WaSP Interviews Jonathan Linczak

Jon:

I am currently, and have been for a little over a year, the webmaster for Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio. In December of 2002, I earned a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from The Ohio State University, but found that I had a passion for website development while I was finishing my degree. Shortly after graduation, I worked for a company as a UNIX Technical Analyst, but spent most of my time doing Web development. When I saw the opportunity open up at Hiram, I knew I had to go for it. The rest is history, I guess.

Jon:

When I stepped into the role of webmaster at Hiram, there were no others before me. While most of the updating was done by one individual whenever possible, various individuals also contributed. A couple of years ago, the College paid a company quite a bit of money to develop the website before our current one, with only a small custom CMS and no regard for Web standards (people were cutting and pasting HTML generated from Microsoft Word into their Web pages). So, in order to move to a standards-compliant site, we knew we had to start from scratch. That meant re-looking at the Information Architecture (IA) of the site and then developing a design around the IA.

Jon:

Honestly, it was just assumed by myself and a few others in my department that it was the best way to go. After reading up on Web standards, using it on sites I created while freelancing, and even preaching it's goodness during my interview for the position of webmaster, I couldn't imagine developing the site any other way. Noticing that there was a real lack of educational institutions that are moving towards standards-compliant sites, I wanted our site to be an example to others that sure, it can be done at a college or university too.

Jon:

Well, most didn't know what I was really referring to, so they assumed that standards-compliance was the way to go. I had some strange looks from some colleagues in my department at first when I was so zealous on Web standards. All I did was show them what was possible through some example sites, the CSS Zen Garden, and just through some examples for mockups that we were putting together. The great thing now, though, is that some of those same people are now actively trying to create their own websites using Web standards. People are beginning to see the true benefit of Web standards and the enthusiasm is spreading.

Jon:

My role in this conversion was essentially the project lead, so I managed the whole project but also did most of the technical work. You probably don't get that in a larger educational institution, but with essentially 2 technical people working on the project, I didn't have much choice.

The management part consisted of making sure the project came in on time and under budget, making decisions on items that the Web committee may not have easily understood, and sometimes bringing concerns to the table and helping to resolve them quickly. It also consisted of helping formulate the IA for the new site. We had a major problem with our last site: people couldn't find anything on it. It took us almost the entire time to iron out the IA, and even now we continue to refine it.

The technical part consisted of setting up the Web servers (my previous job as a UNIX Technical Analyst came in handy there), installing our CMS, working with our designer, Cameron Moll, developing the site with Web standards, then integrating the design with the CMS and teaching users how to use it. The CMS was a tricky thing for me. I never used a CMS on a scale this large, but I knew if we wanted the site to be successful, all stake-holders should update their own information to give the lonely webmaster more time to work on new projects. We found that with Apache's Lenya product.

Jon:

It meant we can be more consistent with our styling across the site. It also meant that when a redesign will be needed, we wouldn't have to spend so much time doing everything over again. Now, we may change some things in the markup, but that's controlled by a handful of templates. The rest is CSS. Beautiful, isn't it? I spend less time worrying about design consistency so that I can worry about putting together new projects for the College.

Jon:

Amazingly well! While we had some hang-ups with our CMS, we're pretty steady right now. We now have around 40 people who are trained to use our CMS and interest in the site is growing on a daily basis. More and more people who once wanted to only hand out information on paper are seeing the usefulness of the web. We're actually making some process changes to account for making sure the website is being updated consistently, which is amazing. My to-do list is getting incredibly long, but that's a problem I'm currently loving rather than sitting there twiddling my thumbs and begging for something to do.

Jon:

Oh absolutely. For one, I would have given the project a couple of more months. When we launched, we had to forgo launching certain areas of the site just to remain within the deadline. A couple of more months would have still kept us on our toes, but would have also made sure we were thorough in our work and that no important parts of the site were delayed. A good example of this is our online events calendar. To this day, I'm still working on it's replacement because of the last-minute planning that went into the one that's currently on our site.

I also would have given more time for testing. While nearly everything went flawlessly when we launched, we did have quite a few memory problems after launch that we weren't aware of since we didn't test under heavy load conditions.

And there's a million smaller things too, like better organizing the CSS files, accounting for printing issues and displaying the site on handhelds, etc. Overall, however, I couldn't have been more pleased about the entire process and where it has led us.

Jon:

The reactions have been simply amazing. Right after we launched we got nothing but great comments from people. Many were appreciative of the hard work we have put in, others were raving about Cameron's design for the site, and others commented on our efforts to make it easier for everyone to update their portions of the site. We were mentioned many places on the Web for our initial redesign, and placed in the sites CSS Beauty and Stylegala. All I have to say is that the College is very honored to be recognized so highly for the work we have done. Even now as we continue to launch more sites, the reactions from within the College and in the public have been amazing.

Jon:

As every Web developer knows, a website is never complete. We're moving along with new sub-sites, a better URL scheme, rewrite of the markup to be easier to read on handheld devices, and then a move from HTML 4.01 to XHTML. Many of these are because of our gradual experience with Lenya. We're also working closely in the coming weeks to freshen up our home page to focus more on how vibrant our campus is and allow us to be more flexible on showcasing special events and items throughout the year. We're finishing up an upgrade to the events calendar that I think will be a big hit as well. Lastly, we're focusing on developing sites for all of our academic departments that will be integrated with our CMS, have an easy-to-understand URL scheme, and will (of course) be standards-compliant.