Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

University Launches New Main Web Site

Courtesy www.georgetown.edu Georgetown’s revamped Web site features a new site map and expanded index. Launched Monday, the site is the result of six months of planning.

Over six months of work by Georgetown’s GUide committee, which manages the university homepage, culminated over Christmas Break with the launch of a new version of the main Web site. The new site is intended to improve on old features, include new ones and more effectively represent the university’s identity.

The redesign process, which began in June 2001, included input from representatives from all three campuses and more than 30 university departments, including over 60 faculty, staff, students and alumni. GUide Co-Chair Piet Niederhausen estimated that approximately 1,500 hours have been put into the site’s development so far.

“It was important to us that the process was representative of the entire institution,” Niederhausen said.

Last June, GUide organized four working groups to deal with the various aspects of the redesign. The first group concentrated on branding a university identity that could be represented by the Web site. Their study concluded that the redesign should focus on Georgetown’s academic excellence, Jesuit identity and international presence.

“They tried to really get at what this university was about, and what impression of it should people take away from the Web site,” Niederhausen said.

The second working group dealt with the technology of the site, including the site’s accessibility for people with disabilities. Promoting continuity, another group worked on generating centralized content for the site. Finally, the fourth group was responsible for cataloguing all of the Web sites publishing on www.georgetown.edu and then creating an adequate structure.

In a broadcast e-mail to faculty and staff, Dave Lambert, vice president for information services and university chief information officer, said that the new redesign responds to the needs of the university’s rapidly growing Web site, which now includes approximately 100,000 documents within more than 600 sub-sites.

“The new site benefits from a more flexible information structure, better represents the university’s unique identity, incorporates current best practices in technology and improves accessibility for users with disabilities,” Lambert said.

In order to maintain continuity throughout the site, the GUide committee plans to publish a web style manual that will contain guidelines, graphic elements and web page templates to all of the university’s departments.

The redesign also includes improvements on some of the site’s older features. For example, the site index has been greatly expanded and the search tool has been improved to include more comprehensive and broader results.

Additionally, all of the former topic pages have been retained and several new pages were added. The site also features a new, updated site map.

Most students said they liked the new look of the Web site but didn’t feel the changes were all that dramatic. “I was surprised to see a new one. It’s not much different, but I like it,” Hideaki Ishii (MSFS ’04) said.

Oriana Wuerth (SFS ’04) said she did not notice much if a difference as well. “It’s pretty much the same. I thought the links to e-mail were a little faster, that’s all I use it for. It’s fine, but it’s not like I spend a lot of time surfing the Georgetown homepage,” she said.

The university’s Web site was last updated in 1999.

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