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Bad experience creating and administering a scientific journal site

Talking about how you do not need to order sites, the developers are already tired of the language. But it is quite rightly noticed that itā€™s extremely difficult to put your experience into someone elseā€™s head, and therefore inexperienced customers continue to step on the same rake. Perhaps one of the reasons is that they come to the fateful subject of garden tools from all sides and each in its own way. I will share my.

First of all, I admit to what extent I am a teapot. At a secondary school, in informatics lessons, she supposedly mastered (within the school curriculum) elementary foundations of the html language, at the beginning of the 21st century, using the html-facilitator (Maxim Moshkov's term), the MS Front Page opened and hosted on a free hosting site without any design: the main page was designed one at a time from standard hosting templates, other subordinate pages - with black text on a white or gray background. For the network publication of semi-artistic works of his own composition, more was not required. And a few years later I registered at " Samizdat " with Maxim Moshkov and completely abandoned my site. My knowledge in the field of web design has remained at the embryonic level of the beginning of the century.

In 2014, a scientific journal of a humanitarian orientation was created at one of the technical universities, and I came to work in its editorial office. A scientific and technical journal has already been published (and now continues to be published) at the university. His site was one of the sections of the general site of the university. The administrator of the university site was directly subordinate to the head of the information and computer center (ITC), and he established a strict priority for uploading materials to the site. Even the specialized magazine was not the first in this queue, and some of his news had already managed to lose relevance by the time the hands of the site administrator reached them. Of course, the editors of the new magazine, and moreover the humanitarian one, would be at the farthest end of the line and could not dream of quickly posting their materials on the site.

The editorial staff decided that this did not suit us, especially since she was outwardly unsympathetic to the minimalist design of a university site running 1C-Bitrix. She obtained permission from the head of the Information and Information Center, and from the vice-rector for scientific work, an nth amount of money to create an independent website for the new journal with hosting on a third-party hosting. The head of the ITC, smiling skeptically, prophesied: "All the same, sooner or later run to my legs to bow to me."

The head of the editorial board has accumulated a lot of administrative experience, but she knew even less about sites than I did. Using an administrative resource, she attracted to the creation of the site a new journal of two graduate students from the department, which trained specialists in information technology. Of course, both developers involuntarily did not burn with enthusiasm to create anything for the money that the vice-rector allocated, but they had no choice. They offered us a choice: compose a site from ready-made modules (ā€œfrom children's blocksā€, as they explained to us on our fingers) or write it, as it should be in a good way and as serious adults do.

And here we made the first mistake. So inexperienced users as we were and remain, a ā€œcubedā€ site would be enough for eyes and ears. Such sites are simple not only to create, but also to manage, because they are designed for people who understand a little more than nothing in the administration of web resources.

But no, we needed everything seriously and in an adult way. At the same time, we did not have any constructive proposals for the siteā€™s functionality. Because of this, we made a second mistake - we did not ask the right questions to the developers. In my defense, I can only say one thing: if some business is completely new for you, you cannot guess which questions are right. The editorial board indicated the website of a journal of another university as an example, and for the rest, in its own words, formulated the requirements in the spirit of ā€œwith such mother-of-pearl buttonsā€. I had no requirements for the appearance of the site, and I said: "As you do, it will be fine."

After some time, the developers brought us a laptop on which they demonstrated how the site looks and works, and at our request we recommended hosting. Under their supervision, we entered into an agreement with a hosting provider and registered a domain name for the site.
The editorial office paid for the work done, and for a while everything was fine. They showed me how to fill the site with content, I remembered something, but something didnā€™t. By the time I had accumulated a bunch of questions, only one of the two developers remained (the second defended herself, and the editorial office lost administrative leverage over him).
The remaining graduate student was extremely dissatisfied with the fact that I constantly went to him with questions, rarely got in touch, and in the end said that his business was only development. Nobody came to an agreement with him about writing instructions, technical support and training the stupid humanities in the basics of content management, and subscribing to it was not part of his plans. The manager had to attract other graduate students, undergraduates and students to my rescue, and with their joint efforts the initial structure of the site (running CMS Joomla) was greatly modified in order to simplify it as much as possible. And still it was difficult for me to cope with the site. I somehow learned how to upload new data, but editing the already uploaded data was still difficult. I had no idea what dynamic sites are,and tried in vain in site administration mode to search for pages with the name I need and the html extension. There were none. It turned out to be a big unpleasant surprise for me that static sites (the microscopic experience with which I had) had long since sunk into oblivion, and pages in dynamic sites simply do not exist until they are accessed. And if you turn to the same page 20 thousand times in a row, it will obediently be re-created 20 thousand times.And if you turn to the same page 20 thousand times in a row, it will obediently be re-created 20 thousand times.And if you turn to the same page 20 thousand times in a row, it will obediently be re-created 20 thousand times.

