Technical Specifics

Our World Wide Web server, our Gopher server, and our anonymous FTP server used to run an Apple Macintosh G3 Minitower. Performance enhancements of this server system (i.e., additional RAM) were made possible by a donation from Classroom Connect. The World Wide Web server was powered by WebSTAR 3.0. Our search engine was iHound, made by ICATT.

As of January 2002, we now have two servers that handle the various Internet services that Purdue's OWL provides. Web, mail, and file service for owl.english.purdue.edu run on an Apple Macintosh G4 server with 1.25G of memory running OSX Server. On owl2.english.purdue.edu, (also an Apple Macintosh G4 server that used to run AppleShare IP and be our primary server), we have a search engine (Phantom) and a webbed Filemaker Pro 5 database which contains a searchable list of articles in the Writing Lab Newsletter. We also have some pictures of the OWL office.

We use Macromedia Dreamweaver for the Macintosh and PC to create, update, and manage the website, and we use Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia Fireworks (also for Mac and PC) to produce and edit graphics. We produce Portable Document Format (PDF) versions of our handouts using Adobe Acrobat 5.0. Presentations are developed in Microsoft PowerPoint. Our web usage statistics are analyzed using a combination of Analog 5.0 and DNStran.

Our online tutoring service is done over email. A selected cadre of tutors use graphical email clients such as Outlook Express or Netscape Messenger to access our IMAP server in order to answer email to the OWL email form. Tutors can access the account either from home or from the writing lab. Our online tutoring coordinator is Vicki Scala. At the moment, we do not do synchronous tutorials or incorporate any forms of synchronous communication into the OWL website.