Adding search to the site

One of the comments that came out from the user's survey was about searching the 'Tube Map'.


   3.  Perhaps a search box on this page that users could use to quickly locate the item on the map would complement the site.


A partial solution was to add a search, that search the site. this has been achieved using Google Custom Search to the www.sustainablity.net site (see below)

To create the search, you need a Google account and then go to http://www.google.com/cse/

Create a new Custom Search Engine and decide what sites you want to include, the name of the search and whether you want to pay. 

For this project I went for the free/standard edition option which means there will be adverts, as well as the search results from the site. 


When you include the sites to search the format does matter to get it to search the whole you will need to put * at the end, so for example http://www.web-sustainablity.net/* to search all of http://www.web-sustainablity.net/.


When you click next you get taken to a screen that enables you to select the look of the search box and test it out as shown below.

If you happy with it clicking next will take you to a page with JavaScript code you need. This code add to your pages where ever you want the search.

<div id="cse" style="width: 100%;">Loading</div>

<script src="http://www.google.com/jsapi" type="text/javascript"></script>

<script type="text/javascript">

  google.load('search', '1', {language : 'en', style : google.loader.themes.GREENSKY});

  google.setOnLoadCallback(function() {

    var customSearchControl = new google.search.CustomSearchControl('<this bit changes for each customised search>');

    customSearchControl.setResultSetSize(google.search.Search.FILTERED_CSE_RESULTSET);

    customSearchControl.draw('cse');

  }, true);

</script>

If you can put up with the adverts, this is a solution to the problem of allowing the user to search the site whilst being free.




This work has been supported by funding from JISC. The site can be viewed at https://sites.google.com/site/emknorg/ or http://www.web-sustainablity.net/emkn/ Survey about this material can be found at: http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=67775a0a-336f-45a5-a222-2f1a6615752c please feel free to fill it in or http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=cec22f0a-e467-4c15-a319-74d96bb8ed9d

Initial Survey: Tube Map and would you use this site

A central feature of the site is the 'Tube map',  a graphical representation of the services on offer.  So a survey of these features on the site http://www.web-sustainablity.net/ was carried out.

Overall the respondents were satisfied or held no strong views with they way it looks.

People seemed reasonably happy with the ability to find what they wanted on the site.

Most people either thought the layout was right for them or didn't have strong views either way. From those that disagreed there were not further comments to help find out what the problem was.

Most people thought they would use the site. The person that stated they strongly disagreed went on to say "Site contains lots of useful info that I was not aware was available" and on all other aspects of the survey had been positive about the site.

These are results are indicative only as the sample size is small (10 respondents)

When asked improving the navigation of the tube map

   1. I do use the Tube Map, as it has some excellent inforamtion, links and contacts etc Would be open to seeing this retained and or further updated and developed so that it can be a really interactive tool.
   2. the use of colour assisted the ease of locating services/institutions
   3. Perhaps a search box on this page that users could use to quickly locate the item on the map would complement the site.

This work has been supported by funding from JISC. The site can be viewed at https://sites.google.com/site/emknorg/ or http://www.web-sustainablity.net/emkn/ Survey about this material can be found at: http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=67775a0a-336f-45a5-a222-2f1a6615752c please feel free to fill it in or http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=cec22f0a-e467-4c15-a319-74d96bb8ed9d

Initial survey results: Website and who are you?

A survey of these features on the site http://www.web-sustainablity.net/ was carried out.

To get a sense of the areas of interest of the respondents they were asked to select the occupations that best reflects them. Managers, students and Other coming out the strongest.

All agree that the layout was right for them.

All agree that the navigation was easyfor them.

All agree, for them, it was easy to find what they were looking for.


When asked  Please add any comments or suggestions you feel appropriate on the navigation.

