Please replace the webmaster at UNISA

w1z4rd

w1z4rd

Karmic Sangoma
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UNISA have a lot of money to produce a world class website. What do we get? A POS that looks like it was designed in Frontpage and which has terrible performance and accessibility issues.

What the heck are they running there? Why cant they maintain a simple thing like a website? Did some cadre or cousin get appointed to the job of web master? There seems to be an error in one of my English assignments... I have a question which reads, "In your opinion, why is it that people with a different are unemployable in certain sectors of the economy and not in others".

The error exists in both the online PDF version and the printed version sent to me. Since the comprehension article I am dealing with deals with affirmative action I assume they mean "different skin color" or something?

Anyways to be 100% sure I thought I would check the UNISA forum that deals with this subject and I see there is a forum post with the title, "Assignment 1 - errors that need to be addressed". Well... for the last 30 minutes I have been trying to click to read that and I cant.

Bunch of idiots running the website. Grrrr.

I guess it has something to do with their stupid policy of letting MS run their servers.
 
The problem is endemic to our higher educational systems in SA. Check out the UCT site. Try to find something, anything really, that's relevant to what you want to know on there.
 
cerebus said:
The problem is endemic to our higher educational systems in SA. Check out the UCT site. Try to find something, anything really, that's relevant to what you want to know on there.
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Add a +1 for anything web-related at UKZN too. Actually I think UKZN can take the award for most rubbish on the internet.
 
And people study IT degrees there... I've always found it amusing how these companies that are supposedly specialising in "IT training" or "web development" training , 99% of the time have the worst online presence. Not only terrible websites, but the stuff they are supposedly teaching are not even used themselves (i.e. being able to manage certain things online etc)

You'd think they'd channel all these eager students to enhance their website via "projects" , fast asleep these places i tell you.
 
I finally opened the forum page and it looks like a classifieds section for people with learning disability. /sigh
 
If anyone comes across the same issue I had re the first english assignment for ENN103F. There is an announcement section that address`s the strange questions:

Dear students of ENN103F

Please be advised that Assignment One on the printed Tutorial Letter 101/3/2013 on pages 12 - 14 has a number of both typographical and numerical mistakes.

This happened as a result of a number of factors: the initial assignment reading was too costly for the Department to commission in terms of copyright and had to be retracted at the last minute.

The reading on "Affirmative Action: a losing battle?" was then included but with an almost impossible deadline, which resulted in the errors reflected therein.

This is regrettable and we apologise for any inconvenience this might have cost you.

The corrected version of the assignment is on myUNISA and is attached to this announcement for your convenience.

The marks are out of 100 marks - 50 for Section A and 50 marks for Section B.

NB: Please note that the due date has not changed in any way (4 March 2013).

Best wishes

The 103F Team.
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The new tutorial letter makes a lot more sense!
 
ponder said:
Are these sites done in house or by outside companies?
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The answer is neither; they accrete over time like stalagmites. Frequently they get chunks done by a third party provider, sometimes their IT departments build a module but lack somebody skilled in one aspect like design. They hobble together into an unsearchable chimeric beast with gangly appendages and no organisational consistency whatsoever.

You'd think they'd channel all these eager students to enhance their website via "projects" , fast asleep these places i tell you.
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Sometimes this does happen and it exacerbates the problem greatly.
 
ghoti said:
UNISA have a lot of money to produce a world class website. What do we get? A POS that looks like it was designed in Frontpage and which has terrible performance and accessibility issues.

....

I guess it has something to do with their stupid policy of letting MS run their servers.
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Please understand the difference between the website and the student portal. The issues your having is with the portal, not the actual web site.

The portal is using an open source system called Sakai Project that is used by over a 100 universities. Honor students get a chance to contribute towards the code base (I applied 5 yrs ago but will only be considered if I study towards my honors).

And yes, there are hardware constraints but thats also due to the massive explosion of students over the years. I've always found the myunisa to be wobbly during the week in February with all the new students hammering it from work. I find that if you access it in the evening and weekends that its better.
 
cbrunsdonza said:
Please understand the difference between the website and the student portal. The issues your having is with the portal, not the actual web site.

