[LINK] Do not call the do not call register

[Tom Worthington]

The Do Not Call Register has opened for registrations online 
<http://internet.aca.gov.au/web/STANDARD//pc%3DPC_100642>. 
Telemarketers in Australia are required to not call numbers on the 
register from 31 May 2007.

But the registration web site appears to have become overloaded as 
soon as it was made available and I have been unable to register 
after several attempts. The web site does not appear to comply with 
Australian anti-discrimination law.

  It took 22 seconds for the text of the web page to load, then 
another 78 seconds for the images. The registration form took 90 
seconds to load. On the first attempt my registration failed with:

         The requested URL /regNumber2.cfm was not found on this server.

It worked on the second attempt. The conformation email message 
arrived three minutes later. Spam Assassin  rated the message 2.3, 
with tests: BAYES_05 -0.207, HTML_40_50 0.496, HTML_MESSAGE 0.001,
   HTML_MIME_NO_HTML_TAG 1.082, MIME_HTML_ONLY 0.001, NO_REAL_NAME 
0.961. This is a low Spam rating but higher than it should be.

Clicking on the requested link in the conformation message resulted in:

         "The requested URL /regNumberActivate.cfm was not found on 
this server."

On the second attempt a blank white screen was displayed.

The third attempt displayed the not found message again.

The fourth attempt displayed the blank white screen again.

Those responsible appear to have made several fundamental mistakes in 
launching the site. These are things I teach my second year ANU web 
design students not to do <http://www.tomw.net.au/2006/wd/>. Any 
student who submitted the DNC web site for an assignment could expect 
to be marked down.

The DNC home page consists of:

HTML 6kbytes
CSS 4kbytes dncr.css
Images:
Commonwealth Arms 7kbytes: images/coatofarms.jpg
DNC logo 10kbytes: images/dncr_logo_padded_sml.jpg
Three ways 5kbytes: images/three_ways.jpg
Mouse 1kbyte: images/mouse.jpg
Phone 1kbyte: images/phone_icon.jpg
Evelope 1kbyte: images/envelope.jpg
Navigation bar background 2 kbytes: images/navbar_fat.jpg

Linked to the web page is a PDF media release (144 kbytes): 
/Media_Releases/english_applicationform.pdf

WHAT TO DO:

* VALIDATE CODE: The DNC home page failed a W3C Validate test with 
one syntax error.

* TEST ACCESSIBILITY: The DNC home page failed an automated 
accessibility test, with four level 2 (AA) errors. In addition no 
alternative to reading text in the security image is provided. As a 
result the web site fails a level 1 (A) test. The web site may breech 
Australian anti-discrimination law.

* ONLY SECURE SENSITIVE PAGES: All the pages on the DNC web site 
seems to use HTTPS secure protocol. As a result each copy of the text 
and images on the home page will have to be individually encrypted 
when sent to each user. As well as slowing down the server which has 
to encrypt, this may prevent the information being cached. This 
encryption should only be used for the pages containing sensitive 
data, such as the forms the user fills in.


* MINIMIZE GRAPHICS: While the graphics used are small, there are a 
lot of them on the home page. The "Three ways" graphic contains text 
and should not be used. If the other graphics are to be used they 
should be highly optimized and ideally reused from a common 
Commonwealth server of images.

* SMALL FORMS: The PDF form is 144kbytes for a one page document, 
which is excessive.

* PRIME CACHES WITH PRE-LAUNCH PAGES: The web site appears to not 
have been placed online until the launch day. As a result none of the 
content will have been cached. Therefore there will be a large 
initial load on the system. The designers should have put a 
placeholder web site up in advance, announcing the site would be 
available. The images, style sheets and other material to be used 
would then have been cached on web servers around Australia. When the 
real site went live, only the changed text would need to be 
downloaded (which makes a small part of a web site).

* STAGED LAUNCH: The register appears to have been launched 
nationwide. A staged introduction, allowing registration for smaller 
regions first would have allowed the bugs to have been shaken out of 
the system and for the caches to be loaded.




Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                http://www.tomw.net.au/
Visiting Fellow, ANU      Blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/atom.xml