No— Nehemiah is not a new member of the web development team — in fact — I don’t think he has even heard of the “web”. You see, Nehemiah lived some 400 years before Christ. I guess I am really here to introduce The Nehemiah Project — not Nehemiah himself.

The Nehemiah Project is a project to rebuild the foundation of Tyndale’s main website. Like in the story of Nehemiah (a biblical character from the old testament) — the foundation of Tyndale’s website needs some attention.

Over the last number of years there has been tremendous growth in prospective students using the Internet to aid them in their choice of post-secondary schools. Keeping in step with this trend, Tyndale has been investing great efforts to provide our future students with the information and site features that they both need and want. We have grown.

Tyndale started it’s web presence in 1996 with a few pages explaining who we were and how to contact us if you had questions. Today we have about 14,000 items indexed by Google and somewhere in the range of 6000 – 7000 pages of information — all being managed by 40+ web content managers.

With rapid growth comes increased complexity. Although our current home built content management system (DPA) has served us well over the years — but we have out grown it. It is time to rebuild.

I am introducing this project to you today, but it has been in the works for about a year now. We have gone through an extensive Request for Proposal (RFP) process. We received, reviewed and ranked a number of great responses. Along with the Web Steering Committee, we selected our vendor. We have initiated the research and are reexamining all of our Information Architecture (I/A) — we are well on the way to a successful relaunch of www.tyndale.ca

Watch this blog for more information on the project including updates and opportunities for you to give feedback.

A newly developed website (started October 2008) features Nick DeNardis on video doing live reviews of academic websites. Nick, a Web Developer from Wayne State University, has a keen eye for what students are looking for and reviews these websites from their perspective.

Last week I had submitted Tyndale’s website for review. On Friday Nick did a live review of www.tyndale.ca. Websites are scores in three areas – Visual, Information and Code. We scored an overall 88% (B+) with visual getting an 80%, information getting an 85% and code scoring a 99% – hey nobody is perfect

As we embark on a website redesign project, Nick’s review will be quite helpful. Most of the negative comments he pointed out have already been identified as area to work on but it is nice to have them confirmed.

Watch the video below and then leave me a comment. What would you like to see changed on Tyndale’s website? Do you think Nick was wrong on any points? What did he miss?

In a recent post I talked about design and how we see design in a lot of things including XHTML/PHP/CSS  code. Smashing Magazine published an article today titled “12 Principles For Keeping Your Code Clean“. The article lays out some very good concepts that should be viewed as best practices for modern web development.

So if code is your thing or you would like to spend a few minutes trying to figure out why web developers have to deal with – swing by and see what you think.

Up From Last October Down From Last October

Overall Web Site Facts

• We had over 36,200 visits
• We had an average of 1170 visits per day with our highest day (20th) having 1600 visits
• We had 640,200 pages viewed by those visitors
• Visitors came from 127 different countries covering most continents
• The top 3 search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN) hit our web site to index our pages over 98,000 times
• 3.7% of our traffic came directly from search engines with Google alone accounting for over 13,000 hits

University College Future Student Micro-Site Facts

• We had about 2,500 visits
• We had an average of 79.97 visits per day
• We had 9,974 pages viewed by those visitors
• Visitors came from 71 different countries covering most continents
• 60.91% of the visitors were new visits
• Visitors used 6 different operating systems ranging from Windows and Mac to the iPhone and iPod Touch
• 60 people completed an inquiry form online
• 21 people registered for campus visits online

Seminary Future Student Micro-Site Facts

• We had about 1,600 visits
• We had an average of 49.90 visits per day
• We had 5,201 pages viewed by those visitors
• Visitors came from 59 different countries covering most continents
• 56.17% of the visitors were new visits
• 30 people completed an inquiry form online
• 20 people registered for campus visits online

Compiled November 5, 2008 by Andrew Smith, Admissions and Marketing

In November I will be speaking twice on Internet Safety and Awareness for Parents.

Honor Bound Men’s Dinner
Tuesday November 18, 2008 at 6:30pm
Cedarview Community Church, Newmarket

This event is combined with a dinner, tickets are $15
-sorry- Men only [map]

Alliston Christian School
Thursday November 20, 2008 at 7pm

This event is being presented as a free seminar primarily aimed at the parents and children from Alliston Christian School but all are welcome to attend. [map]

also see » www.mymission.ca/danger/

Jacob Mantle, Arts and Science Undergraduate Society (ASUS) President at Queen’s University in Kingston Ontario, has been asked to resign following a recent Facebook comment posted on a friend’s wall. The photo was of two girls wearing scarves and sunglasses. The comment read “I like your Taliban picture”.

While I am sure his comments were intended to be a joke — they have sparked tension at Queen’s and have been labeled as racial and ethnic discrimination.

On a number of occasions I have had the opportunity to speak to our Tyndale freshmen students regarding Internet safety — helping them understand just how their remarks on a public web site may be damaging to their future. This is a prime example.

Mantle has made public apologies to the Queen’s community and is considering resigning from his position. If he refuses to resign he may face an impeachment process to have him removed.

This simple comment has caused great embarrassment to both him and Queen’s University and has stained the future of this student.

Read the Queen’s Journal Article

Tyndale Website Statistics are now available for viewing online. These statistics are primarily focused on our Future Students Micro-sites for the university & seminary. Other statistics are available upon request.