Web Strategy and Development Blog

Student Web positions available

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Working on a computer

Want to work in a fun environment while getting hands-on job experience?

Several opportunities available

The office of Web and new media has three student positions available:

Web Help Desk Associate

  • Assists University website developers with telephone and in-person support.
  • Creates and configures websites in Web Press and converts websites to the Web Press system.
  • Creates technical documentation for website developers.
  • Implements website designs using CSS.

Web programmer

  • Programs dynamic and interactive Web applications using advanced programming knowledge including technologies such as SQL and server-side programming languages such as C# and PHP.
  • Uses GIT source control.
  • Develops and maintains large-scale JavaScript applications.
  • Utilizes external APIs including Google Maps and Flickr.

Designer

  • Designs Web graphics, including unit mastheads and featured updates
  • Updates Web information and graphics on University website
  • Provides design/layout information and Adobe CS assistance to other members of the office of Web and new media

Requirements

  • Applicants should feel comfortable in a fun yet professional atmosphere.
  • Applicants must have effective communication skills and the ability to learn technology quickly.
  • Applicants must also be Missouri State University students who can work 10-20 hours/week during the standard work day (8 a.m.-5 p.m., Monday-Friday).

Apply today

Pay ranges from $9-10.50 per hour, depending on position. Work hours may also count toward internship for course credit.

Opening are available immediately. To apply, email your résumé to web@missouristate.edu

About the office of Web and new media

The office of Web and new media maintains many of the Web pages for Missouri State University including the homepage, search and campus map. In addition, the office provides support for Web developers across campus. The office is located downtown in the Meyer Alumni Center.

Student Web developer position available

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GlobeWant to work in a fun environment while getting hands-on job experience? The office of web and new media has openings for student Web programmers.

Position duties

Duties will be tailored to applicant skillset. Possible duties include:

  • Developing custom CSS and HTML for campus websites
  • Coding AJAX/JavaScript for campus websites
  • Programming database-driven Web applications using ASP.net, ASP or PHP

Applicants should feel comfortable in a fun yet professional atmosphere. Applicants must also be Missouri State University students who can work up to 20 hours/week during the standard work day (8 a.m.-5 p.m., Monday-Friday). Pay is $8.50-9.50 per hour.

CSS, HTML and more

Applicants must be proficient in HTML and CSS and have effective communication skills. Preferred applicants should have some proficiency in database design and/or maintenance, C# and/or JavaScript.

Apply today

Opening are available immediately. To apply, email your résumé and some sample websites you’ve coded to web@missouristate.edu

Honey I Shrunk the Website

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Honey I Shrunk the KidsWeb pages should load fast. Period. It’s irritating for any reason to wait on a computer. As a web developer, so many of the factors that go into page loading speed are outside of our control. However, some of the biggest ones are fixable with a minimal amount of work. The effort isn’t really justified for every page, but high traffic pages (like the university homepage) are definitely worth it.

Formatting for speed

As a programmer, I much prefer to maintain nicely formatted code. But when you are after speed, the whitespace has got to go. You can reduce the size of your page significantly. Smaller code size = less bandwidth used = faster load times = win for everyone but the programmer. Removing whitespace is effective on the HTML of the page, stylesheets and JavaScript.

Beyond whitespace

With JavaScript you can optimize even further. Tools such as Google’s Closure-Compiler can not only remove whitespace, but perform some pretty hefty optimizations on your code. For our redesign, Closure-Compiler reduced a 38KB file down to 14KB – and size was only part of the speed benefits it gave.

All zipped and ready

In today’s world, why would you send uncompressed resources? Processing power is cheap – it’s network speeds that still seem to limit us. Text files such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript can easily be compressed on the fly by almost any modern web server – as long as you have the processing power to spare. That 14KB JavaScript file actually gzips down to a measly 5.2KB. That brings our combined savings on that file alone up to nearly 87%!

Compression Resources

Zero is less than something

Of course downloading nothing is always faster. Usage stats show us that we have a high degree of returning visitors to our homepage. By setting some pretty aggressive cache headers, users only have to request new HTML. All of the images, stylesheets and scripts can be loaded from what they got on their last visit.

Cache headers are somewhat confusing and can have unintended side effects. Google has a great article on the relevant cache headers: http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/docs/caching.html

Tools of the trade

Optimizing your site for loading speed can be a daunting task. There are a few tools that make this easier. My personal favorite is Google Page Speed (an addon for FireBug). In addition to a prioritized list of suggestions, several optimizations can be run within the tool itself such as image optmization and whitespace removal.

This is the second post in a series about the techniques used in the 2010 redesign of the Missouri State homepage. Other posts in the series: