RSC Eastern Workshop - 18 June 2003Brian Kelly facilitated a Benchmarking Web Sites workshop for the Eastern Regional Support Centre (RSC). The workshop was held at Bedford College on Wednesday 18th June 2003. The workshop was facilitated by Brian Kelly together with Simon Ball of TechDis.
This event will provide an opportunity for participants to benchmark their college (or other) Web site by making use of a range of Web-based tools. Delegates will compare their findings in order to try to identify examples of best practices and areas in which improvements may be made. Following the hands-on session there will be a presentation outlining some of the issues associated with this approach to benchmarking. The event will conclude by a group discussion of possible follow-up actions.
Feedback from the workshop was very positive, as shown from the following graphs which summarise the results from the workshop evaluation forms.
The timetable is given below.
| Time | Topic |
|---|---|
| 10:15 | Registration & Coffee |
| 10:45 | Welcome and Introduction |
| 10:50 | 'Introduction To Benchmarking Web Sites' - Brian Kelly, UK Web Focus |
| 11:00 | 'Benchmarking Web Sites' - hands-on session |
| 12:30 | Lunch |
| 13:15 | 'Benchmarking Web Sites' - hands-on session (continued) |
| 13:45 | Report Back |
| 14:15 | Discussion |
| 14:45 | Accessibility |
| 15:30 | Conclusions |
| 15:45 | Workshop ends |
The following URLs will be used during the workshop.
| Exercise | Service | URL |
| 1.1 | NetMechanic | <http://www.netmechanic.com/toolbox/html-code.htm> |
| 1.2 | Bobby | <http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/> |
| 1.5 | UK University Web Entry Points | <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/site-rolling-demos/universities/> |
| 2.3 | W3C HTML Validation Service | <http://validator.w3.org/> |
| 2.6 | Link Alarm | <http://www.linkalarm.com/> |
| 3.1 | Link Popularity | <http://www.linkpopularity.com/> |
| 3.4 | Statistics | <http://www.cultivate-int.org/> |
| 4.2 | Browser Emulators | <http://www.dejavu.org/> |
The following URLs may also be useful.
| Service | URL | |
| Bookmarklets | <http://www.bookmarklets.com/> | |
| Cacheability Engine | <http://www.ircache.net/cgi-bin/cacheability.py?action=show_ext> | |
| Extending Your Browser | <http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue19/web-focus/> | |
| WebWatch Services | <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/webwatch/services/> |
| EchoEcho | <http://www.echoecho.com/> | |
| Entuity | <http://www.entuity.com/> | |
| e-TEST Suite | <http://www.rswsoftware.com/> | |
| Freshwater's SiteScope | <http://www.freshwater.com/SiteScope.htm> | |
| Keynote Systems | <http://www.keynote.com/iw.html> | |
| MercuryInteractive | <http://www.mercuryinteractive.com/> | |
| MercuryInteractive | <http://www-heva.mercuryinteractive.com/> | |
| Prutsman | <http://www.prutsman.com/> | |
| Somix | <http://www.somix.com/> |
| Anybrowser | <http://www.anybrowser.com/> | |
| DejaVu (Browser Emulators) | <http://www.dejavu.org/> | |
| Evolt.org (archive of old browsers) | <http://browsers.evolt.org/> | |
| Lynx Emulator | <http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html> | |
| Test display | <http://cgi.w3.org/cgi-bin/html2txt?url=> | |
| Wapilizer | <http://www.gelon.net/> |
| AltaVista | <http://www.altavista.com/> | |
| LinkPopularity | <http://www.linkpopularity.com/> | |
| NetMechanic | <http://www.netmechanic.com/powerpack/tracker.htm> | |
| Searchenginewatch's Guidelines I | <http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/checkurl.html> | |
| Searchenginewatch's Guidelines II | <http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/popularity.html> |
| Bobby | <http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/> | |
| Color Readability Test | <http://snow.utoronto.ca/readtest/> | |
| Web Metrics Testbed | <http://zing.ncsl.nist.gov/webmet/> | |
| Wave 3.0 | <http://wave.webaim.org/> | |
| Vischeck | <http://vischeck.com/vischeckURL.php3> | |
| Web Accessibility | <http://www.w3.org/WAI/report/> |
| Dr HTML | <http://www2.imagiware.com/RxHTML/> |
| NetMechanic | <http://www.netmechanic.com/> |
| InternetSeer | <http://www.internetseer.com/> |
| NetMechanic Monitoring Service | <http://www.netmechanic.com/monitor.htm> |
| Watchdog | <http://watchdog.mycomputer.com/> |
| Alertsite | <http://alertsite.com/freetrial/> |
| WebWatch Services | <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/webwatch/services/> |
| Dr Watson | <http://watson.addy.com/> |
| LinkAlarm | <http://www.linkalarm.com/> |
| NetMechanic Maintenance Service | <http://www.netmechanic.com/maintain.htm> |
| SiteValet | <http://valet.webthing.com/> |
| This Old Mouse | <http://www.thisoldmouse.com/> |
| Webmaster-Toolkit | <http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/> |
| Netmechanic | <http://www.netmechanic.com/> |
| Nodeworks | <http://www.nodeworks.com/> |
| Site valet | <http://valet.webthing.com/> |
| Xenu | <http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html> |
| LinkTool | <http://www.linktool.com/> |
| Usable Web | <http://usableweb.com/topics/000811-0-0.html> |
| Software in Use: | <http://www.exploit-lib.org/issue5/software-used/> |
| Freshwater Software | <http://www.freshtech.com/> |
| WebKing | <http://www.thewebking.com/products/webking/> |
| A Survey Of Links to UK University Web Sites | <http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue23/web-watch/> |
| A Survey Of Numbers of UK University Web Servers | <http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue24/web-watch/> |
| A Survey Of Web Server Software Used In UK University Web Sites | <http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue25/web-watch/> |
| Showing Robots the Door | <http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue15/robots/> |
| UK University Search Engines | <http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue21/webwatch/> |
| Web Watch: 404s - What's Missing? | <http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue20/404/> |
| WebWatching UK Universities and Colleges | <http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue12/web-focus/> |
| What's Related To My Web Site? | <http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue27/web-watch/> |
| Rolling Demonstration of UK University Web Entry Points | <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/site-rolling-demos/universities/> |
| Rolling Demonstration of UK University 404 Error Pages | <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/site-rolling-demos/university-404-pages/> |