Students visiting the Tufts athletics Web site for the first time since winter recess are in for a surprise.
The athletics department, working alongside Tufts' Information Technology Services (ITS) department, has revamped its Web site for the first time since the site's inception in 1999. While featuring the same information and content as the old Web site, the new site includes different aesthetics and organization.
"It's a better design," Sports Information Director Paul Sweeney, who is responsible for updating and maintaining the Web site, said. "It's flashier, so to speak. It has more color and is more pleasing to the eye; it's a new look, a better look and that's the biggest difference between this site and the old one."
"We think that it offers a lot more than the old site," web developer and designer Kristen Barrett said. "The overall layout, the general information and the way it's displayed are welcoming. It's a more appealing design."
Still, the information on the site has remained relatively unchanged.
"It doesn't function all that differently from the old site," Sweeney said. "The old site was easy to navigate and the new site is easy to navigate."
New features include a scrolling scoreboard with the latest results from Tufts' teams, a drop-down box on the main page with direct access to team pages and a link where alumni and parents can make donations to support Tufts athletics.
The decision to overhaul the site was an easy one, as the old version was outdated.
"The old site was developed in 1999, and nowadays, with the way things move in the world of technology, we were way behind in [updating the site]," Sweeney said. "Our site was seven or eight years old, and it was time to do it and make it fresh. Something new needed to be done."
"Paul Sweeney and our group have had a working relationship since day one about seven years ago," Barrett said. "So we've known Paul and we've talked to him several times about redesigning it and he agreed. It was just a matter of finding the right time."
ITS first began work on the new site in the spring of 2006 and continued working throughout the summer. Since the previous site hosted a tremendous amount of archived information about Jumbo sports teams, moving all the old data proved time-consuming.
"It was a tricky site because of its magnitude," Barrett said. "Ideally, our launch date was targeted for this past summer; however, it took a lot of changes in design to get it where we wanted it, and then there was the issue of content migration. By the time the design was approved by Paul and his team, summer was no longer an option, so we opted to launch the new site over winter break."
The department decided to launch the new site in time for this semester, despite a few remaining gaps, including full team archives and the athletics recruitment form.
"The athletics site is very big, and we wanted to launch the site before it was 100 percent developed, because the semester has started and games have started," Sweeney said. "The whole process went smoothly, and it launched on time. It wasn't possible to transfer everything from the old site to the new site before the semester began, so we decided to wait on the archive. Right now, they're working on getting those pages completed."
Due to the small size of the ITS team working on the site, it may be a few more months before the job is completely finished. The ITS members on the website team now include Barrett, server administrator and senior programmer Will Hilley, web developer and designer Sauyee Lee, web editor Alyssa Clossey, and sophomore Kelly Moran, a student assistant.
Responses to the new site have remained overwhelmingly positive since its debut.
"It went very well," Barrett said. "We're pleased with the design and functionality, and we're happy the feedback is all positive."
"There's been no negative feedback about it," Sweeney said. "I'm not just saying that because it's my baby - I'm saying it because I've really had no negative feedback about it."
