- Home >
- Top Stories
A new www.plu.edu
July 28, 2009
The new PLU online experience is more than just a sleek new look.
After months of planning, the PLU Web team is launching prototypes of Web page doorways – Home Page, Current Students, and Faculty & Staff - that show and highlight the PLU experience and serve a as resource for the online community. Once on the page, hit the refresh button and the new page will appear.
“This is really the culmination of the last three or four revisions of the home page,” said Toby Beal, PLU Web designer, “and we’ve learned a lot about our constituents, their values and what’s important to them.
“In addition, we’ve learned how to make better Web pages.”
The prototype Web pages are accessible, beginning today, for the campus community to comment on (send feedback to Toby Beal at bealtr@plu.edu). Then once feedback is processed and the last tweaks are done the new online face of the university will launch for the public.
Beal said the advancement in technology and better Web development tools have really changed the way Web sites are built and managed.
“As a result, this is a huge leap forward from where we were in the past,” he said.
The new doorways allow for more flexibility in adding and modifying content. For example, the Web team will be able to work with various PLU departments to create additional widgets that present and compartmentalize content that is more relevant to a specific audience.
“We hope to use these three pages as a catalyst for the next generation of PLU Web pages,” Beal said. "The work that’s gone into developing these pages will serve as a framework for future projects, eventually even department Web sites that are already within the university’s content management system Cascade."
Already, the process for developing these doorways has provided helpful information for how Web pages are developed for the university, he said.
During early focus groups, the Web team learned that content really needed to be more targeted for the internal doorways (Current Students, Faculty & Staff).
“It needed to not only be about them, but for them,” Beal said. “That changed the way we envisioned the content.”
But in general, the early mock-ups were well received, he said, and really bring the university to a standard in strong standing with competing universities, as well as the way Web pages are now being developed.
Mock-ups are one thing, but viewing the Web pages online and “kicking the tires” can be entirely different.
"Sometimes people need to see a page and play around with it to come up with an opinion about it," Beal said.
He will be collecting feedback about the prototypes at bealtr@plu.edu before making revisions and launching the new doorways for the public.
To find out more about the new web pages go to www.plu.edu/web.
New Features
1. Revised Banner - A revised global banner that makes navigating between doorways easier, while providing navigation deep into the PLU Web site from a series of drop down menus.
2. Institutional Home Page – The emphasis of the home page has shifted from being primarily focused on prospective students to what is now more of an institutional presence with messaging that reflects the university’s core values.
3. Smarter Features – In an effort to keep the home page fresh, a mechanism has been put in place that will keep track of which features a user has already seen off the home page. When a user has cycled through all of the features they will start over at the first feature.
4. Widgets – Both the Home Page and internal doorways (Current Student, Faculty & Staff) have been built using a series of compartmentalized blocks of content (widgets) that can easily be modified, moved or all together removed from the pages. Best of all, new widgets can be introduced to the pages over time providing departments with an opportunity to partner with the Web team to push content onto the doorways.
5. Alert Notifications – The strategy for communicating emergency and weather related alerts has been expanded to include a splash page (To be used in life threatening circumstances) and a persistent banner, which will appear at the top of every next generation web page.
6. In-House Advertising – A special portion of each doorway has been set aside for the purpose of promoting internal events and other miscellaneous items. In addition to this, the Web team is currently evaluating a specialized piece of software that will allow the university to distribute ad campaigns across multiple pages using a variety of metrics.
7. New Look - A handsome new look that is more refined and highlights the positive attributes of PLU’s identity.
“This is really the culmination of the last three or four revisions of the home page,” said Toby Beal, PLU Web designer, “and we’ve learned a lot about our constituents, their values and what’s important to them.
“In addition, we’ve learned how to make better Web pages.”
The prototype Web pages are accessible, beginning today, for the campus community to comment on (send feedback to Toby Beal at bealtr@plu.edu). Then once feedback is processed and the last tweaks are done the new online face of the university will launch for the public.
Beal said the advancement in technology and better Web development tools have really changed the way Web sites are built and managed.
“As a result, this is a huge leap forward from where we were in the past,” he said.
The new doorways allow for more flexibility in adding and modifying content. For example, the Web team will be able to work with various PLU departments to create additional widgets that present and compartmentalize content that is more relevant to a specific audience.
“We hope to use these three pages as a catalyst for the next generation of PLU Web pages,” Beal said. "The work that’s gone into developing these pages will serve as a framework for future projects, eventually even department Web sites that are already within the university’s content management system Cascade."
Already, the process for developing these doorways has provided helpful information for how Web pages are developed for the university, he said.
During early focus groups, the Web team learned that content really needed to be more targeted for the internal doorways (Current Students, Faculty & Staff).
“It needed to not only be about them, but for them,” Beal said. “That changed the way we envisioned the content.”
But in general, the early mock-ups were well received, he said, and really bring the university to a standard in strong standing with competing universities, as well as the way Web pages are now being developed.
Mock-ups are one thing, but viewing the Web pages online and “kicking the tires” can be entirely different.
"Sometimes people need to see a page and play around with it to come up with an opinion about it," Beal said.
He will be collecting feedback about the prototypes at bealtr@plu.edu before making revisions and launching the new doorways for the public.
To find out more about the new web pages go to www.plu.edu/web.
New Features
1. Revised Banner - A revised global banner that makes navigating between doorways easier, while providing navigation deep into the PLU Web site from a series of drop down menus.
2. Institutional Home Page – The emphasis of the home page has shifted from being primarily focused on prospective students to what is now more of an institutional presence with messaging that reflects the university’s core values.
3. Smarter Features – In an effort to keep the home page fresh, a mechanism has been put in place that will keep track of which features a user has already seen off the home page. When a user has cycled through all of the features they will start over at the first feature.
4. Widgets – Both the Home Page and internal doorways (Current Student, Faculty & Staff) have been built using a series of compartmentalized blocks of content (widgets) that can easily be modified, moved or all together removed from the pages. Best of all, new widgets can be introduced to the pages over time providing departments with an opportunity to partner with the Web team to push content onto the doorways.
5. Alert Notifications – The strategy for communicating emergency and weather related alerts has been expanded to include a splash page (To be used in life threatening circumstances) and a persistent banner, which will appear at the top of every next generation web page.
6. In-House Advertising – A special portion of each doorway has been set aside for the purpose of promoting internal events and other miscellaneous items. In addition to this, the Web team is currently evaluating a specialized piece of software that will allow the university to distribute ad campaigns across multiple pages using a variety of metrics.
7. New Look - A handsome new look that is more refined and highlights the positive attributes of PLU’s identity.