Saint Mary's Magazine Winter 2003 - Saint Mary's University of ...

SMU ON THE WWW
Student choir
begins (1949)
30
The Redman yearbook is named All
American with distinctive honor (1949)
29
SMU launches
redesigned website
After more than of year of
planning, decisions and design,
the SMU website is all new and
ready to provide its audiences with
information that is up-to-date in an
inviting and
attractive
package.
A. Eric Heukeshoven
Website Manager
Who
are our
guests?
Much of the
discussion in the
early planning
stages of our
new website centered on the
question of, “Who visits our main
website and what do they want?”
While it is obvious that anyone in the
world with a computer and Internet
connection can visit our site, we
decided to focus on three main
groups: Prospective Students, Alumni
& Friends, and folks interested in
general information about SMU.
Once we determined our “core”
audience, the flow of the website fell
into place. On the “home page”
visitors can quickly decide the path
they wish to follow to find the
information they need.
Navigating the site
As you visit the new site, take a
moment to sample the menu located
along the top right-hand portion of
every page. Each main category
(Admission, Academics, Location,
News & Information, Alumni and
Resources) offers a “drop-down”
menu with choices allowing the
viewer to jump directly to an
appropriate section of the site. If
you’re looking for Sports,
you’ll find a direct link
under News &
Information. Want to
check out a Graduate
Program, it’s there
under Academics!
Managing
the content
As you can see, the
new site has a
completely new look and
feel. What you won’t see are the
tools behind the scenes that allow the
individuals who are most familiar
with their information to make
updates directly to the website. The
new site is based on software from
Intrcomm Technologies, a software
company located here in Minnesota,
which enables our faculty and staff to
make instant updates through an
easy-to-learn web-based interface.
The website is built using a set of
templates into which information can
be added, changed or deleted. “Keep
it simple” has been our motto and we
are confident that we have made an
excellent choice to do just that.
New & Improved
Along with the content management
system we have
added a host of
new options and
features that will
appear as part of
the new site.
“Instant Polls”
such as you see
on many news
sites around the
web can be
added and the
results tracked.
A calendar module makes light work
of updating and maintaining a
searchable calendar of events.
(Look
for one such calendar
in the Undergraduate Alumni
section.) Discussion groups
to allow a forum-type atmosphere
can also be included. And at long
last, we plan to introduce
e-commerce to the SMU website!
Old favorites
If you’re wondering whether we
scrapped everything from the “old”
website, relax, your old favorites are
here too. You can still make a virtual
visit 24/7 to the Winona campus via
our live streaming video webcam.
The online edition of the
Saint Mary’s Magazine and several
other publications will still be at your
fingertips as will photos from recent
alumni events, the
alumni email directory
and other web
resources you’ve come
to rely on.
We welcome your
comments on our new
website, which like
every good idea, is a
work in progress.
Email your thoughts to
webmaster@smumn.edu. I sincerely
look forward to hearing from many
of you soon.≠
20 SAINT MARY’S MAGAZINE WINTER 2003