   1. Find the site easy to navigate, easy to find the information that I am looking for, would be happy to see further devleopment of site
   2. Material was easier to find and navigation flowed well. Layout clear and not cluttered with too much info. When you have selected the services menu it displays a further menu of the options available under services. It may be useful to also to display the further options available eg, services/networking and good practice/ then list the 5 options available, i.e, networking, business seminars etc. Links to other websites should open in a new window / tab so that the user does not loose the East Midlands Knowledge website whilst browsing information, e.g, the link to visit the de montefort website under process improvement quality loads the De Montefort site and you loose the East Midland site.
   3. Great looking website which serves it purpose

A suggestion that been included in refining the site is "Links to other websites should open in a new window / tab so that the user does not loose the East Midlands Knowledge website whilst browsing information, e.g, the link to visit the de montefort website under process improvement quality loads the De Montefort site and you loose the East Midland site" These has been done by adding target="_blank" to the links in the image map.


These are results are indicative only as the sample size is small (10 respondents)




This work has been supported by funding from JISC. The site can be viewed at https://sites.google.com/site/emknorg/ or http://www.web-sustainablity.net/emkn/ Survey about this material can be found at: http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=67775a0a-336f-45a5-a222-2f1a6615752c please feel free to fill it in or http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=cec22f0a-e467-4c15-a319-74d96bb8ed9d

Overall web sustainability strategy used.

Stage 1

• Rescue the site. Capture a copy of the site. Software selected for this job is the free software WinHTTrack Website Copier (http://www.httrack.com/). It is easy to install and use. Keep back-up copies in several places just in case. For more details click here.
• Temporary hosting: dropbox is a good choice. You can transfer the static HTML content straight in a public folder. For more details click here on moving a site to dropbox and for some of the issue click here.
• Add Google Analytics
• Select a free hosting site. 

Option 1:A Google Sites solution was investigate

• Google Sites (www.google.com/sites/overview.html) has been selected as the alternative platform for several reasons:
•  It is a freely available resource, allowing this approach to be replicated with other at risk resources.
• It allows changes for individual pages or the entire site remotely by subscription
•  It integrates with a number of Google-based tools (such as Analytics, Webmaster tools, YouTube, Google Docs and Picasa).

Option 2: Stick with the dropbox solutions it provides a free hosting option that is publically accessible.


Option 3: Use a site such as www.sustainablity.net which can produce a mobile version of the site as well, but you are reliant and someone accepting the site and maintaining it.


Option 4: Amazon Web Services again free hosting with some data backup.


Options 3 and 4 are still under investigation.




Stage 2

• Scan the site for what needs to be moved across. Tools such as PowerMapper are good choices. For details click here.
• Look at Search Engine Optimisation
• Image maps versus flash. For more details click here.
• Keywords - six keywords
• Description: A short summary description of the page not the site.
• Title: Made up of two parts. first "East Midlands Knowledge Network:" and the second part made up of the University name and either the company or specialist service.
• Add Analytics. Google provide guidance on setting this up.

Stage 3
Replicate the site based on stage 2 on the free hosting site. If the pages are static HTML transferring them to the new site is relatively easy.


Stage 4
Let the search engines know where it is. Some suggestions can be found from this blog at including using Sitemaps. 




Stage 5
Getting feedback a free online Survey Tool (EsurveyPro) was been used (the link to this is below). Emails and social network tools were used, anecdotally LinkedIn produced the largest response rate. 








This work has been supported by funding from JISC. The site can be viewed at https://sites.google.com/site/emknorg/http://www.web-sustainablity.net/emkn/map/index.html

Survey about this material can be found at: http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=67775a0a-336f-45a5-a222-2f1a6615752c please feel free to fill it in or http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=cec22f0a-e467-4c15-a319-74d96bb8ed9d

initial work with Amazon's Web Service for sustainable sites

As an alternative free hosting option I have started looking at Amazon's web service. Go to http://aws.amazon.com/free/
To give some idea of why I have copied details in quote below from http://aws.amazon.com/free/
"AWS Free Usage Tier (Per Month):

