Website Sustainability

The project all along has set out to move the website in a sustainable way across to a google site that at the very least provides a doorway to the EMUA's East Midlands Knowledge Network site. The approach has been to build Google Sites (Google) version of the site leading to either pages on the google site or  pages on a dropbox site until the google site version is ready. The aim at the start of the project was to have the site independent of the partner institutions so no-one partner has more control than another over the site. But, is there another way that both increases the sites sustainability? One possible way is for the site to be independently hosted (via Google Sites) but the partner institutions/universities  to have ownership (and possibly to host their own) content. No one institution would have overall control but manage their own resources/presence on the site. This idea has been floated and has the potential to improve the sustainability by the instituti...

The website under-development is currently completely separate from the www.emkn.org site and is hosted on a Google sites site with connections to a Dropbox site (used as at temporary measure) Main page: sites. google.com/site/emknorg/home Three examples of other pages are shown below: Example 1: Networking and Good Practice :  sites.google.com/site/emknorg/services/networking-good-practise Example 2: Technological Services: sites. google.com/site/emknorg/services/technological-services Example 3: Enterprise Development:  sites.google.com/site/emknorg/services/enterprise-development The flash based Tube image has been converted into a more search engine friendly image map and HTML links and ALT tag describing the link aiding accessibility. Click here for the image map Content is being migrated from the dropbox to Google Sites Google analytics has been added to the site both Google sites and Dropbox to capture that information. Analytics is also add...

Sites like The East Midlands Knowledge Network (EMKN) site are worth saving for many reasons (including but certainly not exclusively: return on the investment both in terms of money and time; and as an information source). The site " The Universities of the East Midlands contain an enormous wealth of knowledge and expertise but it’s not always easy to navigate to the sources of support that could make a real difference to your business. The East Midlands Knowledge Network (EMKN) website will help guide you to the broad range of services that are available to help grow and develop your company ." EMKN (2011) The 'rescued' sites can also be later be taken over by others at a future date or taken as a starting for similar site. Perhaps one that is not immediately clear is their value in their own right as a record. Even if these sites are never added to, maintaining them means potentially a snapshot of the activities of partnerships, issues, the kind of activitie...

One of the hope for goals of the project is to make it easier for search engines to find the site, especially one of the key features of the site - the nicknamed 'Tube Map' which can found at sites.google.com/site/emknorg/home/map . This map provides a route through the services the partner universities provide.  "The services are divided into eight categories, or  tube lines . You can navigate these by clicking on the menu of services above, or by looking around the map, and clicking on the  tube stops . This will reveal the services that our universities offer, along with contact details and case studies." EMKN website So one of the elements that has been consideration to improve the chances of picking this important feature of the site,  is using image maps instead of Flash from Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) point of view. Two key reasons for moving over to an image map instead of an interactive flash version: 1. Searchbots  such as Google s...

The currently free Dropbox   provides an alternative place to store a website. But only if we talking about static content (ie. content which is not changed dynamically by PHP, etc but is basically HTML). Dropbox provides a public folder which can be view by one with the appropriate link. First we need to copy the site, so we have local copy on our own machine. This can be done using the method as an example shown in  the earlier blog entry Caught it . Next, we need a Dropbox account. Go to www.dropbox.com and you should see the following: Click on the download button and follow the instructions. You will need an email address. We actually on need the Typical setting. This will add a piece of software to machine. With a little box icon at the bottom of your screen, if we click on this we see the files and folders in the dropbox, open the public folder, now.transfer files over to public folder Go to the dropbox website and log-in Then do Step 2...