More user-friendly, more informative and even more impressive. Such will be the new Wittenberg Web site when it debuts this fall.

For months, Wittenberg’s Computing Center has been in the process of updating the university’s Web site to make an online visit back to campus more fun and interesting, to make recruitment information more accessible, and to make the site more personal for students, alumni and friends.

As part of this renewed effort, Joseph Deck, director of computing services, hired Web consultants Angie Catanzaro and Scott Winkle to assist in the early stages of the redesign process and to oversee the project.

Catanzaro and Winkle studied the site extensively and just last month unveiled their initial plans, plans that include tailoring the site to accommodate Wittenberg’s diverse audiences.

For example, from the home page, alumni will be able to click directly on a button designated as “alumni.” There they will find information on a range of alumni-related activities.

Prospective students will also have their own buttons as will faculty and staff, and current students.“No matter who you are, you will have a button to click on,” Winkle said, “and from there we are going to cater the information given to you.”

Prospective students, for example, will find information on online applications, programs offered and campus tours.

Conversely, alumni will find information on such topics as Homecoming, Alumni Weekend, the Alumni Association and Alumni Clubs, among others.

In addition, the site will provide a button for contact information. By clicking the “contact” button, users will find a list of names for individuals with expertise on everything from financial aid, the library and admission to advancement, athletics and alumni relations.

The link appears prominently on the header of the home page, and it will continue to appear on subsequent pages for easy reference.Revolving photos are also new to the site.

Highlighting such areas as the campus landscape, academics and student life, the photos will regularly change in order to provide users with fresh and interesting views of Wittenberg each time they visit the site.

Once within the site, photos will also change to reflect the pages. Athletics, for instance, may have revolving photos of volleyball, football or field hockey depending on the season.

Despite these major design changes, the site will still remain graphically uniform and still be flexible enough to accommodate faculty and departmental needs.

Faculty members who may want to adjust their pages to fit with their course needs, for example, will have access to a program that will enable them to update their pages without even opening Netscape Composer.

User-friendly templates will also be provided to allow for quick and easy updating, and the search engine will still be available.

The Computing Center hopes that such ease-of-use and flexibility, in combination with the new, user-friendly design, will keep maintenance of the site to a minimum.

“There are thousands of pages and so much that needs to be done,” Catanzaro said, but “I think we can get it done.”

— Sarah Lowe ’01