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Westminster College Unveils Newly Redesigned Homepage

Posted on Friday, March 23, 2007

This article originally appeared in the March 23 edition of The Holcad, Westminster College's student newspaper. Colin Dean, a senior computer science major from Volant, played an integral role in the development of the new homepage and serves as editor-in-chief of The Holcad. The site is best viewed using Internet Explorer 7.0 or Mozilla Firefox 2.0.

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Westminster College Unveils Newly Redesigned Homepage
By Colin Dean, The Holcad Editor-in-chief

The college unveiled on March 23 its redesigned homepage, the first part of the site visitors see when browsing to www.westminster.edu.

Jonathan Smith, college webmaster and 2002 alumnus, redesigned the homepage with input from many faculty members, staff members and students. He also viewed other colleges' homepages, collecting design ideas and determining what ideas would benefit Westminster the most.

"We're really excited about the redesign," Smith said. "We're most excited about the switch to a fluid layout from a static layout."

The new homepage features a fluid layout, a design which fits itself to the size of a visitor's browser window. The previous design was an "ice" layout, a design which is set a certain width and does not expand even if the visitor's browser window is larger than the width. The banner of pictures at the top of the page expands within the browser, so that visitors can enjoy more than four pictures if their browser window is larger than the 1024 pixels by 768 pixels standard used by modern web designers.

Prominently displayed under the banner are testimonials. Mark Meighen, senior director of advancement administration collected last semester more than 100 testimonials from faculty, staff and students, and plans to solicit in the future testimonials from parents and alumni. The topics of the testimonials range from why a student picked Westminster to how much a faculty member enjoys working here.

Three news releases grace the homepage now instead of the one of the former design. Additionally, a full, non-truncated story summary and, if available, a picture is displayed.

An improved calendar displays the next six events for the current day, and lists them in full. The old design cut off the event title after a few letters, so events with long titles were unreadable.

A major visible change is the addition of icons for links to Groupwise WebAccess (e-mail), Portal and the Library homepage. These icons draw a user's attention and make these links easier to find on the page. Smith added a shortcut key so that visitors can quickly access WebAccess. Mozilla Firefox users can hold shift, alt, and hit 'w' to access it, Internet Explorer users have to then hit enter.

The Titan Poll returns on this redesign. The poll will feature campus-related questions related to current events. The results are not scientific, however.

"This poll is not intended to be scientific," Meighen said. "It's for entertainment. It had a tremendous response when we first did it, hopefully it will this time, too."

A small section is devoted to recent athletics scores and upcoming events.

At the bottom of the page is a plethora of larger buttons, each of which features a "place-of-interest" to visitors of the site.

Another addition is a more prominent display of available RSS (Really Simple Syndictaion) news feeds, which visitors can add to their browser's live bookmarks or to a news reader like Mozilla Thunderbird or Google Reader.

"Statistically, our RSS feeds have been growing in popularity, and are among the top visited pages of our site," Smith said. "The new site will make these feeds even more accessible to users."

Smith also highlights the presence of target sub-homepages for faculty, staff and students. These pages provide information and links of use to these groups of people without extras needed for general visitors to the college web site.

For instance, the sub-homepages display a weather section, and the resources links are repositioned higher on the page. Smith urges faculty, staff and students to set the appropriate sub-homepage as the homepage for your browser so you can quickly access the resources section.

Smith revamped the virtual tour, too. Visitors can click on buildings on the campus map to see related links, pictures from events held at the building, and various overlays to see locations of labs ands streets. A link to Google Maps provides customizable directions to campus.

"We plan on adding video to the virtual tour in Fall 2007," Smith said. "We're working with the communications department and some broadcast communications students."

A new part of the site was created to feature the college's music department. "Sounds of Westminster" features 45-second clips from various albums produced by the music department's bands, orchestras
and choirs.

"'Sounds of Westminster' is an outstanding addition to the site," R. Tad Greig, director of bands, said. "Pictures of the band are one thing, but actually hearing the band is so much better."

Smith also added a dedicated weather page. It is accessible though the weather sections on the sub-homepages.

The last new feature is an OpenSearch plug-in for browsers. Users of the site can add a search menu to their existing search places. This search menu allows users to search the Westminster web site directly from their browser without having to load the website.

Contact Jonathan Smith at (724) 946-6209 or e-mail smithjo@westminster.edu for more information.