Point — the USG-run website that provides information about campus events and serves as a hub for student dialogue — was down for redesign over Intersession but is now running again, sporting a new layout.
After the site went back online at noon yesterday, it continued to experience technical difficulties and was inaccessible at times, though USG officers said the problems would soon be remedied.
There were no technical problems with the old version of Point, USG president Rob Biederman '08 and USG webmaster Dan O'Shea '09 said. Both felt it was time for a renovation, however.
"Point was a few years old," Biederman said yesterday. "The technology has improved in the interim, so when the webmaster ... said he was willing to do a redesign, there was no reason [to say 'No']."
The new Point features a different color scheme, similar to that of the newly redesigned Student Course Guide website.
It also intends to be user friendly, allowing users to rearrange the site's features more easily than the original Point.
"The real difference is that it is much more customizable," Biederman said. "It's prettier."
"You can move everything around," he added, referring to features on the site that allow users to reconfigure the layout of the page to match their own preferences. "You could do that before, but it wasn't clear [how to do so]."
Point's renovators have also added some new features aimed at making the website more interactive.
"You can drag the modules, and the navigation bar can be moved around," O'Shea said. "Another new thing is the poll module. After you vote, it will immediately show the results." With the site's previous version, users had to wait until the poll ended to view results, even if they had already voted.
Though students are currently able to access the redesigned Point, the site may still run slowly for the next few days, O'Shea said. "It is still being performance-tuned to increase speed and reliability."
O'Shea, who put more than 100 hours of work into the new Point, added that he expects the site to be fully functional and up to speed by the end of the first week of classes.
Launched in 2004, Point was intended to build on the University's events calendar website, which USG officers saw as difficult to use. Point's creators hoped the new site could also serve as a portal for campus information and provide a space for student dialogue with features such as the Point wall, where students can post opinions and converse with each other.
Biederman said he has high hopes for the site's new incarnation. "I'd love to see the majority of the student body using it as their homepage."
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