University to revamp website's design

This summer Princeton students will witness the revamping of one of the University's most visited sites — its homepage.

"The question we are trying to answer here is how do you include the most information possible while still making the webpage useful, easy to navigate, quick and aesthetically pleasing," said Juan Lessing '05, a member of a student focus group which is working in conjunction with OIT and the Undergraduate Life Committee to reconstruct the website.

The collaborative effort plans "to bring the University webpage to where a lot of . . . universities across America [are]," said Rishi Jaitly '04, another member of the student focus group.

And there is room for improvement, the students say.

Student groups who want to advertise their events in the Headlines or Announcements section frequently have trouble gaining access to this "powerful way of advertising things," Jaitly said.

Even with many student group events occurring daily, the organizations could benefit greatly from a homepage modification that provides more advertising space, Jaitly said, adding that groups could alternate announcements on the page to allow for more equal publicity.

The group, which began meeting toward the end of fall semester, will provide recommendations to OIT "concerning the new website's content, navigability and appearance," Raj Hathiramani '07, another member of the student focus group and a 'Prince' staff writer, said.

"Overall the goal is to keep the webpage as technologically up-to-date as possible and to meet the changing needs of the student body and University community at large," Lessing said.

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The homepage does change "once in a while" and the format for the homepage changed last year too, Lessing added.

Describing the current effort to transform the website, Lessing said. "Change came about because of OIT interest, but mainly through the legwork of Rishi Jaitly and Raj Hathiramani."

Jaitly said he also hopes the group's efforts make the homepage "more personable." For example, there may be links for each class year to allow for quicker, easier access to the class websites, Jaitly said.

Reed Meister, recently-named director of web communications and strategic projects for OIT, is the "point person in charge of taking our suggestions and, when practical and feasible, incorporating them into the homepage design," Lessing said.

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Among potential new features, the University is considering a search engine combining the Princeton and the standard Google search engines.

A feature picture will also most likely remain a part of the homepage.

Hathiramani said a webmail link that takes a user directly to the login page is another idea.

An additional project has been formed to select a content management system (CMS) that would meet the more complete set of website needs for the webpage builders, Hathiramani said.

The University recently submitted a request-for-proposal to select a CMS vendor. Several responses have already been received, Meister confirmed.

A CMS system will allow webpage builders to manage and modify websites and content more easily.

The new homepage — originally slated to debut this spring — has been delayed due to the search for a CMS system.

Lessing said the most difficult aspect of changing the webpage is organization.

"I feel that at Princeton sometimes we are so overwhelmed with information . . . that we occasionally overlook the incredible resources that we are given here," Lessing said.

Though the homepage will certainly change, one feature will remain the same.

"I am not sure what hue [of] orange will be on the homepage, but I can almost guarantee you there will be some sort of orange," Lessing said. "It's the Princeton way."