When students and staff return to campus this fall, they will find a new look to the University's homepage — a site many community members visit dozens of times a day, yet one which has remained essentially unchanged since 1994. The site will be completely redesigned, and is slated to be up and running by next semester.
Along with changing the site's appearance, the Office of Communication and Office of Information Technology are collaborating to make the homepage more accessible to all the departments on campus.
They plan to pre-launch a content management system, or CMS, by June, with full implementation scheduled for the fall. The new system will allow individuals without technical expertise to upload information onto University websites.
"Right now you need to know HTML coding to change anything, but with the content management system someone like a department chair could upload or alter his or her department's site," Director of Communications Lauren Robinson-Brown '85 said.
She explained that the new system would be able to transform a faculty member's Microsoft Word file into an attractive, web-ready form with the click of a button.
The planned changes would also benefit those working in the communications office by making it easier to upload campus news and events to the homepage.
When Robinson-Brown was named director of communications in 2000, she said one of her "immediate issues was analyzing the University's Web presence."
The CMS system will be sold to the University by an outside vendor. Currently OIT has narrowed its choice of providers from 16 to five companies and a final decision is expected by early May.
"We are looking for some technology that can meet both the University's shortand longterm needs," Robinson-Brown said.
Another major ongoing project undertaken by OIT and the Office of Communications has been remodeling the University homepage.
"One of the key goals of the redesign is to provide the greatest degree of accessibility to information, both for current users and newcomers," explained Director of Web Communications and Special Projects Reed Meister.
The major structural change to the site will be the addition of so-called audience pages. These pages will be linked directly to the University homepage and designed with specific audiences such as alumni, current students and parents in mind.
Their proposal will be pre-launched in June, in time to solicit public feedback before the website is officially launched next semester. While the current homepage has lasted 10 years, OIT estimates the new design will only be used for two to three years. Brown said this is in line with the general lifespan of most major webpages today.
"Thus far we have gotten nothing but positive feedback from those who have seen [a draft of the website]. Everyone seems pretty confident in it," Robinson-Brown said.
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