And that was half the trouble. The real trouble came when the calendar year ended. It ended with all the templates created by the developers for an example. For the new issues of the journal in the next calendar year, it was necessary to create everything herself. I did not have instructions for our specific site. I read the general instructions on Jumla and with a sin in half I created a set of categories for the new year. I was even glad that everything seemed to work out. But, as it turned out later, there was much more than half of sin. I noticed that the content of the journalā€™s issues, painted by articles using my new categories, does not look the same as before. From somewhere appeared fields that had not existed before. I was surprised, but decided that it wasnā€™t scary. Think unusual looks! Just to work.

This was the third mistake. Suddenly, we began to receive messages from the hosting provider that our site exceeds the permissible amount of traffic and overloads the hosting. All the advice contained in the "Frequently Asked Questions" section on the hosting, I obediently followed, but it did not help. And the hosting provider continued to send formidable letters. In the most categorical terms, we were required to solve the problem of excess traffic, otherwise we would be denied the provision of a hosting service. At university, no one could or did not want to help me, and in desperation, I asked my husband to look at the ill-fated site. The husband immediately asked the right question: "Do you know that your comments on the articles are open?"

Of course, I was not in the know. Scientific articles are not social media posts; they donā€™t need comments. There was no one to moderate comments and set protection against intruders. In templates created by developers, unnecessary features were disabled. But I didnā€™t suspect either of their existence or of the fact that when creating categories, everything that is not required should be disabled on its own. A powerful army of spam bots climbed through unowned comments, and this was the reason for the excess of traffic volume. I tried to deal with the problem in much the same way as the mocking advice on fighting cockroaches sounds: "Drive all the cockroaches under the cabinet and saw off his legs." I deleted comments and disabled the ability to comment article by article. A control element of a higher level, which would eliminate the commenting function immediately throughout the site,I have not found. And of course, while I was picking, the hosting provider was tired of waiting and fulfilled its threat. We were politely asked to leave the hosting.

