New “portal” approach
One of the changes made in this design was to start moving toward better portals for some of our audiences.
One of those was to migrate away from the old Campus Life page to the term Students for now (pending feedback). Our hope there is to build a robust student-oriented portal, that can both be used by current students as a resource and looked at by prospective students to see what’s going on at WFU.
What you see now on that page is similar to what you saw on the Campus Life page — a bunch of links. We plan to expand that page significantly to make clear areas for Students to be able to get to what they need: RL&H, Dining, financial services, academic resources, things to do, etc.
We plan to do the same with the Faculty/Staff portal as well. We know at this point, we’re probably missing a variety of useful stuff that should be on there, so please let us know if you have ideas for what would help you.
April 16, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Regarding the transition from the title “Campus Life” to “Students”: I, as a current student, find it to be incredibly helpful and a step in the right direction. The title “Campus Life” is much too vague and unfocused for the content included on the page. As a student (and, I would postulate, prospective student) I want to be able to access relevant information as easily and quickly as possible. The best way of doing this? Locate a page titled “Students” and go from there. I urge you to keep this title, as it appears to me to be much more logical and useful.
April 19, 2009 at 8:52 am
The gold logo DOES NOT work. Do it the way the Law School did, in black and white.
April 19, 2009 at 7:51 pm
Thank you for the new website. I don’t know if I’m in a position to do this as a prospective freshman but I just wanted to suggest a couple things that I think could be improved. First off, the picture stuff at the top is taking too much space so that we have to scroll down to see the entire page. Secondly, I believe that the bottom menus (below the quote “Serving Humanity Through…”) and the side menus on the left are redundant. Although the side menus gave a room for the “Window on Wake Forest” section, I don’t think it is necessary to do that.
I suggest that the middle part (side menus and Wow section) can be gone or at least hidden behind the homepage. The benefit of getting rid of these is 1) the home page will not be not as long as it is now, but it can still have the picture/news stuff on the top 2) the bottom of the page itself is well organized and it is easy enough to navigate through without the side menus’ help – the side menu might just add more of a confusion rather than be helpful.
Again, thank you for your effort of redesigning a new website. I hope you find my suggestions helpful.
April 20, 2009 at 8:26 am
The home page frequently freezes or only partially loads. You have to go back out and then come in again to get the full page.
April 20, 2009 at 1:03 pm
On a side note, I do have to agree with Internet Cop that the gold logo does not particularly work. I feel like it is overshadowed by the brighter colors on the page and does not stand out as much as it should. I do agree that a white logo on black may work better.
April 21, 2009 at 3:28 pm
I noticed on the left side of the home page there’s not major link for “Giving” or “Alumni.” I agree with someone else the top of the page is too big. Lots of “hard” data and tons of breaking news would be much better. The home page should really be treated like the front page of a major newspaper.
April 22, 2009 at 9:33 pm
Hi, again. For the logo at the top, it seems that the program that you used to shrink the image down didn’t do as well a job as it should have. I again would recommend trying the black and white.
But, regardless, I compliment Creative Services with the redesign. It’s been a long time coming. And badly needed.
My other advice would be as follows:
1) Get rid of the “Accomplished” “Bold” “Noble” and “Inquisitive” tabs. All they do is take up space.
2) The images on the home page are at the correct size. Well done with the graphics.
3) The font and color of the left-hand menu needs to be changed. The onmouseover background change should be replaced with some other effect. Perhaps an arrow such as “–>” on mouseover.
4) The bar with “Serving Humanity Through the Pursuit of Knowledge” should be replaced with a) an image of the text, b) the background should be a different, lighter color that doesn’t clash with the lightness all around it, and c) the vertical columns/dividers on both sides should be extended to include this box/bar. Right now the bar looks out of place without the lines on both ends.
5) The bottom bar with “Copyright…” also needs a different color. It clashes with the rest of the Web site.
Congratulations again on a fine job.
-Internet Cop/2008 alumn.
April 22, 2009 at 9:44 pm
Also, the most pressing change that should be made next is Window on Wake Forest.
P.S. on my last message… for #4, it turns out there is a line extended all the way down through the box, but it happens to be the same color as the box. Like I said, though, I would modify the box with a lighter color, so the left and right border could be clearly discerned.
July 16, 2009 at 2:21 pm
The homepage takes WAY too long to load; I can’t click to read more about a story until it all loads. Please do something to help it load faster. I don’t know if it’s the images or the programming. Help!
Kyle
July 20, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Please do shrink the top portion of the page; it takes up a lot of room—as many comments have indicated. The words “Bold”, “Inquisitive”, etc. are nice but my concern is that they become trite after some time. The bottom portion of the home page really contains the interesting news and should be given more space. Nice color scheme but perhaps the page is not “Bold” enough in terms of grabbing the person’s interest. Logo is lost in this scheme.
August 23, 2009 at 1:25 pm
The home page frequently freezes or only partially loads. You have to go back out and then come in again to get the full page.