redesigning lclark.edu

Make the whale happy; get involved.

Tailored Web Experiences

I suppose it’s worth mentioning here one of the big questions about the Web: should a school have a single, unified website or should it create multiple “experiences” for different cohorts?The only place I can think of where we have done the latter is for newly admitted law students (”Inside Law“).For another example, take a look at the right column on the Gettysburg homepage, where they have separate logins for different cohorts who get a tailored Web experience.  Something to ponder… 

Filed Under

One person has made the whale happy; will you?(Go ahead, make a comment…)

Is there a CMS that supports custom/new content types?

Has anyone found a CMS that makes it easy to create a new content type? To me, this is such an important feature, but it’s been hard to find software that supports it. Drupal seems to only nominally support this — what it calls a new content type seems to be simply a web page with an admin-chosen type name.

Here’s what I mean by “new content type”, in case this isn’t clear:

A CMS usually comes pre-designed to support a few pre-chosen content types. For example, a common one is:

WEB PAGE

Attribute Name: Title
Data Type: Text string, <= 255 chars.

Attribute Name: Content
Data Type: Text string, unlimited length.

What I find extremely useful is a system that allows new content types with a new set of attributes to be created by the admin. Then, users can create instances of these types via custom-tailored dialogs. They’d then be displayed via custom-tailored style sheets. For example, a new content type might be:

COMMITTEE REPORT

Attribute Name: Committee Name
…

Attribute Name: Report Date
…

etc.

Filed Under

2 people have already made the whale happy; but who couldn’t be happier?(Go ahead, make a comment…)

Starting Monday March 17th, the Redesign

Some History

In mid-January, I sent out a request for proposal (RFP) to about ten different firms, large and small, local and distant, that had come up on our radar as potential companies that would be able and well-suited to help us form the strategy for our website redesign. Two weeks later, after a process of meeting and talking with several companies, six proposals were submitted.

Our small committee of Dan Terrio, Tom Krattenmaker and myself reviewed the proposals and selected two firms to invite to campus for informal two-hour “interviews.” (At this point, it should be noted that both firms were excellent and would clearly be able to handle the job. What we really needed to discover was what the working relationship would be like.)

Both accepted and we met with each of their teams during mid-February. Those sessions gave us lots to think about, and after consulting with members of New Media, PubCom and a few others across campus, it was still very close. (And what really threw helped us solidify our decision was the responses from the references provided.)

With that, I’m pleased to announce that White Whale (WW), a small educationally-focused web design firm from Oakland, Calif. will become our partner in forming the forthcoming web redesign strategy.

What’s Next

A week or so ago, we officially signed the contract and I’m happy to report that beginning tomorrow, March 17th, Jason, Tonya, Donald, and Alex — all of White Whale — will be on campus to meet with select groups over three days to hear from all of you what should become of our web site.

And as of this posting we’re opening up authorship of this blog so that WW can participate in and communicate about the web redesign as we’re all working through the process. (One of the reasons that WW rose to the top was due to their very collaborative process with their client-partners.)

So, if you have some thoughts about the web redesign, be sure to:

  • communicate them with any of us, WW, IT or New Media;
  • stop us if you see us in the Trailroom or elsewhere around campus; and,
  • watch this blog to continue the conversation.

There’s a lot more to come over the next few days in particular; I’ll be posting more soon.

David

Filed Under

Make the whale happy; post a comment.

Another site worth a look

Take a look at Bard’s site: http://www.bard.edu/  I enjoy the concept much more than the execution, but it is worth a look.  The pulldown menus at the top too easily get lost and one is left feeling that the only way to navigate (other than the search box) is the Flash people photos.  Having a top banner built in Flash with moving photos is all the rage these days.  I’m not much of a fan, as I think they can be hard to navigate.  Bard’s no exception in my mind.  Why click on this guy or that?  (Why not?)  The concept of emphasizing the “human element” of a college is a good one though.

Filed Under

4 people have already made the whale happy; but who couldn’t be happier?(Go ahead, make a comment…)

Site Architecture

Noah received the following message today — which we thought as indicative of why we are planning a redesign. I’ve posted my response as a comment.

David

—

Good morning, Noah

Since you are the one name I know in association with the College website, you are the one to whom I want to give some feedback—hoping that it will reach the ears of whomever is the “right” person.

Over the years I have spent a lot of time visiting college websites, trying to find various department and faculty information. From these searches, I have come to know what makes a site “friendly” and useful from the start. Alas, our own site fails in that regard.

This morning I tried to find out some specific department information on our site because my own computer (with all my information) is out being repaired, and the information in the printed directory is many years out of date. So I started at the top page, clicked on Academics, hoping to find a list of department names. Not there.

Then I clicked on College of Arts & Sciences, again hoping to find a list of departments. Not there.

This is definitely not “user friendly” and I’m looking from the inside! If I were a secretary at another school who was looking for department information, specifically the name and email address of a department secretary, how am I supposed to find it? When I DO get to a department site (Graduate School of Education) I’m offered a Faculty button, but there’s no Faculty & Staff button.

Many other schools offer department listings right up front, no need to keep digging and digging. On top of that, when I actually did reach one of the departments I wanted, I still couldn’t find out the staffing information, only faculty. This is not good.

At what point do the individual departments control what’s visible/available, and what is determined by a different administrative body? Also, at the uppermost levels (in terms of layers of web pages) who decided that the department listings would be so impossible to find?

Is any of this making sense? Do you understand what is making me so frustrated with our own site?

With great sincerity and a desire to help,

Charlene [Walker]

Filed Under

One person has made the whale happy; will you?(Go ahead, make a comment…)