Institutional Memory
for the members of the UCLA Linguistics Department
Web
Site Committee.
The whole site (i.e. everything; including all individual Web pages, the Phonetics Lab site, and the speech error database) is in one folder, called Linguistics, on the Web server. In principle, you can just copy this folder to the hard disk of a computer. Computers have pretty big hard disks these days, and as of this writing (August 2004) the whole site is only about a gigabyte. The FTP is not as fast as one might wish, and the download takes several hours.
The hard part is to get the whole thing to download overnight, without any interruption that would be needed to be dealt with by hand. The interruptions come from these annoying little crosslinks that divert FTP to the wrong folder as it downloads.
There has to be a better way to do this, but for now:
a) Use the Windows Search capacity to search in the previous backup for any file named primelinks.txt. These files form a kind of server-internal link. If left unaltered, they will cause the FTP program to wander about the site in endless loops as it follows the links.
b) Go to the Web site with FTP or similar software and rename any primelinks.txt file primelinks.txt.bak.
c) Copy the site to your hard disk with FTP. As of August 2004 you need about a gigabyte of free disk space. Copy the "Linguistics" folder and all of its daughter folders.
d) When you're done copying, rename all of the primelinks.txt files so that their users can use them again.
e) Use the Windows "rar" compression program or similar program to compress the copied Linguistics folder.
f) If necessary, use Chainsaw or some similar program to chop up the compressed folder into pieces small enough to fit on CD's.
g) Burn the CD or CD's.
h) Give it/them to the staff member of the Web Site Committee for safekeeping.
Andy French suggests using Internet Explorer for the copying; perhaps it ignores the links. I have not yet tried this.
How To Convert A Page Into A Pretty Page with Sidebars
Word document: PrettyPagesWithSidebars.doc, PDF file: PrettyPagesWithSidebars.pdf
Pages to Watch
(because their content changes)
People
Department committee members:
http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/general/committees.htm;
also the private version at
http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/private/committees.htm
Changes in faculty, including promotions in rank:
http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/faculty.htm
Changes in staff:
http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/staff.htm,
http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/sduties.htm
Changes in visiting faculty and scholars:
http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu//people/visitors.htm
New grad students, students graduating or otherwise leaving program:
http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/students.htm
Newly finished Ph.D.'s
http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/phds.htm.
(Occasionally update links on this list, using a search
engine.)
Downloadable dissertations of finished Ph.D.'s:
http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/faciliti/diss.htm
Courses and Lecture Series
Colloquium and seminar schedules (frequent!):
http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/linguistics/colloquia/
Changes in graduate courses:
http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/programs/courses/gcourses.htm
Changes in undergraduate courses:
http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/programs/courses/ucourses.htm
New proseminar topics:
http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/general/ProseminarTopics.htm
Other
Legislation enacted in faculty meetings:
http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/general/Legislation.html
Add news; remove news when it becomes old:
http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/News.htm
Conferences, changes in chair, retirements, old newletters:
http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/general/history.htm