University to unveil new Web site Friday, Feb. 1
Feb. 1, a new Utah State University Web site will be put online. New photos, graphics, pictures, links and better searching tools will be included
Charles Thompson, USU webmaster, said nearly 40 people including some USU students were involved in rebuilding the Web site. Students contributed valuable suggestions and wonderful photos, he said.
They started building the new Web site Aug. 1, 2001, Thompson said, “because we found the old Web site is hard to use and very inconsistent.”
Alyson Wade, a freshman majoring in nursing, said the existing Web site was fine to her, and normally it took her 5 to 10 minutes to get the information she wanted.
Thompson said, the new Web site will assist people to obtain the information more quickly without having to go back to the home page or refresh the page or dig around from time to time.
Its most distinguished feature is it encapsulates dynamic menus and a search box, enabling the users to search for information much faster and in a more convenient way, he said.
For instance, Thompson said, there will be buttons for WebMail, the library, the QUAD, calendar, and others students use, together with the search box, will be on every page.
According to the announcement on the old Web site, the infrastructure of the new one “is composed of three Windows 2000 servers running Apache with the Chili!,” while the existing Web site just has one server where people are not allowed to do server-side scripting or other technologies for the sake of “the security and availability reasons.”
Thompson said the new Web site features two ideal operation environments. Users can build and test their Web applications on the development server then submit a request to the Web site developer via e-mail for moving files from development server to the production server.
If an individual has a Web site hosted on www.usu.edu, he or she must obtain the new username and password for the new server, he said. The developer performs the move-up work twice a day.
He said the goal is to benefit people, and at the same time, “We always try to keep the server as secure as possible,” he said.
Until now, USU’s Web site has not been hacked.
If someone requires a direct access to the production server, Thompson said, with a convincing reason, it may be allowed. For example, he said a person who updates his Web site 10 to 15 times a day can be granted production server access.
So far, the new Web site is already in good shape. Nevertheless, Thompson said the whole construction of the new Web site is far from being completed. They have just built a framework to start from. About every three months, they will roll up and add new functionality and new tools to the Web site, he said.
“Now we have a common looking field to go from,” he said. “But there are a lot of tools that we need to build, [such as a] financial aid calculator and search tools.”
The library Web site and WebMail need refining, he said.
Of the 10,000 pages in the existing Web site, they have rebuilt 80 of them, Thompson said. Those updated pages function as a tourist who guides people to the page they want to see.
For instance, he said, if an individual wants to have a look at a certain department, it is the page that leads you there which has already been redesigned.
He said all the college/department/administrative units are encouraged to upgrade their Web sites, because they want to maintain the visual framework of every page similar as the new USU home page. Navigation elements and the USU logo, are required to be kept the same.
“Faculty and staff personal and class pages, student clubs and organizations, and varsity athletics will be exempted from meeting the new standards,” according to the announcement.
Regarding the announcement, some colleges and departments have qualified webmasters, and “each college and administrative unit has a University Web Advisory Council representative.” They can help rebuild the Web site.
Thompson said the office of Public Relations and Marketing can also help with Web site redesign or provide free templates. Rebuilding the unit Web sites is expected to be finished in August.
He said they welcome all kinds of comments and suggestions from students and aim to meet people’s demand and work hard to ensure their satisfaction.