Marietta College Website
In my first year working at Marietta College, I completely redesigned their website.
The old website had been developed by a third-party in 2004 and had a static home page, a table-based layout littered with spacer gifs, a cgi-bin backend relying on an offsite database, and the navigation was unintuitive and inconsistent. Users frequently complained that it was too difficult to find what they were looking for and dozens of pages were outdated. Also, the college was approaching its 175th anniversary and wanted a special section devoted to that, with links from the home page.
The new website features several improvements, including a standards-compliant tableless XHTML/CSS based layout, intuitive navigation, and tasteful use of php and javascript to enhance the user experience as well as aiding in the ease of maintenance. One of the most notable changes is the use of featured content sliders on the home page and in various sub-pages, to continually promote college news stories, thereby transforming a static homepage into a dynamic news center to better engage visitors and keep them coming back for more. The news section itself is built using Drupal, and feeds several different subsections, such as an Alumni news feed appearing on the Alumni home page, etc. Also, the masthead featured a prominent "175" logo for the duration of the college's anniversary year, to quickly allow visitors access to the 175 site from any subpage.
Redesigning and building the "Core Pages" of the site was Phase 1 of the project. Phase 2 was (and continues to be) updating the various individual department sites to enforce some standard navigation and design elements. You're welcome to view more sites and banners I've built for Marietta College.
You can learn more about the redesign process and features of the new website by visiting http://www.marietta.edu/about_this_site.html
Chris has been an outstanding addition to the College Relations staff at Marietta College. He jumped in immediately with both feet as we began a redesign of the College website on his first day. He played an integral role in the redesign, as well as helped keep a steering committee informed of the work that was needed to complete the job. In short, Chris led the effort by developing a plan and time line, conducting research and executing the plan to near perfection. With Phase 1 completed, Chris has completed a smooth transition into Phase 2, where he is developing new department site and redesigning and improving existing sites to meet the College's standard graphic identity. In conclusion, Chris has been an outstanding member of the College Relations team and a valuable asset to Marietta College.
-Tom Perry, Executive Director of College Relations at Marietta College