To kick off the start of spring term 2003, BYU-Hawaii officially launched the redesign of its website on April 26.
The website sports a look that has many similar elements with BYU-Hawaii’s sister institutions in Provo and Idaho, but also has additional features to appeal to a more internationally diverse audience.
“In this current information society, websites on average are updated about every two years,” said Robert Wakefield, director of university communications. “The University’s old look had existed for the last three years and was more than past due for a redesign.”
Along with the new look, the website offers a more user-friendly approach to those who use it on a frequent basis.
“The old Web site became too unwieldy with lots of links down the left side. This new look will help people find their way around easier,” said Kevin Schlag, university webmaster and head of the redesign team. “Also, we've done some things so people can update information themselves without knowing HTML.”
In an effort to organize the content more effectively, the new design groups the links into subjects that will help those browsing find the information they need more quickly. “With the old design, for example, students had to scroll through 29 links, organized alphabetically, to find what they wanted,” Schlag said.
The redesign team also took advantage of some of the newer web technologies to enhance security and help with the maintenance of pages.
"We've also changed our Search Engine, which is now handled by Google,” Schlag said. “It will be more complete and up to date, and users should be able to find things a little easier."