The portal is using an open source system called Sakai Project that is used by over a 100 universities. Honor students get a chance to contribute towards the code base (I applied 5 yrs ago but will only be considered if I study towards my honors).

And yes, there are hardware constraints but thats also due to the massive explosion of students over the years. I've always found the myunisa to be wobbly during the week in February with all the new students hammering it from work. I find that if you access it in the evening and weekends that its better.
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For R10000 a month you can setup a cloud to run the website/portal (the portal is just an interactive website) on that could handle millions of users at the same time. I dont accept wobbly as reasonable.
 
h869C2C18
 
ghoti said:
For R10000 a month you can setup a cloud to run the website/portal (the portal is just an interactive website) on that could handle millions of users at the same time. I dont accept wobbly as reasonable.
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Not saying you need to accept, just stating facts. And R10K is not going to cut it, take it you've never had to actually setup a cloud instance for high volume traffic. Don't forget UNISA has over 200K students that all have to use myunisa.

But since I'm not a representative of UNISA I would recommend that you actually speak to Dr Mac vnd der Merwe to get a better understanding of the infrastructure of the myunisa portal.
 
cbrunsdonza said:
Not saying you need to accept, just stating facts. And R10K is not going to cut it, take it you've never had to actually setup a cloud instance for high volume traffic. Don't forget UNISA has over 200K students that all have to use myunisa.
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Actually I have. I have an international onApp install running the recommend hardware to control balanced VMs, which is:

Code: 
1 x Controller Server
The Controller Server manages your cloud and hosts the OnApp Control Panel. 

8GB RAM (16GB+ recommended)
Dual or Quad Core 2Ghz+
100GB Raid 1
2x Gig NIC
CentOS 5
2 x Hypervisor servers
Hypervisors host virtual machines and provide their hardware resources.

8GB+ RAM
Quad Core 2Ghz+
30GB HD (SSD recommended)
3 x Gig NIC (4 recommended)
CentOS 5
1 x SAN
The primary storage device for your cloud.  

1TB block storage
iSCSI, AoE or Fiber – it can even be on a shared SAN
1 x Backup server
Backup servers store virtual machine snapshots and templates, and handle disk-related activities such as VM provisioning and backup processes.

4GB RAM (8GB+ recommended)
Dual or Quad Core 2GHz+
2TB Storage mounted locally
2x Gig NIC
CentOS 5

It is hosted in Germany so perhaps the rest of the money disappears to bandwidth or something with UNISA?
 
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I once attended a web design seminar. They speaker started with good news and bad news.

The good news is that anyone these days can create a website.

The bad news is that anyone these days can create a website.
 
ghoti said:
Actually I have. I have an international onApp install running the recommend hardware to control balanced VMs, which is:

...

It is hosted in Germany so perhaps the rest of the money disappears to bandwidth or something with UNISA?
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And how does it handle volume? Ever had 50K users simultaneous access the server? What about 100K users?

Just saying that its easy to say cloud is the solution but its obvious your convinced that your solution is the solution.
 
Picard said:
I once attended a web design seminar. They speaker started with good news and bad news.

The good news is that anyone these days can create a website.

The bad news is that anyone these days can create a website.
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Reason why I'm not a web developer. Any tosser who can say CSS slaps together a website. I prefer to stick to my enterprise PHP development.
 
cbrunsdonza said:
And how does it handle volume? Ever had 50K users simultaneous access the server? What about 100K users?
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I am not sure on actually exact users but it does handle massive amounts of constant traffic (thousands of terabytes a month) and load. Since it is a solution for VM`s I dont have easy access to each users VPS to get their user numbers.

Just saying that its easy to say cloud is the solution but its obvious your convinced that your solution is the solution.
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My solution is hardly a solution for this situation. Mine is for the procurement of virtual machines and their management and not for a learning system. I was just expressing that its not that expensive to setup the hardware for large loads, especially considering the amount of money going through the university.

However if someone's cousins former brothers roomate got the tender for this I can see how the costs would spiral out of control.
 
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