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The Spectator
Why I Love LAMP
by Dave Riordan '09Science & Technology Sr. Writer
About four years ago, Hamilton's presence on the web was wildly different. Sure hamilton.edu's front page wanted to know if we "were ready," but buried deeper in the Hamilton web servers was a hotbed of spam bots and hacked websites of students and campus organizations. Back then, things were different. Students could do much more with the webspace Hamilton gave them, but because of the power of those underlying technologies that students and organizations had access to were so powerful, they were abused by hackers. And about a year and a half ago, after much soul searching, Hamilton ITS decided to put a stop to dynamic student websites and focus their resources on building the main Hamilton website and the technologies that power it.
The technologies that power the internet are, from a computer scientist's point of view, relatively simple, but still incredibly powerful, and keep getting more powerful. Internet technologies, to borrow from Jefferson,"stand on the shoulders of giants," with one technology building upon another to create a more powerful (and often easier to use) platform upon which to build something else on. In technologists' terms, this is called the "stack."
When it comes to the web, the stack can get pretty big and pretty powerful. When these stacks get interesting for the web is when they let you do more than just serve the same unchanging webpage over and over. The ability to easily create and serve dynamic content over the web has been one of the key elements of the web version 2.0 revival. The point is you can do more by implementing these technologies built upon each other.
For that reason, the stack matters and the choice of what stack is used limits what can be built upon it.
Hamilton's web stack is built on ColdFusion, a programming language built for the web, designed to make things that were once hard (like working with databases) pretty easy. Mike Sprague,ITS's director of Web Services describes ColdFusion as the tool that's used to make the tools, the "connecting layer" that handles the things we don't, for the most part, see. On top of ColdFusion is SiteManager, which handles the managing of content for the main Hamilton site. SiteManager is written in ColdFusion, as are the various class wikis, blogs, and majority of other tools on the Hamilton website (though not BlackBoard and WebAdvisor).
Using SiteManager & ColdFusion with a variety of other web standards on top of it, Hamilton's Web Services team has built a powerful portal for the college, an incredibly useful information system (MyHamilton), and HOLAC, what former Media Board chair Chris Lloyd '09 calls "the most powerful alumni directory in the WORLD." They've done for Hamilton what really can't be done at many other small colleges, and they are working on revamping SiteManager to be an even more integral platform for the future of the Hamilton site, eventually giving access to professors, students, and organizations to use it to build basic webpages in a way similar to writing a Word document.
Unfortunately for students and most organizations, that's all it will do, and as the Web 2.0 bubble took off, Hamilton students and student organizations were left behind. It all has to do with platforms and the choice of the technology stacks.
The powerful ColdFusion stack is off limits to students and student organizations. They cannot run code on it nor code for it in their Hamilton web space. Several years ago, students were given access to a different web stack, one that let them build basic pages in HTML (the same as now), as well as use PHP, a programming language, and MYSQL, a database. PHP & MYSQL have been building blocks of much of the stack of Web 2.0. They have become standard platforms for open adoption and some of the most successful and portable web products are built upon them. Individuals and organizations would run their own web applications, but would often forget about them.
As things got more out of control, ITS and Student Assembly decided to stop supporting the technologies that these interactive student sites were built on, due to issues such as hacking. And so, in 2007, when The Spectator's own site stopped working (it was built on MYSQL and ColdFusion and nobody had known how to update it after several students graduated), and The Spectator simply stopped publishing online. Eventually, working with Web Services and C&D, a new site was built in SiteManager, though with fewer features than the previous site (before it had broken).
When the Continental launched, it decided to simply skip Hamilton's site altogether and use Google's Blogger service to put content online.
Things were in limbo - ITS couldn't support the dynamic student sites any longer because of the resources they drained and trouble they created, but student organizations had nowhere to turn to get significant web hosting off of Hamilton's campus.
It seems as if an end is in sight. As Web Services takes the next few months to revamp SiteManager, it will open up new possibilities for students and student activities alike on Hamilton's own site. Meanwhile, organizations wishing to do more than what SiteManager can provide are finally starting to get web hosting off campus (as was done with the wildly successful Humans vs. Zombies). As the Hamilton technology stack grows, the web's stack grows even faster, and with the atmosphere of innovation being promoted by ITS and organizations diverting off on parallel tracks, it seems Hamilton and student organizations will finally get a web presence as dynamic as its students.