• 750 hours of Amazon EC2 Linux Micro Instance usage (613 MB of memory and 32-bit and 64-bit platform support) – enough hours to run continuously each month*
• 750 hours of an Elastic Load Balancer plus 15 GB data processing*
• 10 GB of Amazon Elastic Block Storage, plus 1 million I/Os, 1 GB of snapshot storage, 10,000 snapshot Get Requests and 1,000 snapshot Put Requests*
• 5 GB of Amazon S3 standard storage, 20,000 Get Requests, and 2,000 Put Requests*
• 30 GB per of internet data transfer (15 GB of data transfer “in” and 15 GB of data transfer “out” across all services except Amazon CloudFront)*
• 25 Amazon SimpleDB Machine Hours and 1 GB of Storage**
• 100,000 Requests of Amazon Simple Queue Service**
• 100,000 Requests, 100,000 HTTP notifications and 1,000 email notifications for Amazon Simple Notification Service**
• 10 Amazon Cloudwatch metrics, 10 alarms, and 1,000,000 API requests**"

You need to give credit card details, even though we are only after a free tier account.

You will get an automated phone call where you type in the the PIN that gets displayed on the screen to verify your identity.

A good article of setting this up can be found in .net magazine (issue 218 summer 2011 pp 100-102)

We now need to give the 'bucket' which is where we place our site. So I clicked on create bucket on the left hand side and gave it a name I choose www.sustainability.net and selected location Ireland (it was the nearest option).











I have ended up http://www.sustainability.net.s3-website-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/




To up-load the files I used the Enhanced Uploader (a Java based application) that is available as an option when you click on the upload tab. It allows Files and Folders to be upload to maintain the structure of the site. Click on Set Permissions to set the premissions and tick the Make everything public options and the upload.


If you want to see how the site looks click on the link: http://www.sustainability.net.s3-website-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/




This work has been supported by funding from JISC. The site can be viewed at https://sites.google.com/site/emknorg/ and http://www.web-sustainablity.net/emkn/




Survey about this material can be found at: http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=67775a0a-336f-45a5-a222-2f1a6615752c please feel free to fill it in.

Social Networking to get the survey out.

Social networks (Facebook and Twitter) have been trialed as a method of getting the survey out to a wider audience.


First route: all the Blogs have been sent out on Facebook and twitter.

The 140 character including the URL means it has to short and to the point.




LinkedIn has also been tried as another social networking route. Sent out as a post with the a request for help and a link to the survey. This route was included because of the nature of the LinkedIn it can be targeted to those those who are in organisations the site is aimed at.


How effective these are we must wait to see.





This work has been supported by funding from JISC. The site can be viewed at https://sites.google.com/site/emknorg/ or http://www.web-sustainablity.net/emkn/


Survey about this material can be found at: http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=67775a0a-336f-45a5-a222-2f1a6615752c please feel free to fill it in or http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=cec22f0a-e467-4c15-a319-74d96bb8ed9d

Caught it: Copying the site before moving it.

Before starting to migrate the site from a hosted server to a Google sites, capturing the current web contents as static HTML has some benefits:
-Even though Google sites does allow for direct importing of HTML. HTML can be added to a Google Site.
-Provides all the images in one go.


Software selected for this job is the free software WinHTTrack Website Copier (http://www.httrack.com/). It is easy to install and use.

This work has been supported by funding from JISC. The site can be viewed at https://sites.google.com/site/emknorg/ or http://www.web-sustainablity.net/emkn/

Survey about this material can be found at: http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=67775a0a-336f-45a5-a222-2f1a6615752c please feel free to fill it in or http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=cec22f0a-e467-4c15-a319-74d96bb8ed9d

Survey - invited on-line survey

To get more feedback an on-line survey has been produced using eSurveysPro (http://www.esurveyspro.com). eSurverysPro is a free on-line package that lets you produce surveys and email them out or provide a link.




A selection of emails addresses, taken from the EMKN site, were used to invited people to take part, as these are people who may be interested in the site.


