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Help.unc.edu is an application which contains a collection of information about technology at UNC-Chapel Hill. The collection covers topics such as networking and securing computers at Carolina, the Carolina Computing Initiative, troubleshooting your computer, and tutorials of various desktop applications. If you are not faculty, staff or a student at UNC, some information may not apply to your computing environment.
You can search our knowledge base using the search field above. The knowledge base contains thousands of documents that can help answer your questions about using technology at Carolina. If you need help using help.unc.edu, take a look at [ http://help.unc.edu/?id=1386 ] "How do I use help.unc.edu" , if you are having trouble with searching, the document: [ http://help.unc.edu/?id=5765 ] "Search Tips" . Take a look at the [ http://help.unc.edu/?id=3663 ] "Other ITS Help Options" document for more ways to find help or get personal help with your computing needs at UNC.
Help.unc.edu includes documents created by various members of the Carolina community, including staff, students, faculty, EPA non-faculty, etc.. All documents and work on this Web site are the property of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. However, we do encourage others to freely reuse all publically available materials on the site through the [ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/ ] Creative Commons attribution license. All that we require is proper attribution to UNC Chapel Hill as the source of the content.
Note
Documents that are restricted by login are not subject to the Creative Commons license. Please do not reuse content from restricted documents without permission.
help.unc.edu makes use of the "Silk" icon set provided by Mark James, which is licensed under the Creative Commons 2.5 Attribution license. You can find these icons at [ http://famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/ ] famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/.
Help.unc.edu is the website front end to the ITS knowledge base. Knowledge base files are stored in [ http://help.unc.edu/?id= ] [ http://www.docbook.org ] DocBook format, which are transformed into XHTML fragments by a separate application. A print stylesheet is provided for "print friendly" versions of all documents (simply select "print preview" in your browser to see an example or click on the "printable version" link above). Other data about the document (such as its type, who 'owns' it and who is responsible for editing it) are provided in the footer information at the bottom of each page.
Help.unc.edu is a Java application running inside an [ http://tomcat.apache.org ] Apache Tomcat servlet container. The application uses the [ http://www.springframework.org ] Spring Framework and [ http://freemarker.sourceforge.net ] FreeMarker templating framework. Search services are provided by an [ http://lucene.apache.org/solr ] Apache Solr instance. We also make use of the very popular [ http://httpd.apache.org ] Apache web server. All of this runs on an IBM x330 server running Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The software components of help.unc.edu are thus -- with the exception of the proprietary Java Runtime Environment implementation (and even that situation is changing, as of 2007!) -- based on open source software.
Behind all of this is the decision to store the documents in eXtensible Markup Language (XML). There are standardized programming languages for manipulating and transforming XML, most importantly (from the end-user's perspective), for transforming XML-based documents into HTML (XHTML). Using XML to store documents gives us the capability of delivering documents in other formats or platforms such as mobile phones, handheld devices, or other unforeseen/as yet un-invented devices.
This site has been designed to adhere to current standards of XHTML ( http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/ ), CSS ( http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/ ), and DOM ( http://www.w3.org/DOM/ ) as specified by the [ http://www.w3.org ] W3C (http://www.w3.org/DOM/) . The site has also been designed to be accessible to disabled users in compliance with [ http://www.section508.gov ] US section 508 requirements . As a state institution and responsible community member this website has been designed for use by all users.
Web standards are open specifications for languages and technologies developed by [ http://www.w3.org ] World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) which is an international industry consortium dedicated to [ http://www.w3.org/consortium ] "leading the Web to its full potential" . Groups such as the [ http://www.webstandards.org ] Web Standards Project strongly advocate standards which "ensure simple, affordable access to web technologies for all."
Adhering to standards makes it easier for UNC designers and developers to make pages comply with the [ http://www.w3.org/WAI ] WAI (W3C's web accessibility initiative) and [ http://www.section508.gov ] Section 508 accessibility standards for people with disabilities. Standards compliance allows pages to be understood by people using all browsers including speech browsers or Braille browsers, allows easy porting of pages to a handheld device, and ensure that pages can be easily viewed by browsing technology yet to be developed. For more on general website accessibility take a look at the [ http://www.webstandards.org/learn/external/wai/ ] Web Standards Project page on accessibility , for more on accessibility at UNC, take a look at the [ http://www.unc.edu/webaccess/ ] Accessible Electronic Content at Carolina site.
[ http://its.unc.edu ] Information Technology Services at Carolina and specifically the [ http://its.unc.edu/divisions/communications/km/ ] Knowledge Management Group is primarily responsible for help.unc.edu.
Document Overview
Tags: documentation, overviewSubjects: Support
Genre: Service Overview
Audience: Everyone
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Copyright 2002-2007 The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
This
work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
