How to find a site's webmaster

[Erin Paseka]

It would be handy if we could use the Registry to look up the developer/webmaster for any given UNL site.

Here's a typical example of what happens when I try to get updates or corrections to another developer: Last week I discovered that Psychology had links to some Grad Studies pages that ceased to exist a few years ago. I poked around Psych's site, checked their staff listing, and found no contact information for a webmaster. They're using the old template, so I checked the "comments?" link in the footer, was pleased to see that it went to an email address rather than the general UNL comment form (are those comments getting forwarded anywhere?), and sent my "please use these URLs instead" email. But it bounced. I checked the Web Transition Progress Report, which lists developers, but Psych isn't in it yet. Eventually I went back to their staff page and randomly selected someone to email; turns out the comments-link address is a student who did their site but then graduated 3 years ago and left.

(I don't mean to pick on Psychology--the staff member's reply was quick and she cc'd their current webmaster. Others have been less responsive.)

[nhummel]

One trick for people who run their own servers, like us, is to use

webmaster@site
manager@site
root@site

if you didn't try/know that already (you didn't say either way)

Ned - who knows this isn't really a solution

[saltybeagle]

you're right... many of the maintainers for pages at UNL are unknown....

Erin, would you like to see a public edition of the WDN members & sites?

- in some respects a 'live' version of the chancellor's report (at least the data)...?

[Erin Paseka]

Okay, I've given this some more thought, and it's most practical to just use the chancellor's report for now.

As more sites are added to the registry (and consequently to the report), the potential for using the report as a means of identifying webmasters goes up. In that respect, we don't need anything extra right now. Updating once a month is "live" enough for my purposes.

Looking ahead, though, I imagine that the progress reports will eventually be discontinued. When that happens, I may ask for something new to list webmasters. Or maybe by that time everybody will have webmaster contact information on their sites.

[saltybeagle]

Just in case anyone missed the last WDN meeting, a registry is now available at http://www1.unl.edu/wdn/registry/ which allows you to look up the developers for a given URL.

The question now becomes maintenance - how to ensure that the contact information for sites stays up to date. If anyone has any suggestions they would be greatly appreciated.