Meet the people behind the website

In this electronic age, an institution’s website is an intrinsic and invaluable part of its employees’ daily work lives. This is also true of the North-West University’s (NWU) website. 

When looking at the numerous web pages that make up the NWU’s internet and staff intranet, it becomes obvious that many people are working behind the scenes to continuously publish, update, develop, manage and coordinate material.

These people are members of two inter-related groups, namely the Web Redevelopment Task Team (Web Support Structure) and the Web Control Committee. Then there are also the various publishers who are scattered across the NWU.

Facts about the web

• The NWU's current website comprises approximately 29 000 pages.
• Every month approximately 65 856 users access the NWU’s internet.
• There are approximately 360 publishers across the University.
• In a recent web survey, participants indicated that what they want most are blogs and an event calendar. From the same survey, it emerged that the biggest problems of the current website as navigation, functionality and information relevance and accuracy.

Web Redevelopment Task Team
This task team is a sub committee of the Institutional Management (IM) and is responsible for the overall restructuring, planning and developing the new NWU web. This group was formed specifically to oversee the redevelopment process and will become the Web Support Structure once the new website has been launched.

Web Control Committee
This committee ensures a strategic fit between the website and the NWU’s vision, strategic plan and business needs. It also advises and supports the Web Support Structure.

People behind the pages
Both these structures, which are chaired by Ms Phumzile Mmope, Executive Director: Corporate Affairs and Relations, include representatives from the Institutional Office (IO) and the three campuses.  In the case of the IO, there are representatives from the Corporate Affairs and Relations (CAR) unit, the Language Directorate and Institutional Administration, among others.  They include Ms Marelize Santana, who is the IO’s Electronic Manager and is based at the CAR unit. She drives the total NWU web in terms of established policies, processes and procedures, and works with and supports the Campus Electronic Managers and the publishers to ensure that the web is managed effectively.

“Information Technology Central (ITC) also plays a huge part in the web development and management,” says Ms Santana.  Their functions include maintaining the technical architecture of the NWU web, operating the central web server and taking responsibility for hardware, software and web training.

Campus representatives include people from the communication and marketing offices on the campuses, such as the Campus Electronic Managers who oversee the web publishing at each campus. They are ultimately responsible for the website construction and maintenance to ensure professional and concise campus representation.  The Campus Electronic Managers are Ms Susan van Rooyen, (Mafikeng), Mr Vincent Eastes (Potchefstroom) and Ms Annette Willemse (Vaal Triangle).

The publishers also play a vital role in maintaining an effective website.   Situated at the IO and all three campuses, they represent specific faculties, divisions, departments, schools and other business units. “Ideally each of these groups needs to be represented by at least one web publisher,” Ms Santana says. These publishers edit or add information on web pages by means of a web-based content management system, such as OpenCMS. They are trained by their campus’s IT divisions.