Tech Know Bytes - Spring 2016

Web Services 101

What We Do

Web Services is a division within the IT department and specializes in furthering campus needs through the UCCS web site. We do this by:

• Website design, development, and training
• Maintaining the web Content Management System (wCMS)
• Maintaining myUCCS Portal
• Building data integration with third party cloud vendors
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Analytics and Content Quality
• Providing support, design, and assistance for campus customers to promote their college, department, or faculty websites

If you'd like discuss a website project or learn more about our services, please contact us at web@uccs.edu.

Drupal - Web Services maintains the wCMS that contains and controls all content within the www.uccs.edu web domain. Currently we are working on replacing the current wCMS, Ingeniux, with the widely used Drupal web product. The new Drupal platform is scheduled to be released to the UCCS campus this spring semester, and fully in production by summer 2016.

Web Content Quality - Another large project we are currently working on is the Web Content Quality Plan. This project is designed to help users keep their pages up to date on the UCCS website and assist in removing outdated or inaccurate content. The process involves identifying a site owner and ensuring that every page is reviewed every six months. The Web Services team has built several tools to help with the process and has purchased the cloud product Siteimprove this past semester. Siteimprove will help users find broken links, misspellings, and content that is not ADA compliant within their webpages. Stay tuned for notices regarding both of these projects.

Who We Are
Web Services has five staff members: Manager Craig Decker, Principal Programmer Jeremy Sparks, Web Programmer Michael Bolei, Web Designer Josh Nicholson, and Campus Web Trainer Sam Frank. In addition Web Services employs six part-time student employees. Like most departments on campus, Web Services depends on student employees to help with a lot of the workload. As a matter of fact, student employees usually answer most of the support tickets that are submitted through web@uccs.edu. They are a large part of what makes Web Services successful. We thank them.

Meet Craig Decker: 
Web Services Manager
Craig has been a member of the UCCS family since graduating with a BA in Fine Art Studio in 1996. After working for an outside marketing firm in town, Craig joined UCCS as the Total Learning Environment Web Master in 1998 and has been with UCCS ever since, creating numerous web sites and helping lead UCCS into the next phase of the web.

In his spare time, Craig enjoys spending time with his wife Christy and their three children (Mazzy, Gaboric, and Remy) and everything soccer: coaching, watching, and cheering on the Manchester United.

IT and Sustainability

Believe it or not, while IT uses a lot of power to make things run, we also try to make sure that the resources we use are as efficient as possible! Here are just a few examples of how IT is contributing to sustainability at UCCS:

• All-in-One IT Lab Computers are Energy Star certified and use a 200W power supply, which is lower than most desktops and workstations.
• Computers are shut down nightly at the closing time of their building, and power on at 7:30am Monday through Friday. They remain powered off during the weekend unless manually turned on.
• Current power settings on computers are controlled by IT, and turn off the display after 10 minutes of inactivity and put the computers to sleep after 30 minutes (non-podium computers).
• We reduced the number of lab printers and purchased newer energy efficient printers. Power settings put these printers into a sleep state after 30 minutes of non-use.
• Servers are always virtualized if possible. More than 120 virtual servers are powered by only 14 physical servers. Each virtual server consumes less than 9 watts of power. If all 120 systems were physical systems, each would run on a 750 watt dual power supply, meaning we are nearly 1000% more efficient per server through virtualization with no performance loss.
• Machine room lights are turned off each night.
• Phone screens are turned off from 6:00pm to 7:00am to conserve power.
• Wireless access points auto-adjust power depending on how many devices are connected to each access point. The fewer devices, the less power.
• Old equipment is reused or sold. Any items that cannot be used or sold because they are too old are recycled according to e-Stewards standards which ensure that the electronics are recycled using environmentally and socially responsible practices.
• Because most of these items are behind the scenes, we are replacing our water fountain with a Hydration Station with funding from the Green Action Fund. This will help show how IT is being efficient not only with electronics, but the water we drink every day.

New and Improved IT Website

Have you checked out our website recently? If you have not, we think you'll love the new easy-to-use layout. The new IT website is all-inclusive and features sections such as Meeting the Staff, Projects and Initiatives, and Services. The Services section highlights most of what IT does, and breaks down important information such as: purpose, targeted population, and comprehensive how-to's. One of the features we are excited about, and think you will be too, is the new Get Help (IT Help Desk) page. Get Help highlights our hours of operation, multiple methods of contacting us, and includes a new option: Chat With Us, which gives you the ability to chat online with a Help Desk Technician! One last thing - our site is now mobile friendly! We invite you to explore our new site and provide comments via the Feedback button on the right hand side of all main IT pages.

WebEx and Back Up Link

WebEx
Some of you may have heard about a collaboration platform called WebEx. WebEx provides a virtual meeting room that users can interact with each other almost as if they were in the same room. Users can share presentations over voice and video while also sharing content with one another. We are still in the process of rolling this out to the entire campus. Stay tuned for future announcements on how you can use this service!

Back Up Link
After many months of planning, building and testing, UCCS finally has an internet backup link that can handle all UCCS traffic without an outage! The backup link is in place in case our primary internet connection is cut or is unstable. If we should ever lose our primary connection, the backup link takes over automatically and users should never notice that we are on our secondary link.

Extra 10% off with Dell

Exclusive offer for the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs community. February through end of April, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs students, parents, faculty, staff, & alumni have the option to shop at Dell.com/dellu/UCCS and get an additional 10% off our already discounted educational pricing!

View PDF Flyer

Here's how it works:
1. Go to Dell.com/dellu/UCCS
2. Enter in your @uccs.edu email address & click the "Submit" button to request a coupon.

3. After you are emailed a coupon code, click the "Shop Now" button.

4. Copy & paste your coupon code in your cart at checkout for the extra 10% off!