site was implemented. Instead, a lot of the data is stored in XML format in the _sitedata directory on the site, with an administrative backend that writes to the XML files as appropriate. XML is used to store meeting agendas and minutes, as well as the main news feed on the main page of the AIMS web site.
Statistics for the web site are available via Google Analytics.
Information Architecture
For the most part, flat file names are prefixed by the section name (for example, "about-") to group all files together properly.
The site currently structures into four different sections at various levels of development:
- About - Background information about AIMS itself
- Connect - Ways to get in touch with and participate in AIMS as a group (currently links to our outreach methods online - Facebook and Twitter)
- Events - The main events listing for AIMS
- Wiki - The AIMS wiki
The site directory structure is as follows:
_sitedata - Backend files that support the overall site operation
domready - Used by the aims-admin administrative backend
rich_calendar - Used by the aims-admin administrative backend
xsd - Contains the formal XSD schema definitions for meeting minute and news XML files
aims-admin - The administrative backend that allows for editing files (currently under development)
css - CSS files
images - Web site images
media - PDF files, other files linked to from various parts of the site (also includes historic documents)
php_tmp - Temporary PHP data (session data) - keep this.
pmwiki-2.1.27 - Actual wiki install
wiki (points at pmwiki-2.1.27) - alias to make it easier to remember what the path to the wiki actually is
Tasks
Monthly Tasks:
- Add general and officer meeting minutes to the web site.
Quarterly Tasks:
- Update the constitution with the most recent version submitted to the Student Activities Office.
Yearly Tasks:
- Update the officer web page to list incoming officers (outgoing officers should be marked as "outgoing"). We maintain a historic list of officers to honor their contribution to the organization.
- Update the domain contact information to reflect the incoming technology officer (the physical address may remain the same so long as the Information School remains in MGH).
- Ensure that the domain name aimsuw.org does not expire. It is currently registered via MyDomain. As of March 2009, the domain does not expire until October 2013. Domain renewal may be charged to the technology officer's credit card, and the receipt should be submitted to the AIMS Treasurer for reimbursement.
- Add the incoming technology officer, at a minimum, to the Google Analytics account for the AIMS web site.
