South Dakota

The Hurleybulldogs.com domain was registered in August of 1999 - at that point the school and staff were very new to building and providing web content.
In 1999 we received a Compaq Proliant 3000 server, running NT/4 and were building our first web. To the best of my knowledge , some 7 years later, nothing of the original web exists.
I had been helping out around the school by then. The school had started it's computing adventure using Apple computers - lots of Apple II's and then a gaggle of Mac G3's. Networking was pretty much Appletalk with a little bit of Ethernet starting to raise its ugly head. We did have a T1 from DTG as our connection to the internet. With the advent of the Proliant Server from the state, and new school administration, the decision was made to move to an Intel/Windows based computing environment. I started moving in for real in 2000 - things were pretty much chaos. We had acquired our first batch of Inter/Windows machines and we were trying to make them work with the Macs and The Proliant server. The Second web was starting to be built. I created the first Hurley website logo - which is still around - in August 2000.
Our second web lasted in various permutations for nearly six years. Actually it wasn't just one web. We ended up with a number of independent webs, one for each teacher, and we tied them together with a central school site.
In 2004 we upgraded from NT/4 to Windows Server/2003 and thusly to IIS6. This was a big move and stressed our old server to the max. In 2005 , to relieve the server pressure, we migrated the web to it's own Compaq Proliant DL360, with two 1 GHZ Pentium III's and a GB or RAM, running Server/2003. This helped a lot, After using and modifying the old web , using FrontPage and frames, the design was wearing thin. Organizing content was becoming difficult, and we had evolved into distinct user groups that needed servicing. While frames were certainly convenient, Frontpage/2000 wasn't generating the best code and I decided to move away from frames and go with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). This meant that building pages using FrontPage/2000 WYSIWYG interface wasn't viable either. However, Frontpage worked pretty well for letting us control the site and we could fetch pages up and edit them with notepad just fine.
Over the years I had reflected on what purpose the web and the website played in the school. These are the criteria I have identified:

• 1. Provide information for visitors, parents, staff, and students.
• 2. Provided a place for Students and Staff to display the yea's happenings.
• 3. Provide easy access to commonly used functions.
• 4. Most functions available inside and outside of the school - using the same URLs and the same mechanisms.
• 5. Provide an easy way for web visitors to communicate with the staff.
• 6. Code according to W3c.org standards.
• 7. Ensure the site is usable for people using adaptive technology
• 8. Implement the above functions in a straight forward and easy to understand layout.

So, now we come to the Spring of 2006.

We have this new website, based on straight HTML and Cascading Style Sheets. It has an general entry point for people browsing the web, and specialized wings off the main web, the provide customized portals for visitors, parents, staff, and students. I am trying to make the HTML code all be HTML 4.01 Transitional as verified by W3C.org. Since I am also concerned about accessibility of this site for people using adaptive technology, it has been design and tested with adaptive aids. This site is actually a blend of a number different servers running on two different operating systems. We are now supporting virtualized servers on n-way machines. Along with the basic web site, we are providing

• Web based services for students and staff - mail with encryption services, shared and individual address books, calendaring with scheduling, notepads, task managers, file storage, problem reporting and tracking, and general portal services.
• Public event and meal calendaring
• News service with RSS feeds
• Web sites for faculty, staff, and administration
• Image storage and retrieval
• Online Surveys with reporting

We have come a long way since 1999 !!

• "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it) - but 'That's funny...'"

Isaac Asimov  

 Hurley School Web Site

How these pages are arranged

The menu on the top of the page is the same for every page and provides functional navigation back to the home page or to one of the 4 major user pages. The center of each page contains the primary page content - text, graphics, and links. On every page you enter - the right menu will contain navigation links or information specific to the page you are on.