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Web Software

This page describes the software infrastructure of the department's website. Information is available elsewhere about the hardware and specific how-to instructions.

Web Server

Department web pages are served by the Apache web server. Developed by the Apache Group, Apache is the most widely used web server on the internet. Apache documentation is available at the Apache web site.

Web Browsers

There are a variety of web browsers available. The most popular include Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Search Engine

The entire department web site is indexed nightly to enable up-to-date and fast site-wide searches. Swish-E is used for both indexing and searching. Information is available from the Swish-E web site. A standard CGI search command is described under the next section.

Content Management

The main department pages were constructed using Website Meta Language, an HTML preprocessor that supports a wide array of programming language features designed to simplify web site design and management. A local author's guide explains how to create or modify these pages.

CGI Commands

The Common Gateway Interface is a specification for how web browsers interact with scripts and programs on the server machine to produce dynamic output. The World Wide Web Consortium maintains a list of links to information about CGI.

The technical staff maintains a number of local CGI commands for use by web developers.

Other Commands

Here are some other commands that are useful to web authors:

• webmaint: Reminds web page owners to update their pages, based on tags embedded in those pages.
• webupdate: Copies web pages from the internal web to the external web. This runs nightly on the whole web, but web authors can also run it on their own pages.