Thursday, January 17, 2008

Weekly re.web Podcast: It's Still Raining and It's Still Thursday

Episode eleven of the re.web podcast is called "Come Rain or Come Shine."

Links to the re.web content within the W&M on iTunes U site:



posted by Susan Evans

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What do you all think about http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI

It seems that the big benefits of the redesign is that its easy to move content around, which would break links as far as the rest of the world is concerned. You may be able to make something internally consistent with a CMS, but if, like most people, the clients use a search engine to discover content, when you move the content, it will become more inaccessible. For instance, if someone bookmarks a workshop they'd like to attend or some seminar notes they did attend, will they be able to find it 3 years later? It seems you are aiming for 'No'.

From the writer's perspective, it might just be 'content'. Y'all get paid by the line/page, and hiding the old stuff makes the new stuff more valuble. From the client's perspective, the pages are resources, and if you design the system to move or expire them, you hide them, they are less valuble resources.

Designing for transience makes me not want to put anything valuble into your system. Why write something in WYSIWYG(in 2008) when it won't be WYG(in 2012) and may not even be accessible anywhere in 2012? An alumni looking to give something once per year won't find anything familiar at W&M.

re.web said...

Dave X,

Thanks for the specific constructive criticism. We like to hear what others are thinking. And specific examples are something we can more easily address and use for improving the College web presence.

I've looked over the W3C document you reference. In theory, I agree that URIs should not be as disposable as we often treat them. Our circumstances, however, remind me of Yogi Berra's famous insight: "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In
practice there is."

You'll find more on this topic in a blog entry you've inspired me to write.

posted by Andrew Bauserman