Just a quick note on the UMBC web schedule of classes thing…
There’s a “draft” version of the schedule of classes, that the registrar occasionally likes to populate. The URL of this version is http://www.umbc.edu/aboutumbc/newschedule. Access to this page is controlled by a simple .htaccess file. There’s a single username and password that the registrar disseminates to all interested parties.
All of the updates to this schedule happen behind the scenes. There’s a parallel job on the HP3000 that handles this version of the schedule. The web version is built from the same verter.pl script that handles the regular version. The only real maintenance involved with this is occasionally changing the password at the request of the registrar. The password file is located at
/afs/umbc.edu/admin/www/umbc/htdocs/aboutumbc/newschedule/.htaccess
The registrar will typically request that the password be changed right before they start mucking with the draft schedule. They asked me to do it today for the fall 2006 schedule.
Once they’re done with the draft schedule, they may request that access to it be disabled. I do this (again) by changing the password.
You may ask, why not use a webauth-enabled .htaccess file? Well, that would be more maintenance, because then we’d have to maintain a list of users who have access to the page. They way it is now, all I ever have to do with the thing is change one password. It works.