The reasons  eSurveysPro (http://www.esurveyspro.com) was selected was:

• It offers a free on-line service;
• Invites of up to 50 people in a month can be sent from a free account;
• Anonymity - IP or email address of respondents won't be collected;
• There is an option for people to withdraw themselves from the list.

If you would like to take part in the survey, it can be found at: http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=67775a0a-336f-45a5-a222-2f1a6615752c

SEO: Keywords, description, title

As well as moving the site to a more sustainable hosting solution we would like to make it more sustainable by increasing the number of people visiting the site. Making the site more accessible to search engines or Search Engine Optimisation is key to this. To trial this the following have be trialled on the http://www.web-sustainablity.net/ site.




Keywords

Try to limited to six keywords.

Description: 

A short summary description of the page not the site.

From Google's suggestion of best practice

• Accurately summarise the page's content
• Create unique descriptions for each page (where possible).

Title - Create accurate and unique titles.

From Google's suggestion of best practice

• Accurately describe the page's content
• Create unique title tags for each page
• Use brief, but descriptive title

Approach taken was make the title up using two approaches

 Either

• First "East Midlands Knowledge Network:" and the second part made up of the University name and either the company or specialist service.
• First "East Midlands Knowledge Network:" and the second part made up of the name of the subject area.
• First "East Midlands Knowledge Network:" and the second part made up of East Midlands Universities if it applied to all the universities and then the name of the subject area.
• First "East Midlands Knowledge Network:" and the second part made up of specialised area and then the case study name.

Resources
There are many good books and sites out there on this area.

For example:

The Art of SEO (Theory in Practice (O'Reilly)) by Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, Rand Fishkin and Jessie C Stricchiola

Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day by Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin 

Google also provide their own basic but useful guide to this area. This can be found at SEO Basics.




This work has been supported by funding from JISC. The site can be viewed at https://sites.google.com/site/emknorg/ or http://www.web-sustainablity.net/

Survey about this material can be found at: http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=67775a0a-336f-45a5-a222-2f1a6615752c please feel free to fill it in.

Alex's Personal Reflections 2

As the work on the project continues, we learn how to make the transfer of the pages quicker, but also we come across new difficulties and challenges.

An important enhancement of our work was done when we started using templates for creating new pages. By default Google Sites offer the users a few templates: Web Page, Announcements, File Cabinet and List. However, the users may easily create new templates to suit their needs. For the purpose of the website 8 new templates were created – one for each of the main menu items: Business Performance, Creative Services, Enterprise Development, Networking & Good Practise, New Product Development, Process Improvement, Recruitment & Development and Technological Services. Each template contains a decoration bar with the picture of a tube line and a submenu of appropriate colour. Thanks to this there is no need to spend time on creating every page from the scratch – it can now be done by just one click. It is planned to create a similar template for other sub-pages.

After solving the problem with inserting JavaScript by using gadgets, it seemed that everything would go smoothly from then on. However, I discovered that the website actually does use some simple server-side scripting to process user input – the authors provided forms that allow contacting HEIs (Higher Education Institutes) via the website. Unfortunately there is no way of implementing this on Google Sites. Therefore the contact forms element had to be dropped and replaced with a Contact page, containing the contact details of all HEIs. This seems to be the best and most reasonable solution.

As the website contains many pages to be moved, it will require a lot of time to finish the project. Nevertheless, thanks to creating new templates and solving the issue with the server-side forms, transferring new pages should go more efficiently.

This work has been supported by funding from JISC. The site can be viewed at https://sites.google.com/site/emknorg/


Survey about this material can be found at: http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=67775a0a-336f-45a5-a222-2f1a6615752c please feel free to fill it in or http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=cec22f0a-e467-4c15-a319-74d96bb8ed9d

Usage statistics for this blog (updated March 2016).

The figure above shows the summary of the usage overall; with a relatively large rise in the numbers of page views in July 2016. One of the most popular traffic source is probably due to the short post about can be Skydrive be used to host webpages Can Skydrive be used as free hosting. (see table at the end of the post)

A welcome surprise was the number of page views from the countries other than the UK (with the United States being the largest group).