World-Wide Web

UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY COMPUTING CENTER
COMPUTING SINCE 1958

WORLD WIDE WEB

The Computing Center began operating an experimental Web server in the second half of 1993. The initial home page was all text, but in December of 1993 a graphical home page with iconic links was introduced. The links on the original page reflected many of the items available from the Gopher service that existed at the time, but also included several new items, like a map of the campus with links to information about the buildings, that demonstrated some of the new capabilities of the Web.

Over the years the home page was updated and items were added and removed as more information became available on the Web, but the basic design remained unchanged. An entirely new design was introduced in October 1998 and updated in June 2001. University Public Relations began managing the home page and a set of central pages in 1998.

Use of the Web server grew rapidly - by about a factor of ten annually for a few years - and by January 1995 the Web server was handling over 160,000 requests monthly, exceeding the usage of the Gopher server for the first time. Usage fluctuates with the University calendar, but overall the usage has increased by about 50% annually in recent years. The 1998 design was more graphics-intensive and resulted in a large jump in activity as each page viewed by a browser required many more references to the server. (See the server statistics page for more information.)

Search Services

As more materials became available through web servers it became increasingly important to provide automated search tools to locate them. Several packages were tried on www.uky.edu during the early years. In the fall of 1996 we installed ht://Dig, which indexed pages on www.uky.edu only. The problem of finding material was exacerbated as it became easier to set up web servers and they began to proliferate on campus.

In May 2000 we purchased UltraSeek to run on a dedicated server and index the entire campus web. At that time about 150,000 web pages were indexed on 300 campus servers. In July 2003 the Ultraseek server was replaced by a Google Search Appliance (GB-1001), which was upgraded to newer models over the years. It is currently indexing over 500,000 pages on over 700 servers.

Evolution of the UK Home Page

The original graphical home page, December 1993.		The home page circa 1996.
The home page as it appeared in mid-1998.		The home page introduced in October 1998.
New design introduced in June 2001.		That design was slightly modified later in 2001. This image is from June 2002.
New design introduced in May 2005.		Updated in October 2005.
Design updated spring 2006. Image from July 2007.		New design introduced September 2007.
New design, September 2008.		Design from early 2010.

This page was updated on 2011-10-19.