By Jaci Schneider, Copy Editor

Like many parts of campus, the university’s Web site underwent major renovations this summer.

After several months of planning, the new Web site went live Aug. 5, said Paul Bryan, the designer of the site.

Carmen Foster, Webmaster for the university, was in charge of the project and said planning for the redesign began a year ago.

Foster said the main goal of the redesign was to make the site more appealing to future students and their parents. In a survey given to parents of students participating in August Passport, 60 percent of them prefered to look at the Web site first to find information.

“We really wanted to become more of an interesting site that was more user-friendly,” she said. “Improving the usability and the look and feel of it was our main target.”

Foster said a Web strategy team, made up of seven people from different departments and offices on campus, came up with guidelines and directions for implementing the university’s mission and marketing strategy on the site.

Foster said a lot of research went into the site’s planning.

“There’s a lot to building a Web site,” she said. People had to work on the content of the site, making sure it was clear and user-friendly, and some terminology has changed from the old site to make information clearer.

Foster said their research showed that prospective students wanted to see pictures of other students who they might relate to, so the Web design inludes more pictures of students and people’s faces.

“We had a lot of information to show on the front page, and we wanted to show as much as possible without cluttering it up,” Bryan said.

Although the university home page and admissions information is new, the resdesign is still in progress.

“It’s going to be a process to move everything over,” Foster said. Academic departments, campus offices, alumni information and athletics are not yet finished, but should be in about six months to a year.

Foster said the redesign is a long process, but it allows departments to update their information and take advantage of the research the Web strategy team did.

And the long process is worth it because Foster said people viewed about 18.2 million pages on the site in 2004.

“I love the way people have responded to it,” Foster said. “I’d love to have feedback from anybody.”