TMFsite-Instrumented-Readme

What the directory contains:

• This directory (TMFsite_instrumented) contains the root of the instrumented Motley Fool website with Javascript inserted into it to facilitate the capture of user interactions.
• Readme.html -- this file. 

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Description:

This is the instrumented website that you and your subjects will be evaluating. It is identical in all respects to the native site found on the CD in the TMFsite directory, except for the insertion of Javascript fragments. These scripts capture user interactions to a log file which may be viewed with the NIST Web Metrics VisVIP tool and pretty-printer.

In order to create a self-contained archive, links to external sites have been replaced with local links. In addition, the dynamic elements found in the actual Motley Fool site have been replaced with static pages. While the dynamic site is capable of generating hundreds of thousands of page variants, the static snapshot on this CD contains about 10,000 pages. The decision about which pages to replicate depended to a great extent on the tasks that were envisioned. Therefore, when your subjects are performing a task, they are likely to see valid sequences of pages. If a subject is engaged in browsing of the site, it is quite possible that he/she will encounter a region in which the content was not copied. These boundaries have been identified and point to self-explanatory pages that tell the user what has happened and how to continue.

Why and when you will need this information:

As with any website, the location of the component files as specified in the URL's contained in the documents is important. Therefore, you should not move any of the files individually. You will need to copy this site from the CD to a location on the hard drive of the machine that hosts your http server.

If you want to automatically capture your users' interactions, such as keystrokes, usa-button presses, and checkbox selections, you will want to use this version of the website. If your evaluation methodology does not require the logging of such information or if you prefer to log these events manually, you will want to use the native site found at /TMFsite.

The instrumentation of the site was performed by WebVIP. Additional information about WebVIP can be found in the WebVIP/Readme.html.

Requirements:

The root of the site is called /FoolSite. It must be located so that your http server software can find it. This usually means that you will copy the whole site to your hard drive and set up a virtual directory so that the relative references in the URL's will point to the correct locations.

Procedure:

1. Copy the site from the CD to your hard drive.
2. Add the location to the virtual directories that your http server recognizes, so that http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xx/FoolSite/FoolMain/index.html is the main page of TMF site where xxx.xxx.xxx.xx is your IP address.
3. Install WebVIP using the instructions found at WebVIP/Readme.html.
4. Customize the userbegin.html page. You may want to add your company's logo or specialized instructions for your users. Be careful not to modify the sections indicated in the file. See WebVIP/Readme for more information on how to set up UserID's and TaskID's. 

For more information:

CIFter project contact -- cifter [at] nist.gov (cifter[at]nist[dot]gov)

Note:

See WebVIP/Readme.html for more information on the types of interactions that will be logged using this instrumented version. You will also find information on ways to view (pretty-print) and visualize (using VisVIP) the logfiles created during your users' test sessions. 

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