Middlebury College is a small liberal arts college located in Middlebury,
Vermont.
ioflux performed two distinct projects with Middlebury College:
Lifelong
Email System
a web application to enable alumni to have a permanent, forwarded
email address @alumni.middelbury.edu
Alumni Portal Technical Review
Middlebury was interested in purchasing a 3rd party technology
(in the $10-$30,000 range) to enable a portal for Alumni. An ioflux
consultant was called in to attend vendor presentations,
review technology, and produce recommendations for technology acquisition.
Lifelong Email System
Middlebury College had a home-grown email forwarding system which failed
in 2001. They approached ioflux to reimplement the lifelong email system
in a quick and efficient manner.
ioflux implemented a PHP and MySQL based site which enabled both staff
and alumni to authenticate via Middlebury's proprietary mainframe identification
system. The system
included an administrative page for users, mailing list subscriptions, administration
interface for staff, and a word blocking system to prevent profanity and
use of undesirable email address names (such as president@alumni.middlebury.edu)
Technology developed:
User administrative front end to enable user account editing
email
address verification
Subscription to mailing lists
Administrative interface to "banned" word list
Administrative interface to user list
Complete logging system of all system actions
Installation and backup systems
Full documentation of all aspects of the technology
Technologies Used:
PHP
MySQL
qmail
Linux
bash scripts
C interface to mainframe authentication
Within weeks of the alumni email forwarding downtime, Middlebury college
had a robust system which exceeded their specifications.
This system ran for two years without any maintenance or bug fixes
to the code by ioflux consultants.
A single issue did appear, which was related to the use of Red Hat's
up2date functionality, which modified permissions which took the system
down for approximately 3 hours.
Alumni Portal System Technical Review
The Alumni Relations department of Middlebury College was reviewing 3rd
party products for use as an alumni portal, with an estimated budget of $10,000
- $30,000.
The Alumni Relations department lacked the technical skills to be able
to review products, and requested ioflux consultant to review each product
for its technical merits and issues.
An ioflux consultant attended two 3rd party vendor presentations for alumni
portal technology, and met with a third vendor's sales representative.
"Red Flags" to enable administrative staff to identify key
concerns with the products.
Details of questions asked during review, with commentary on interpretation
of the answers from each vendors
Given ioflux, inc. review of the vendors, Middlebury College was able to
successfully select a vendor for their alumni portal needs, and make an informed
decision.
