Department of Chemistry, Imperial College

Web Server Policies

This server started operation on an experimental basis in October 1993, and commenced full operation in December 1993 as http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/. It is one of the first Chemistry Web sites in operation (the very first to our knowledge being at Leeds University).

The server currently runs on a Silicon Graphics Origin 200 system running Irix 6.5, connected to the network at 100 Mbps.

The Apache httpd server V 2.0.39 provides a high performing environment, to which has been added the WebDAV extended authoring functionality and SSL security. The server data has been indexed using a chemically modified version of ht://Dig (Chemdig). Usage statistics are provided via Analog.

The vast majority of documents on this server have been prepared using "BBedit 6.5 from Bare Bones Software. We are gradually migrating most of the HTML on the site up to the XHTML 1.0 recommendation using Dave Raggett's Tidy programs. We endeavour to adhere to the W3C usability guidelines, and our pages are constantly being updated to adhere to:

W3C XHTML Validation
W3C CSS Validation
To get your page to this state, use Tidy

The Home Page Design

It is very common nowadays to see homepages replete with complex graphics and effects. Often, a wait of 1 minute or more is encountered whilst the background to the page, and various other graphical buttons download. On anything other than a local server, the wait can be very frustrating. Here we have striven to avoid at least the worst excesses of such home page design. Other than a single image, comprising the College crest, and a small "molecule", to emphasize we are a chemistry faculty, the rest is text. Colour is generated using markup commands rather than gif images. Finally, the layout is largely horizontal, since this uses space more efficiently than vertical designs. Our intention is to deliver the most informative content as rapidly as possible to the user, and to keep the site friendly for those who only have low bandwidth connections to us.

Robot Exclusion Policy

We do not currently exclude robots, but are constantly re-evaluating this policy.

Forinformation about other departments in the College, click here.

To return to the main departmental page, click here.

For more information, contact Henry Rzepa, at rzepa@ic.ac.uk

DISCLAIMER: Readers of these pages are responsible for ensuring that they are familiar with any safety and hazard information relevant to local or national legislation.