Tools and Standards

Central Web Services has developed a set of tools for use by the OSU community and suggests a few guidelines when developing for the web.

1. Tools
   • WebManage
   • Survey Tool
   • Campus Map
   • Email Tools
   • Search Tool
   • Single Sign On (SSO) Library
   • gpgwrap: GPG Encryption from PHP
2. Standards and Guidelines
   • Accessibility
   • Validation

Tools 

Working with the University, we have developed many tools to allow many people easy access to sometimes complex tasks. These tools will allow you to enhance your website for users.

WebManage

Using WebManage, our users are able to view and edit information about their sites, including the users associated with it, web paths which are available, and database usernames and passwords. In addition it allows new users the ability to request access to a new site. Check it out at https://access.cws.oregonstate.edu/webmanage.

Survey Tool

The OSU Survey Tool empowers the OSU community with the ability to create, manage and collect custom surveys through the web. It also provides result reporting and multiple export options. There are helpful survey tips which provides information on how to find a survey you are looking for, how to take a survey, and contact information. To create a survey, you will need to login with your ONID account. Once you login, you will find survey creation help.

Campus Map

The Campus Map is a tool intended to give an interactive map of the OSU campus. The most basic of these features are those that show the positions of buildings, streets, and the respective names or abreviations across campus. It also provides the user with the ability to create a link for a custom map. This link can be used with web sites, in e-mails, or even for advertizing and event location. To create your own map, please read these instructions.

Email Tools

Email tools provide a way to send email to anyone on campus. By using these tools, mass emailers (spammers) are prevented from seeing the destination email address, and thus can not take that address and use it for other purposes.

• WebMailer: get a fixed link for an e-mail address to limit spam exposure. (Person or Group)
• OSU Web E-mail Form: find and e-mail people at OSU. (does not include departments or groups)

Search Tool

The Search Tool allows users to search inside of your site or all of OSU with the OSU search engine. Simply insert the form below in your site and you will have the functionality of the search page at http://search.oregonstate.edu

<form method="get" action="http://search.oregonstate.edu/web">
  <input type="text" name="query" size="15" maxlength="256" />
  <input type="checkbox" name="site"
     value="yoursite.edu/directoryname" checked="checked" />
     Search this site only.
  <input type="submit" value="Go" title="Search OSU." />
</form>

Don't forget to modify "yoursite.edu/directoryname" to point to the location of your website

Single Sign On (SSO) Library

The SSO Library is a collection of code written in PHP by Central Web Services to provide convenient ONID SSO authentication and session management functionality. It was developed for web applications being built by CWS, but anyone is free to use it.

ONID Single Sign on allows a user to authenticate to a web page using their ONID credentials. Once authenticated, they can then travel to another SSO enabled website and are logged in automatically. It is important to note that SSO only supplies authentication and not authorization

To use the SSO Library, you must:

• Register your site with ONID SSO
• Download the SSO Library, sso.tar.gz
• Extract the library files and place the sso folder created in your web directory.
• Edit sso/sso.php file and change the $sso_site_config to suit your needs.

An API Documentation for the library is available for integration with your web application.

gpgwrap: GPG Encryption from PHP

gpgwrap is a simple wrapper around GNUPG, a free replacement for the PGP utility. Because the exec() functions are disabled on CWS servers, gpgwrap is provided as a means of utilizing some gnupg features from php scripts.

Please see the Wikipedia article on public key cryptography for additional background information.

You are encouraged to copy the examples given for your own applications; they make extensive use of the php curl library for sending and receiving data from the gpgwrap script.

Additional documentation and example usage.

Standards and Guidelines

When creating new pages for your web site, it is important to follow the standards and guidelines that form a good web site. Such things as clear and simple language or easy to follow navigation will increase the usability of your site. Once a user feels at home and can easily get around, all that is left is to provide good content.

Accessibility

Designing a site for the largest possible audience should be the goal of anyone making a web page. Following accessibility guidelines will allow users with disabilities to easily find the information they need. Simply thinking about how a screen reader or braille display will show the page to a disabled user is the perfect first step in creating a highly accessible site.

There are many resource to help in creation of accessible sites:

• OSU's Accessibility Website
• W3C Techniques for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0
• Accessibility - A New Way of Thinking
• Web Accessibility

Validation

During the development of your site, we suggest you run it through the W3C's Markup Validation Service and the W3C's CSS Validation Service. These services will point out any standards issues that may appear in your site. If the site does not validate, it may not render correctly on all browsers, or may be inaccessible to disabled users.