for months and months now you’ve all heard me mention i’ve been working hard on a huge seton hall web project. today came the first real announcement and explanation to not only the seton hall community but to any outside visitors- the following message comes directly from public relations and has been published on the main page of the university’s current site:

Seton Hall’s new main Web site, also called the gateway, is almost here, and you are invited for a sneak preview. The new site will replace the one located at www.shu.edu, which was originally launched in 2000. The University’s design team has spent nearly nine months developing the new Web site, and only one step remains: getting your comments. The design team behind the new site was a joint collaboration between the University’s departments of Public Relations and Marketing and Information Technologies. The team consists of Rob Brosnan, Lee Clark, Mike Hyland, Nancy Mustachio, Courtney Sollie, Marie Somers and Kevin Whary.

With so much effort behind the project, what can you expect? The Web site features three main improvements over the existing site: a new look, new content and new technology.

New Look

After five years of the “blue bar”, the design team decided to take an entirely fresh approach to the graphical design of the site. Working through at least 25 different designs, the team settled upon the look and feel you see on the preview site. The site’s use of a prominent Seton Hall blue, along with complementary blues, greens and yellows, helps visitors recognize New Jersey’s oldest and largest Catholic institution of higher learning.

But color isn’t the only element you’ll notice on the new site. The site makes a much more nimble use of space, resulting in more relevant information available on a page. “With as many demands for attention on people as there are today,” says Mike Hyland, the site’s graphic designer, “we wanted to make sure visitors didn’t have to go hunting for information. No matter where you go on the site, you can find an interesting story, fact about the University or an event happening on campus. The site really reflects the breadth and depth of activities on campus.”

New Content

“Seton Hall is a great university, but the Web has had trouble showcasing all that we are and do,” says Rob Brosnan, director of web and digital communications. “For example, did you know that there are seven former U.N. ambassadors on the faculty of the Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations? If the information isn’t presented to you, would you go looking for it? On the old Web site, you’d be hard pressed to find it.”

The new site addresses this deficiency through new types of content. In addition to the news and events carried on the old site, the new site offers prospective students Hallmarks, or key reasons why they should come to Seton Hall. Facts about the University, such as the number of U.N. ambassadors, are presented in quick, easy-to-digest elements called Fast Facts and Did You Know.

“The accomplishments of and research by our faculty has long been missing in action,” Brosnan says. Faculty achievements will be illustrated through the In Focus area on the new site’s home page. Over time, profiles, quotes and other elements will be used to highlight the faculty and student body.

Finally, in order to get the right information to the right people, the site boasts redesigned Current Students and Faculty and Staffpages. In these convenient locations, students and faculty and staff will each have a single place to look to find out news and announcements that are relevant to them and events they might want to attend.

New Technology

Keeping news, events and other information up-to-date is often the most difficult aspect of managing a Web site. Marie Somers, web development manager, remarks, “Very few of us actually have the word ‘Web’ in our job titles. Yet we all have a role to play in promoting campus activities. Our goal was to make submitting news and events as easy as writing a letter. People should manage technology, not the other way around.”

The new Web site is built atop a content management system called CommonSpot. Content management systems are similar to word processors, allowing individuals to update the content of a Web page with the same skills they utilize when working in Microsoft Word™. “While a little training is necessary,” Somers says, “everyone on campus already has what it takes to use CommonSpot.”

The new Web site is the first to feature CommonSpot, but over time, all other University Web sites will be moved onto CommonSpot.

Visit www2.shu.edu and e-mail your comments to newweb@shu.edu.

so there you have it- what i’ve been up to at work. what was my real involvement in the project? first and foremost, design- design, and then some design. public relations let me loose on designing as many ideas as i could muster through research and reference… although the article mentions 25 different designs- i must say i did quite a few more trial and error sessions with looks before they saw even that few a number of refined ideas. i referenced dozens of educational and professional template sites over weeks of development- it was the hardest design challenge i had ever faced. i am proud that over time the team was able to help me develop these designs into what the finished project, and over the next 2 years, the entire seton hall website will evolve into.

designing was only the beginning. once my work had the approval of my division, public relations, and ultimately the president of the university and a few of the board of reagents, i was off to coding my designs into functional html. it was here that i faced my second great challenge: coding the ‘look and feel’ of the 5 different page types (content templates) into a completely css based layout. this was the hardest coding challenge i had ever faced. again, i am proud to have pulled this off- i still look at the design and the code barebones and wonder how the hell i pulled that all out of my mind.

while i worked through these design challenges, the rest of my department focused on our newly purchased content management system commonspot. to see what this software actually adds to the power of our website, check out this features list on the paperthin website. overall, the content management system utilizes cold fusion and sql in our network enviroment to help us implement simple and sophisticated tools for creating, publishing and managing web content in a controlled, distributed and collaborative web development environment-

in the final hours (weeks) all teams came together.. my design work was implemented into cold fusion; i continued to style and learn the product; public relations worked to migrate the content for ‘phase one’ to the new technology; the rest of my department focused on making the product meet the needs of everyone all fronts- and then a ton of more development, leading up to today’s little message:

After nine months of development and countless cups of coffee, doughnuts and slices of pizza, the University new main site is almost here.

by the time the clock was ticking down to zero hour, i think we were all developed in so many ways, and for a website that receives literally hunderds of thousands of unique hits a month, a milestone for seton hall. it was truly a career defining experience for me thus far- and of course this is only the beginning of what for now appears to be at least a 2 years initiative for the university. i will keep you all updated on large developments as they happen; and for everyone who has given feedback in the last several months, thank you!

Filed under: Design, Web Development