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Joe's "State of the Web sites" Address, Part I
1/21/2004
Apache Modules
Apache was designed from the ground up to be highly extensible and highly configurable via "modules." However, the only Apache modules seen at six or more study sites were PHP, mod_ssl, and mod_perl. Thus, despite the tremendous number of ways that Apache can be customized, most sites run with a very conservative "vanilla" set of extensions, if they use any Apache extensions at all.
A noteworthy difference between our study sites and general global practice is that while, by various accounts, roughly 20-22 percent of all global sites use Microsoft FrontPage extensions, only two sites (1.6 percent) in our study were running FrontPage extensions. (There have been a variety of security issues associated with the FrontPage extensions, which may have resulted in this difference in penetration.)
Other Apache modules seen at one to five study sites were mod_fastcgi, mod_pubcookie, DAV, mod_python, mod_layout, mod_auth_pam, mod_ldap_userdir, mod_macro, mod_jk, ApacheJserv and mod_gzip. See http://modules.apache.org/ for more information about Apache modules.
Natural Minimum Web Page Size
We were also curious about natural minimum Web page size, or the smallest size window in which a university's Web site could be displayed without causing a horizontal scroll bar to appear. Deciding on the correct width for a Web page can be tricky these days since there are huge differences in the screen sizes people use, ranging from 640x480 (307,200 pixels) on small legacy monitors all the way up to 2048x1536 (3,145,728 pixels) on huge high resolution tubes--a full order of magnitude difference.
It can be difficult to design a simple, attractive and easy-to-maintain fixed width or resizable Web page that works well across that full range of resolutions. In our study, the median (50th percentile) horizontal page size was 727.5 pixels, with an X dimension range that went from 486 pixels to 1229 pixels. Vertically the median was 717.5 pixels, with a range from 409 pixels to 2516 pixels (this exceedingly "tall" homepage was at a Web sites where the site stacked badly as the width of the Web page was reduced to its minimum natural width of 625 pixels). For comparison, Google's home page has a natural width of only 571 pixels.
At least some university Web sites are obviously being quite aggressive about their use of screen real estate, assuming at least an 800x600 screen resolution or a willingness on the part of their users to "pan" to see parts of their Web site.
Web Page Design Trends: Segmentation
We had received some feedback that a growing number of college and university Web sites apparently had begun to explicitly segment their audience into narrow categories on their home page. In evaluating that claim, we found that indeed, 78.4 percent (135 out of the 172 sites in our study), now do this.
What is segmentation? A university might choose to offer a number of parallel versions of its home page: one version tailored for prospective students, another for current students, a third for faculty and staff, a fourth for sports fans, a fifth for alumni, a sixth for parents and families of students, a seventh for donors, an eighth version for members of the news media, and so forth.
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