Following a year's worth of work in planning, design, and implementation, Bowdoin launched its new Web site on Aug. 20.
"The site is intended to be more representative of Bowdoin," said Bowdoin's Chief Information Officer Mitch Davis. "When I first got here [last year], all anyone said was, 'We hate the Web site!'"
So began the planning stage, during which members of the Bowdoin community were asked to give input on what they wanted out of the Web site, which, according to the Information Technology department, receives about 1.5 million on-campus visitors per year in addition to 2.5 million visits from off-campus locations.
Goals of the new design included fulfilling President Mills' desire to reflect the more academic and intellectual side of Bowdoin (including the addition of the Offer of the College to the home page), improving navigation and search functions, integrating site content more deeply, and meeting disability compliance standards. Said Web Designer Robert Denton, "The old [home page] was affectionately referred to as a doormat; the new site has much more active content, and less peripheral 'fluff.'"
Under the direction of Webmaster Holly Sherburne, a team of 12 students worked along with the IT department this summer to update the approximately 35,000 pages associated with the Web site. In order to improve the site's navigation and search capabilities, a "taxonomy" team was formed, drawing experts from the Hawthorn-Longfellow Library, the Office of Communication, and the Web team. In the process, a Google search engine was added, as well as doubled bandwidth to increase speed, and an I2 connection, which will allow access to other institutions' servers.
Denton reports having received feedback within minutes of the site's launch through a new "add feedback" link at the bottom of each page. He estimates that about 90 to 95 percent of the feedback has been positive.
"Some people just don't like the colors," Davis jokes.
Some comments the department has received about the site include, "As a rising sophomore here at Bowdoin...I actually found out more about the school and its offerings [on the site]," and, "It is about time we cleaned it up!!!!!"
Most reported problems with the site have been traced to page views from older machines, particularly by users with Netscape or Internet Explorer 4.0 or earlier versions.
"We didn't design it to be backwards compatible; we built it with forward compatibility in mind," Denton explains, "At the very least, though, users [of older browsers] can get all content?it's ugly, but it's there."
Phase Two of the project is currently underway. "The whole idea of the site is, 'This is the beginning, not the end,'" Davis said. As part of the second phase, academic departments will have access to new design support, allowing them to customize their pages to better suit their departments. Visual Arts will be the first academic department to publish their newly shaped content in the next two weeks. Forthcoming goals of Phase Two include developing better campus communication, such as increasing event publication on the web, and improving student organizations' access to the web.
In the meantime, IT is also working on a project with Bowdoin Cable Network to establish a four-quadrant split screen and readerboard in Smith Union for ongoing announcements and footage of campus events.