Here the prophecy of the head of the ITC came true. We crawled to fall into his legs and, for Christ's sake, asked us to let our magazine host the university. More precisely, the editorial office had to crawl. The head of the IVC did not see me point-blank and considered my attempts to talk with him to be a violation of subordination. Towards the end of my career at the university, he relented and changed his attitude towards me, but then it was. He entertained pride for some time with contemplation of a kneeling head and repeated in different ways that he knew and warned how the whole undertaking would end and the like, but in the end he relented. I remind you again that I am a humanist, and ask you to excuse me for a simplified view of complex system objects and processes. As I understand it, our site as a potentially unsafe object was allocated some special place on the hosting, something like quarantine,under the protection of special programs. There he continued to work under Jumla, as intended by the developers. But if nothing has changed for site visitors, then administration has become even more difficult. From now on, each team would have to wait a minute or longer to complete administrative work with the site. Apparently, defense systems prevented the site from creating dynamic pages. I shouted: ā€œGuard, well, itā€™s impossible to work like that!ā€ The editorial board again entered into negotiations with the department that trained specialists in information technology, and an unfortunate student was appointed the system administrator as the volitional effort of the two heads (the editors and the department). From him, I finally received instructions for managing the site, and thanks to his answers to the questions that I had after reading this document,and something began to clear up in my head. The student fixed the interface elements, broken by the efforts to simplify the site and finally failed after the transition to university hosting. True, he did not delve into other people's work too deeply, he considered the simple solution to be the most reliable, due to which static html-pages lovely to my heart appeared in several places on the site. Together, the student and I sorted back into the numbers of magazines mixed into a messy pile of articles. He created a stock of the necessary categories with correctly established function restrictions for a couple of years. But all good things come to an end. The student completed his studies, and again I was left alone with the site.broken by efforts to simplify the site and finally failed after switching to university hosting. True, he did not delve into other people's work too deeply, he considered the simple solution to be the most reliable, due to which static html-pages lovely to my heart appeared in several places on the site. Together, the student and I sorted back into the numbers of magazines mixed into a messy pile of articles. He created a stock of the necessary categories with correctly established function restrictions for a couple of years. But all good things come to an end. The student completed his studies, and again I was left alone with the site.broken by efforts to simplify the site and finally failed after switching to university hosting. True, he did not delve into other people's work too deeply, he considered the simple solution to be the most reliable, due to which static html-pages lovely to my heart appeared in several places on the site. Together, the student and I sorted back into the numbers of magazines mixed into a messy pile of articles. He created a stock of the necessary categories with correctly established function restrictions for a couple of years. But all good things come to an end. The student completed his studies, and again I was left alone with the site.Together, the student and I sorted back into the numbers of magazines mixed into a messy pile of articles. He created a stock of the necessary categories with correctly established function restrictions for a couple of years. But all good things come to an end. The student completed his studies, and again I was left alone with the site.Together, the student and I sorted back into the numbers of magazines mixed into a messy pile of articles. He created a stock of the necessary categories with correctly established function restrictions for a couple of years. But all good things come to an end. The student completed his studies, and again I was left alone with the site.
Having exhausted the stock of templates created by the student, at the beginning of the next calendar year I made another mistake. A static html page containing a list of all issues of the magazine for all years allowed me to see that the year is a category. But the magazine is quarterly, therefore, in the year there are four issues and there is no issue that would contain materials for the whole year. On this basis, I decided that it would be possible to make another simplification: for the next year, do not create a category. Moreover, in the English version of the site, the years of release ceased to be categories after 2015. For nothing more, I brought the Russian version to a simplified English standard and ... the instruction stopped working. Now I understand that it could not be otherwise. The student wrote the instruction without taking into account such a significant simplification. But then I panicked: how so,I do everything as it is written, but I donā€™t get the desired result ?! The content of the issues of the journal in Russian has ceased to be displayed on the site. I bombarded a graduate, a former administrator, with letters, but I received a harsh rebuke from him: he is no longer studying at this university, no one has renewed the contract with him, payment has not yet been made in full, so thereā€™s nothing to talk about. In the end, he advised checking the links. Using the painful enumeration of the options, it was not long before I found a variant of Russian links that was very similar to English, and it worked. Missing Russian articles appeared each under its own number and under the desired year. I canā€™t say how relieved I felt! As if a mountain had fallen from his shoulders.I bombarded a graduate, a former administrator, with letters, but I received a harsh rebuke from him: he is no longer studying at this university, no one has renewed the contract with him, payment has not yet been made in full, so thereā€™s nothing to talk about. In the end, he advised checking the links. Using the painful enumeration of the options, it was not long before I found a variant of Russian links that was very similar to English, and it worked. Missing Russian articles appeared each under its own number and under the desired year. I canā€™t say how relieved I felt! As if a mountain had fallen from his shoulders.I bombarded a graduate, a former administrator, with letters, but I received a harsh rebuke from him: he is no longer studying at this university, no one has renewed the contract with him, payment has not yet been made in full, so thereā€™s nothing to talk about. In the end, he advised checking the links. Using the painful enumeration of the options, it was not long before I found a variant of Russian links that was very similar to English, and it worked. Missing Russian articles appeared each under its own number and under the desired year. I canā€™t say how relieved I felt! As if a mountain had fallen from his shoulders.Using the painful enumeration of the options, it was not long before I found a variant of Russian links that was very similar to English, and it worked. Missing Russian articles appeared each under its own number and under the desired year. I canā€™t say how relieved I felt! As if a mountain had fallen from his shoulders.Using the painful enumeration of the options, it was not long before I found a variant of Russian links that was very similar to English, and it worked. Missing Russian articles appeared each under its own number and under the desired year. I canā€™t say how relieved I felt! As if a mountain had fallen from his shoulders.

But it turned out that the struggle with the site takes too much working time. The magazine is included in the HAC List, distributed by subscription, and therefore must be published on time. This is the first priority, and all the rest afterwards, if and when time is left. And I was forced to keep the site content to a minimum. I downloaded only the numbers in full and the files of individual articles, the analytical listing of the numbers ceased to lead, as did replenishing the database of authors. The site is in three quarters. Sad story.

But she could still have a good ending. The main scientific and technical journal of the university was tasked with entering international databases. One of the conditions for joining them is a developed bilingual site, independent of the site of the publishing organization. The university leadership purchased a corresponding license from 1C-Bitrix. And I read in the brochure to her that the minimum number of sites to which this license applies is not one, but two. Theoretically, it is possible to transfer both journals to a single technical platform with convenient quick administration. But this is a different story, and telling it is not for me. Since October 2019, I no longer work at the university.

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