ITS Digital Services is managing the volume of web.unc.edu sites to ensure only updated, accurate information is found on University sites.
Web.unc.edu is a web publishing service that enables campus individuals to create their own website. The widespread availability of this service has led to the creation of more than 20,000 web.unc.edu sites. The sites are hosted on enterprise-level hardware at the University.
“We had a ton of abandoned sites taking up space on the servers,” said Kim Vassiliadis, Manager of ITS Digital Services and User Experience, “so we started an initiative to cull the number of those abandoned sites.”
In May 2019, Vassiliadis and her team began sorting through the thousands of web.unc.edu sites, looking for sites that met any of the criteria for deactivation. These criteria include sites that were owned by users with expired Onyens or had been created within the previous three months but had not been updated since their creation date.
“Having a ton of outdated content can lead to inaccurate and misleading information,” Vassiliadis said. Digital Services has to acknowledge the accuracy and accessibility of its web content. Hosting outdated, incorrect and inaccessible information would be a liability to the team.
Digital Services regularly works with University Archives to identify websites that represent the University and may need to be kept for historical record.
Vassiliadis and her team have reduced the number of web.unc.edu sites to less than 5,000 sites. Digital Services plans to continue this curation process every six months or at least every year.