University website enhancements coming

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Starting Friday, Sept. 21, individuals who access the University’s home page will notice some subtle changes, but users of mobile devices will benefit greatly from the latest enhancements.

An improved mobile theme will deploy responsive Web technologies to allow the University’s home page to display properly on any mobile device, such as smart phones and tablets, said Cindy Jones, Web communications manager in the Office of University Communications.

“Technology exists that will determine how a user is accessing the website, so we are deploying this enhancement to ensure that content is displayed fluidly, no matter how you get to the site,” Jones explained. “For smart phone users, one key advantage is they will no longer have to zoom in and out or scroll in order to read site content. Also, we can use one site to deliver a usable mobile experience rather than design and manage specific mobile sites for the University home page.”

Mobile users are becoming a larger segment of the audience accessing the University’s home page. Recent data indicate nearly 13 percent of visitors looking at the home page were from a mobile device. “Given the changing technological landscape, current and prospective students will increasingly use mobile devices to access the University’s home page to locate resources and information.”

As for changes to the home page, users will see an upgraded University header that features the crown watermark and a gold accent bar. These are elements from the second version of Drupal Web templates.

“This is the most current version of the template. As the home page was launched in August 2010, we thought it was appropriate to give it a refreshed look and feel,” said Jones. “The Web communications team will work to deploy the new template to sites that were included in early phases of the migration effort.”

In addition, the University’s home page will be upgraded to Drupal 7, the newest version of the content management system. The Web communications team and the ITS Enterprise Web Services group have collaborated on this project for several weeks. Drupal is an open-source software, so there is a community of developers that constantly modify and improve the system. As newer versions are developed, and Drupal 8 is in the creation stage, older versions are no longer supported by the overall Drupal community.

“By upgrading to Drupal 7, we are well-positioned to ensure that we are running the most current version of the software,” Jones stated.