For the first time since 2005, Auburn's website has gotten a makeover.
Most of the navigational structure for the website is the same, but the most noticeable changes are the visual aspects of the site.
"We felt that people were comfortable with the way things were placed before," said Mike Clardy, director of communications. "They knew where things were, and they were used to things being in a certain place."
The major change is the presentation of the website, including the two top sections: the featured story section and the "Take 5" section.
"We'll take a story and take it from just a plain, flat news release and try to bring some life to it," Clardy said. "We try to add some video, interviews and lots of photographs. It's more of a multimedia experience than just a news release. In this day and age you've got to do more for a reader than just give them a written story."
The featured stories, or news feed section, rotates through the articles on its own and will change every week.
The "Take 5" section is a completely new aspect of the website and is meant to give website users a behind-the-scenes look into the people of Auburn University.
"We kept hearing from people that, 'I love to read news about the University, but tell me more about the people behind these stories,'" Clardy said.
Clardy said parents and prospective students were particularly interested in this aspect of the website, and the section is meant to be a fun and simple read.
The "Take 5" section will also be updated weekly and consists of five questions that feature a different person every week.
"It's going to be a wide variety of people--people you have heard of and people you haven't heard of," Clardy said.
Seth Humphrey, the webmaster and designer of the website, said websites should evolve with both the audience and the technology.
"One of the reasons I wanted to redo it was the technical aspects behind the scenes," Humphrey said. "I wanted to get the code up to date with the latest and greatest."
One advantage of the new coding is the website is now more accessible for mobile devices.
Clardy said the major focus of the change was to give Auburn a better opportunity to tell the stories it wants to tell by bringing them to life visually.
An additional motivation for the website change was to create a site that was more accessible for people who are hearing and visually impaired.
Also, the new website features a footer that is customizable by each department.
Megan Lacy, freshman in animal science, said she is still in the process of getting used to the new website.
"Honestly, I prefer the old website to this one," Lacy said. "It's a lot harder for me to locate the links that I need to access for my classes."
Lacy said she has noticed some issues with broken links or sections of the website being inaccessible because of the maintenance associated with the update.
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