You can send comments and suggestions about the homepage here.

Humboldt State University’s homepage has been updated with a new look and feel, along with new functionality. The goal was to give prospective students a positive overview of what the university has to offer, as well as plenty of ways to find more information.

In addition, the refreshed homepage meets increasing demand from users on mobile devices. It was created using “responsive design” techniques, which allows it to display effectively on everything from smartphones to desktops.

The homepage design is marked by large rotating photos that highlight faculty-student interaction, hands-on learning and Humboldt’s beautiful natural environment. A secondary photo collection showcases the campus facilities. Frequently used links and sections are easier to find, and there are new sections that provide overviews of topics that prospective students often ask about. These allow prospective students to “window shop” before exploring deeper into particular areas, and include “Why Humboldt State,” “Student Life,” and “Costs.”

Searching for particular majors and programs is also easier, and specific, commonly requested action buttons are prominently located over the top of the main photo.

Further down the page is a news section that now includes highlights from media coverage of the university. There is also a “Life at Humboldt State” section that features a rotating collection of current photos from social media posts by the campus community and by staff. To get a photo considered, users can tag posts on Twitter and Instagram with #HumboldtState.

To keep the homepage from becoming cluttered and difficult to navigate, some secondary pages that received little traffic were eliminated. And the information that used to be found under “current students” and “faculty & staff” is now contained within MyHumboldt.

This is the first major overhaul of the homepage’s design in nearly eight years.

A set of matching templates for campus department use are currently being tested (examples of pilot sites include the Office of Diversity & Inclusion and the Division of Enrollment Management and Student Affairs). These templates will be finalized and broadly available within the next few months. Like the homepage, they also have a responsive design, and are built with Drupal, which is being phased in as a campus standard for developing and maintaining websites.

During the fall semester, the campus also will begin transferring public-facing websites to off-campus server space managed by Pantheon. This could take a number of years to complete, and the process is still being developed. The Pantheon servers are specifically set up to work with Drupal websites; other advantages include a development space for new websites, constant updates of software, and not having to utilize campus staff to manage server space and functionality.

Plans for the upcoming academic year also include offering new training and support for campus Drupal users. And enhanced templates are in the works that will make it simpler to launch new sites, give more options for functionality, and provide automatic updates to match the most current campus homepage design.

You can send comments and suggestions about the homepage here.