QA Focus Web Site

Architecture of the QA Focus Web site

In order to assist anyone who may be involved in the preservation of the QA Focus web site or may wish to further develop or redevelop the web site this summary of the technical architecture is provided.

Details

The QA Focus web site is hosted on an Apache web server. It is part of the main UKOLN Web site. The QA Focus web site has the URL http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/qa-focus/

The web site uses simple PHP to pull-in HTML fragments, A typical directory has the following files:

intro.php: which pulls in PHP assignments (e.g. title of file) and fragments for the HTML DTD, HTML HEAD, CSS and standard footer elements.
default.ssi: in which PHP variables are assigned such as the title, keywords, etc.
content.ssi: the main HTML fragment for the content of the page.

During the lifetime of the project a database was used was contained details of JISC-funded projects. This database was subsequently switched off. All links to the database should have also been removed.

Note that no JavaScript is believed to be hosted on the project web site.

Content

The web site primarily contains:

Information about the project.
Documents, including briefing documents and access to peer-reviewed papers
Presentations (in MS PowerPoint format) about the project
Audits of JISC programme web sites.
A series of FAQs
RSS and OPML feeds providing links to key deliverables

The following areas of the web site have been discontinued:

The project blog.
The database of JISC-funded projects.
The self-assessment toolkit.
The Sitemeter tool giving usage statistics for the web site.
The link to the email delivery of the contents of the RSS feed of new briefing documents.

Note that the web site primarily hosts files in the following formats:

HTML and CSS
PHP
MS Word
MS Powerpoint
MS Excel
Adobe PDF
RSS and OPML

The Xenu link-checking software provided a summary of the file formats used on the web site. The table is given below:

Correct internal URLs, by MIME type:

MIME type	count	% count	Σ size	Σ size (KB)	% size	min size	max size	Ø size	Ø size (KB)	Ø time
text/html	662 URLs	48.71%	7277902 Bytes	(7107 KB)	11.38%	543 Bytes	684983 Bytes	10993 Bytes	(10 KB)	0.026
text/xml	6 URLs	0.44%	7600 Bytes	(7 KB)	0.01%	503 Bytes	2731 Bytes	1266 Bytes	(1 KB)
application/xml	94 URLs	6.92%	535671 Bytes	(523 KB)	0.84%	1682 Bytes	53907 Bytes	5698 Bytes	(5 KB)
text/css	13 URLs	0.96%	32101 Bytes	(31 KB)	0.05%	180 Bytes	12144 Bytes	2469 Bytes	(2 KB)
image/gif	81 URLs	5.96%	1811489 Bytes	(1769 KB)	2.83%	50 Bytes	120552 Bytes	22364 Bytes	(21 KB)
image/png	148 URLs	10.89%	12472014 Bytes	(12179 KB)	19.50%	2998 Bytes	379755 Bytes	84270 Bytes	(82 KB)
application/msword	263 URLs	19.35%	29181952 Bytes	(28498 KB)	45.64%	34304 Bytes	1861120 Bytes	110957 Bytes	(108 KB)
application/pdf	4 URLs	0.29%	931936 Bytes	(910 KB)	1.46%	131571 Bytes	318749 Bytes	232984 Bytes	(227 KB)
image/jpeg	6 URLs	0.44%	103860 Bytes	(101 KB)	0.16%	3284 Bytes	34689 Bytes	17310 Bytes	(16 KB)
application/vnd.ms-powerpoint	38 URLs	2.80%	10736640 Bytes	(10485 KB)	16.79%	61952 Bytes	1052160 Bytes	282543 Bytes	(275 KB)
text/plain	8 URLs	0.59%	98528 Bytes	(96 KB)	0.15%	308 Bytes	57382 Bytes	12316 Bytes	(12 KB)
video/unknown	35 URLs	2.58%	733306 Bytes	(716 KB)	1.15%	9486 Bytes	21400 Bytes	20951 Bytes	(20 KB)
application/vnd.ms-excel	1 URLs	0.07%	22016 Bytes	(21 KB)	0.03%	22016 Bytes	22016 Bytes	22016 Bytes	(21 KB)
Total	1359 URLs	100.00%	63945015 Bytes	(62446 KB)	100.00%

Robustness of the Web Site

In order to provide evidence of the technical integriety of the project web site an audit of internal links and HTML conformance of significant areas of the project web site are provided.

These audits were carried out during the lifetime of the project, at the end of the project and 8 years after the project had completed.