This is Part 1 of my write up on the SoMAS Website. This post discusses the history of the website.
One of my tasks at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences is that of webmaster for the school’s website. I have discovered that SoMAS has a mountain of history that has been documented in many forms, but isn’t collected in a central location. Part of the reason SoMAS has such a rich history is that the school has been a presence at Stony Brook University for a long time.
To quote our web page:
SoMAS became a school at Stony Brook University in 2007, but we have existed for more than 40 years as the Marine Sciences Research Center (MSRC) and the Institute for Terrestrial and Planetary Atmospheres (ITPA).
The Marine Sciences Research Center web page was maintained by my predecessor, George Carroll, and has gone through a few iterations over the years. In an effort to capture this history in a bottle, the MSRC web page has been archived in its various forms. To get a great look at the history, it is best to use Archive.org’s Way Back Machine, but I also have two versions of the website captured on Dropbox, as well. The different looks of MSRC/SoMAS on the web are available below:
MSRC became SoMAS in late 2007. From what I understand of the history, it is at this time that a new website is designed to help promote the new school. This time, an outside design firm was used: Academic Web Pages (AWP). Working with a committee of faculty and staff at SoMAS, AWP set out to design a website for SoMAS. They had to address a plethora of content: educational and research information, numerous internal institutes, personnel information including directories, faculty pages, and publication databases, news, image galleries and more. Even more, as stated in the SoMAS strategic plan, “SoMAS does not have traditional divisions or departments within the school.” Organizationally, this central focus can sometimes make it difficult to sort content when everything is contained within the same group. However, AWP was able to get it done.
The new web site for the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences launched in late 2009. A new web server was purchased to house the website content. Designed in Adobe Dreamweaver, the website offered modern styling, a great use of photos and graphics provided by everyone at SoMAS and a mountain of content. The home page offered a greeting from the Dean, along with the latest news article, the latest research highlight and publication, the current weather, provided by SoMAS weather stations and radar imagery created at SoMAS, and the latest student highlight. SoMAS also hired a communications specialist, Leslie Taylor, who provided press releases to news outlets and main campus to add additional spotlight to SoMAS-related news and was available to take photos of events. With Academic Web Pages, website maintenance was included so that content could be updated as necessary, but the website could also be updated by anyone with access to the server and knowledge of HTML or Dreamweaver templates. The maintenance agreement with AWP would prove helpful when the communications specialist position was not extended and the former IT Specialist retired.
During 2011, when SoMAS did not have any IT personnel maintaining the website, Associate Dean Bill Wise filled the role of communications manager, sending AWP authored news articles and updated publication records to keep content updated on a regular basis. His articles kept the news flowing on the SoMAS website.
When I started at SoMAS in 2011, modifying the website became one of my tasks. Bill Wise still produced news articles for the website and SoMAS continued to maintain the maintenance agreement. I was not left with many notes about the website other than the AWP relationship, and I did not noticed right away that the website was created in Adobe Dreamweaver. My previous experiences with Dreamweaver instilled the knowledge that I should avoid it at all costs, particularly given the dated copies of the software that were available on hand and my desire to keep costs low for website maintenance.
It was very early on that I knew I needed a more efficient and cost-effective alternative to the website.
