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A Guide to Using the UMass Medical School Website

Welcome to the official University of Massachusetts-Worcester web site. Information Services is pleased to provide this new service for the UMass community. This is now a full service web site that includes both Internet and Intranet sites, search capabilities, development tools, reporting tools and support staff.

The web has become the standard tool for accessing information. Good web sites are not only visually appealing and informative, but they also must add value and must evolve. While the development of individual or departmental web pages has become commonplace, the task of building and maintaining a large multi-department web site is complex. We have taken a programmatic modular approach in constructing this web site. We adhered to the following design principles in the development of this site:

We decided to separate the content from the navigation to satisfy many of these principles. Accurate and timely content is key to a successful web site. We depend on departmental contacts for content. Consistent navigation is critical to make the site user friendly. It is also important for the maintenance of a large web site. We use templates and style sheets to achieve this. This approach allows authors to focus on content and allows Web Services to keep the technology current.

This web page is part of a comprehensive solution. We have selected ColdFusion as an application environment to build and deploy scalable solutions that integrates browser, server, and database technologies. We use Verity to provide powerful indexing and search capabilities. We use WebTrends to analyze the use of our site so that we can continuously improve it. Finally, and most importantly, we have a committed staff to provide support.