Web Site Redesign
What to Look for on W&L's New Site
Welcome to W&L's redesign overiew. We encourage you to take a look at our new design and send us your feedback.
A few caveats:
- This site is still under construction, and you will no doubt encounter errors as you navigate these pages. Please help us improve the site prior to its launch by reporting any errors to webservices@wlu.edu.
- Some of the functionality that we promise below is not yet available. Bear with us and rest assured that we are working to bring these tools to you as quickly as possible.
- The site will be rolled out in phases, so there will be many links that take you to pages maintained outside our new content management system. We expect the full rollout to take place over the next year, possibly longer.
About the New Design:
What's Changed?
- New Homepage Profiles: Highlights students (and eventually faculty and programs) who illustrate the depth and breadth of the W&L experience. New spotlight elements will be introduced every month.
- Centralized Calendar of Events: One University-wide calendar of events, filterable by audience (events for current students, faculty, staff, general public, etc.) and event type (lecture, film, athletic contest, etc.). Future functionality will include a self-service event submission form to allow any campus user to submit an event for approval and publication to the calendar, a monthly grid view, dual filtering and printer-friendly formats.
- Custom Quicklinks: Users will soon have the option of adding any page on the site to their custom Quicklinks menu for future reference.
- Improved Search functionality: Our new search engine provides faster and more relevant results, and can be customized to search an individual section of the site.
- News and Events feeds: Department-specific news headlines and events listings are now available for syndication on any section of the site.
- Offices and Services page: A comprehensive, A-Z listing of all academic and administrative offices at W&L, ideal for quick reference.
What's the Same?
- Navigation: In an effort to make the transition to a new site easier for on-campus users, we have tried to retain as many of the global navigation elements as possible from the old design. The location of some of these links, however, has changed. Topic-based navigation (Academics, Campus Life, etc.) is now in the horizontal navigation bar across the top of the page, and will remain consistent throughout all pages in the site. Audience-based navigation (Prospective Students, Current Students, Faculty & Staff, etc.) has moved to the left sidebar on the University homepage and moves to the footer of subsequent pages in the site. We have also expanded our Tactical navigation bar at the very top of the screen to include links to frequently accessed pages like Webmail, Libraries & Computing and Offices & Services.
- News and Events: The homepage will still feature current news and upcoming events at the University, as well as a Spotlight feature to highlight notable events and achievements.
About the Rollout
W&L will roll out the redesign to individual departments and administrative offices on campus as their pages are migrated into our new University-wide content management system (CMS). Departments migrating into the CMS will undergo a comprehensive needs assessment with members of W&L's Web Services team to determine goals and objectives for the redesign, identify any special technology requirements and customize a set of templates for their departmental use.
If you would like to add your department or office's website to our redesign schedule, please email Eric Owsley, University Web Developer, at owsleye@wlu.edu.
