www2.computer.org ITSC April 11, 2008 Leo Wadsworth Manager, Website Development and Administration

Measurable Goals l Metrics: 50% more than the same month in the prior year l Visitors l Visits l Time spent on site l Percentage returning l Revenue l 99.9% Uptime

Paradigm Shift What can we offer people? What does our audience want to do?

CS-Centric Vs. User-Centric l Computer Society-centric design l List of our magazines l List of our conferences l List of our journals l User-centric design l Subject pages, with all of our available resources gathered in one place

Continuous Refinement l Determining “what they want to do” is an ongoing mission l Measure l Analyze l Change l Repeat

Three 100-Day Phases to a New computer.org l Phase one (Complete Oct 19) l Infrastructure / foundation l Overall visual approach l New Main page l Expanded to include 41 subject pages l Phase two (Complete April 2) l Digital Library Beta l Phase three (Ends August 29) l Everything else

Persona-Based Design l Started with matrix of 29 user categories l Developed needs and interests for each user category l Refined it down to 4 “personas” which represent the various user categories

Dr. Bill Lumbergh l Professor of Computer Science l Location: Canada l Author of 2 Computer Society articles l Looking for l Authoritative Research l Peer-reviewed publishing

Nina Bell l Technical Manager l Location: USA l Stressed, overworked l Looking for l Technical trends l Quick answers l Business resources / Training l Career Development l Help with comparative decisions

Samir Gupta l Software Architect l Location: India l Looking for l Software or system trends l How others have solved similar problems l Career development l Consumer of peer-reviewed research

Peter Gibbons l Entry-level Programmer l Location: USA l Looking for: l Information l Training l Mentoring l Jobs l Help!

Modern Interactive Capabilities l Used to be limited by technology available l Could not even use available resources in the Vignette portal because it was not tied into the IEEE Web Accounts. l Now limited only by business considerations l Blogs (such as by EICs, etc.) l Limited only by commitment to make frequent updates over a long period of time l Wikis (body of knowledge) l Limited only by commitment to participate and moderate l Forums (discussions) l Limited only by commitment to participate and moderate

In-House Usability Testing l Inexpensive l Repeatable l Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug l Website: sensible.com l 3 chapters on usability testing available on the website

Technology of www2 l Akamai Caching l Ubuntu Linux l Xen Virtual Servers l HAProxy l Liferay Portal l Apache web servers l Tomcat servlet container l Alfresco content management l MySQL databases l OpenX ad server l CAS authentication l Alfresco Cache Server l DL Cache server

Technology of New Site (2) l Supports standards l Web Services l REST l AJAX l iCalendar & Microformat l JSR-168 l JSR-127 l JSR-170 l OpenSearch l Open platform with support for web services including: l JSON l Hessian l Burlap l REST l RMI l WSRP l WebDAV l CIFS l FTP

Features of New Site l Designed with metrics in mind l Tightly integrated with IEEE Web accounts – single username/password and cross-domain authentication l Interactive features (blogs, wikis, forums, calendars, ratings, tags, etc.) tightly integrated into site l Easy to publish and maintain l With just a few clicks: l Able to choose different column arrangements l Able to add / delete portlets (such as content, search portlet, calendar, wiki, forum, etc.) l Able to move things around using drag and drop