While many University students relaxed during the summer months, the core of campus communication, that deity of all vital information -- the U.Va. Web site -- received a virtual makeover.
The redesigned site made its debut last month, just in time to greet the massive Internet traffic that grips it at the beginning of every new semester.
"We wanted to add functionality and better navigation," said Nancy Tramontin, director of Web communications and lead webmaster.
Specific pages were created for graduate students, international students and parents, three groups that previously did not have focused or readily accessible pages. Links to these new pages are prominent on the home page.
"A lot of graduate students felt that the U. Va. students page was very undergraduate oriented -- and it was," Tramontin said.
Graduate students worked with the Office of Orientation to create a page that is both helpful to current graduate students and welcoming to prospectives.
International students also had trouble navigating the old U.Va. Web site, which had no clear links to relevant pages, Tramontin said.
She also stressed the goal of the Web site being "more functional to more audiences."
Users of the site now can access "featured links," which many students should find useful, Tramontin said.
Also, underneath the familiar photo of Jefferson's statue is an area titled "Today at UVA", which site visitors can use to link to important news and information.
Tramontin said that the U.Va. site was used heavily during Sept. 11 to convey timely information to the University community, and that a space for such information was included in the newly designed site.
Reactions to the new page have been generally positive, Tramontin said. But she reported getting some e-mails from aggravated students complaining about the increased loading time for the page.
According to Tramontin, this is not a result of the redesign, but rather a result of the extreme usage that is normal for this time of the academic year. The page is nearly the same size as the old one.
The sleeker, more professional appearance of the new Web site was almost an inadvertent result of the redesign, Tramontin said.
"Making it to be prettier was not the major motivator," Tramontin said. Although she said the page is now more graphically interesting, "we didn't want to change the whole look and feel of the page."
Fans of the old page might dearly miss their instinctive knowledge of certain oft-visited links, but Tramontin hopes that this new site will be just as easy to use.
But if you really miss the
old page, you still can visit it at
www.virginia.edu/virginia2001. If you need to visit this online relic, however, be aware it is no longer being updated -- it's stuck in a time capsule at August 12, 2002.
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