Remembrance of Webs Past The Beginnings of the PMC Web Site News & Views Feature Article

by Whitney Quesenbery Copyright © 1998 Whitney Quesenbery. Whitney Quesenbery leads the design group at Cognetics Corporation, an interactive design company dedicated to the creation of user-centered, LUCID software. Her email address is whitneyq@cognetics.com. Originally published in News & Views August 1998 issue. For permission to reprint this article, contact the Managing Editor.

Editor's Note: After two-and-a-half years as the webmaster for the PMC web site, Whitney is moving on to other STC activities. I asked her to recall her experiences. Back in the fall of 1995, I began to work on a plan for a web site for the chapter. Working with Emily Skarzenski, then managing editor of News & Views, and with the Online SIG, we outlined some goals: The PMC web site is a means to: publicize the activities of our chapter in a new format available to the public make chapter information available in a way that can be kept up to date easily, without the timing issues inherent in a print publication archive articles and other information produced under STC-PMC auspices as a "reference library" provide a way for members to keep up with events they could not attend link STC-PMC to other areas of the Internet covering areas of interest to our members, placing ourselves in the midst of this "cyber-community" The organization of the site was kept simple, following the committee organization of the chapter. From the home page there were links to meetings, competitions, jobs, SIGs, resources, and newsletter archives, along with chapter and STC society information. Setting design and usability goals Over the next months, we talked to as many people in the chapter as we could, listening to their ideas and questions, and set additional goals for the site that would make it a place where members felt comfortable. Make the site accessible. Many people were concerned about download speed and support for browsers with limited functionality. So we limited graphics (the first icons only used 16 colors), used only broadly adopted HTML codes, and planned for pages that could be viewed acceptably even with graphics display turned off. We didn't use tables, that mainstay of web page layout, until 1997, by which time most browsers supported them. Our site is not the flashiest place on the web, but it is not loaded down with huge graphics and complex formatting, either. Don't compete with News & Views. Although the web site overlaps with the newsletter in many ways, we did not want the two to compete. The web site would not be a "web 'zine", an alternative publication. Instead, we looked for ways to make the two work together. Also, the STC office was strongly opposed to giving away the newsletter to the general public, because it is an important benefit of membership. We resolved these issues-and helped meet the goal of making the web site into a reference library-by deciding to post only feature articles and regular columns in an archive. In the beginning this archive looked puny, but with three years of articles online (http://stc.org/region2/phi/n&v/index.html), it is an impressive overview of the interests of our chapter. Allow for many authors. Since we didn't know how many people would work on the site at any one time, we structured the site to make it easy for many authors, with each section in its own directory to avoid naming and update conflicts as much as possible. Uphold high editorial standards. Credit for any success in reaching this goal must go to Becky Tuszynski, who became the web editor shortly after it went online. In addition to basic proofreading and grammar correction, she helped set and maintain a standard for simple, clear language. When it was built, did they come? I believe we achieved our goals of an elegant, simple, and easy to access site. But the real test of any information system is whether it is used. Site statistics are notoriously difficult to interpret, but my best reading is that the site gets 200-300 visitors a month. This is certainly no threat to Yahoo!, but not bad for a chapter information site. Some of our resource pages and article archives have been linked from other sites, as have the weekly job listings (posted by Heather Nelson at http://stc.org/region2/phi/jobs/). We've also received email queries from people who found the site through a search engine. Most had never heard of STC, so we had an opportunity to do some publicity and outreach work. The site is also a place where we can explore the connection between print and online media. Mike Hendry's software review in the May News & Views, "Comparing the Latest Help Authoring Tools," (http://stc.org/region2/phi/n&v/soft0598nf.html) was the first to expand a short newsletter article into a longer one on the web. What have I learned? Part of my interest in the PMC site was based on the opportunity to manage a site that required frequent updates. Most of my work at Cognetics is in initial creation, and this was a chance to see what seemed important over a long period of time. The most important lesson I learned was simple: stick to the basics. Make sure the key information on the site is kept up to date, because people lose confidence quickly if it is not. The other lesson? Have fun. And I did. Thoughts for the future? I hope the web site will continue to grow and to be an important part of the life of the chapter. I hope that many of you will contribute-helping with ongoing site maintenance, writing a resource page, creating a chapter directory-there are so many possibilities (with small or large commitments). Most of all, I hope it will be an award-winning site for many, many years. If you have ideas, or want to help, I'm sure our new webmaster, Deborah Stone (deborah@chesco.com), will want to hear from you.

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Posted August 12, 1998 (dls)