McCombs School of Business
Technology Resources

Web Team

This page answers several deep questions, including:

What is the Web Team?

The Web Team is a group of Web producers who assist with the technical design, production, and maintenance of Web sites for departments at the School of Business. Presently the Team maintains over 30 sites at the School representing about 2000 web pages, while assisting with development and maintenance of many more. 

The team is responsible for coding, graphic design, production, and technical quality control on a majority of the standardized sites at the School, including the MSB home page and the new internal services portal, Texas Nexus.

The Team is modeled on the structure of Web design firms and e-commerce companies, where front-end producers and project managers coordinate end-to-end production of a client's Web site.  Team members do not manage the content of a department's Web site.  Content remains under the direction of the department itself, which directs content changes and forwards them to the Team producer who maintains their site. 

At present, the Team has three full-time, and two part-time student producer/developers, Ariel Comstock, Todd Rinker, and Jeanna Myers, who each specialize in different areas.  Altogether these staff will coordinate technical production and maintenance of most of the 2600 publicly accessible web pages at the School, plus a large portion of the internal McCombs community sites now linked off of Texas Nexus.

Why would you want their services?

Team members work full-time on Web production, so they are familiar with all aspects of the production process, from design to coding, publishing, and placement with outside search engines.  Team members serve as end-to-end project managers for the sites that they work with. This situation has many advantages, including:

  • Reliance on full-time staff. Instead of relying on part-time student workers, you get service from full-time staff; if your assigned producer is out for any reason, another Team member covers your site.

  • Quick turnaround time. Team members implement basic changes to a site on a day's notice, and often within hours (even minutes) of a request; this has encouraged more frequent updating of departmental Web sites like the Marketing Department, IROM Department, and Executive Education, all of which use the Web Team.

  • Quality control. Team members are trained to check for compatibility across browsers and platforms, and they work with templates that meet high quality criteria, including accessibility for people with disabilities, keywords for search engine placement, and best practices for coding, site organization, and fast load times.  

  • Liberation from technology.  If a Web Team member maintains your site, you are free to concentrate on its content, look, and feel without having to worry about HTML, ASP, Web publishing, JavaScript, or other technical details. Staff who want to learn about Web production can always do so, but this is not the most enjoyable or efficient use of everyone's time.

  • Access to the latest Web technologies. Team members keep up with technology and share ideas with other technical specialists across the School; because they work on multiple sites, they can share innovations and ideas across many departments.

  • Customer service.  Team members are charged with delivering excellent customer service to their client departments; they are held accountable for their service and evaluated on its quality.

  • Single point of contact.  With a Web Services producer handling the technical project management of your site, you do not need to contact multiple departments and technical staff at the School when you want to get something done on the Web, you just leave it up to your project manager.

Several staff at the School can describe their experiences working with the Web Team. For first-hand experiences, contact Mary Ann Willsey in Texas Executive MBA, or Anne Eden from Executive Education. Contact Communications Department (471-3314) for more references or information.

Can you use the Web Team

Presently, members of the Web Team are assigned to work on production for the following sites (in alphabetical order):

Administrative Services (to come)
Center for Customer Insight
Dean Gau's Office
Executive Education
Executive MBA - Mexico City
Finance Department
Idea to IPO
MBA Student Organizations
Management Department
Marketing Department
Media Services
IROM Department
News & Information
PhD
Technology Resources
School of Business Home Pages
Site Index / Site Map
Templates (this site)
Texas Evening MBA
Texas Executive MBA
Texas MBA
Texas Nexus (including 12+ subsites)

If your site is one of the above, then a contact person in your department is already working with a member of the Team.  Call Ariel Comstock (Interim Web Team Manager) at 232-6652 to find out who your contact is, or check with your department head.

What if you want to use them but are not eligible, what can you do then?

If your department, program, research center, or organization is not presently eligible for service from the Team, you have several options:

  • Use the Web team's Guide to Building a Web site; which outlines in detail the steps necessary to create a site.

  • Use the online guide to work with the templates yourself, which is probably why you are on this site in the first place.

  • Seek consulting from the Team, which can help you get started with the templates or pursue other options, for instance non-standardized pages or pages built through an outside design agency. We have several great freelance designers to recommend.

  • Contact Communications Department or Dean Gau and ask for services from the Team. The Communications Department will extend service as far as staffing allows, either through Communications Services or through help from the MBA program office and Media Services. Your request will help the Dean gauge demand for professional Web services at the School.