September 1998
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Classroom Info on
Web Welcome New Students,
Faculty, & Staff From the
Director Multimedia Room in
Rolvaag Gov. Docs. What's New on the St.
Olaf Web WebAssist
Program Course E-Mail
Aliases Reserve a Computer
Lab Computing Guides on
Web ACC HelpDesk
Overview Res Hall
Computing New HelpLine
Software Welcome Kjell
Stenberg Major Network
Upgrades Computer Repair
Services Welcome Anthony
Roberts E-Mail
Attachments Student
Workshops Y2K
Problem Fac/Staff
Seminars Learning and Teaching
Technology Series
What's New on the St. Olaf Web
By Tom White, ACC Webmaster
and Craig Rice, Networking Consultant
This has been a busy summer for the St. Olaf webmaster team. We have been working on many projects that will improve the performance of the college web site, and we have assisted with the development of new content.
Web-Based Password Changes
You no longer need to log into a UNIX system to change your e-mail (UNIX) password. Instead, open up a web browser to the URL:
http://www.stolaf.edu/cgi-bin/chpw.pl
You will be asked for your current UNIX login name and password, and then you will be given the option to change your password. As in the past, you can change your password only from a computer on the St. Olaf network, and the new password still must conform to our strict password checking.
Web-based Alias Administration
It is now possible to administer your user-created campus-wide e-mail aliases via the Web. This means that instead of logging into UNIX to use makelist, addlist, and rmlist, you can create and delete aliases as well as add address to and remove address from your aliases, all via the web. To manage your aliases via the Web, please open the URL:
http://www.stolaf.edu/cgi-bin/ml.pl
New Web Index
Last spring, it became apparent to the webmaster team that our web site had outgrown our indexing system, the system that allows you to do a keyword search of pages on the college web site. We began looking for alternatives to our WAIS-based system, which ran on the same UNIX computer as our web server.
This summer, we purchased and installed an indexing application named "Phantom," which runs on a Macintosh server, separate from our main web server. Phantom permits keyword searches with a variety of options and constraints. It returns a list of results that is ranked by relevance and lists the file size, creation/modification date, and the first couple lines of the page's text.
Phantom's web "crawler" indexes one-seventh of our web site each night, so the entire site index is updated within a week. (Personal pages are not indexed.)
Please give our new index a try. Go to the St. Olaf home page, and click on the word "Search."
College Catalog Online
The Office of Publications is putting the finishing touches on the online version of the 1998-99 College Catalog. When it is finished, it will be available at:
http://www.stolaf.edu/catalog/
Alumni Registry Web Database
The ACC worked with the Office of Alumni/ae and Parent Relations in the development of a new FileMaker Pro-based web database of information about the college's alumni/ae, parents, and friends.
The database provides a web interface through which an aluma/us, parent, or friend may enter her or his information via a web browser. The database can track considerably more information than the previous online registry, and it allows the user to create his or her own password for future access to update the record.
You may visit the new alumni/ae registry by opening the URL:
http://alum.relations.stolaf.edu/
Student Work Web Database
The ACC has been working with the Office of Student Financial Services to develop a web-based clearing house for student jobs. Departments and offices can post available positions for students to browse, and students can post a resumé for potential on-campus employers to review.
This project is in the final stages of development. Watch for an announcement in the Campus Memo and at http://www.stolaf.edu/calendars/announcements/