Nov. 9, 2012 — The website redesign team is happy to announce that we have entered the final phase of this project. The bulk of the new infrastructure is in place, and many important content decisions have been made. Now, we are at work doing quality assurance testing (QA), making final revisions, and tying up the many loose ends intrinsic to a project this large and complex. Our aim is to launch the redesigned site by the end of the month.
For those interested in the process, here is a basic look at what we’ve been working on in recent weeks, where we are today, and what’s left to do, as well as an overview of the community input that has guided the entire project. To learn more about the full life cycle of this undertaking, please see the pages listed in the lefthand column of this page.
| Project Component |
Community Input | Development Status | Next Steps |
| Homepage | All stakeholder groups and full community | Done. | Populate with final content nearer to launch day. |
| Landing pages | All stakeholder groups and full community | Done except for fine tuning of the navigation links. | Finish fine tuning of navigation; select final photos for each landing page. |
| Search web/directory | All stakeholder groups and full community | Desktop version is done. Still working on mobile-friendly results page. | Further QA and enhancements based on community feedback. |
| Quick Links | All stakeholder groups and full community | Fully functional beta version in place. | Write help documentation; further QA and enhancements based on community feedback. |
| Faculty Profiles | Working group and faculty | Done. | Some manual content formatting may be needed when moving profiles from old to new version. Encourage departments to upload larger images. |
| Mobile homepage | Preview scheduled for all stakeholder groups and full community week of 11/12 | Mobile-friendly framework combining homepage with landing pages is in place. | Enhancements based on community feedback; Add news and events content sections; format search results for mobile browsers. |
| Course lister | Preview scheduled for all stakeholder groups and full community week of 11/12 | Done. | Enhancements based on community feedback |
| Mobile page template | Preview scheduled for all stakeholder groups and full community week of 11/12 | Condensed mobile navigation and page layout are done. | Enhancements based on community feedback; QA of pages on multiple devices and browsers. |
| Image/post Slider | Preview scheduled for all stakeholder groups and full community week of 11/12 | In progress. | |
| Migrate departments site already in WordPress into the new theme | Partial preview scheduled for all stakeholder groups and full community week of 11/12 | We are working with a small group of early adopters to assess their content and convert their sites to the new templates. | This process continues until launch day. |
| Create responsive layouts so site automatically fits user’s screen (ie, laptop, tablet, mobile) | Preview scheduled for all stakeholder groups and full community week of 11/12 | Basic responsive rules are in place. | QA on various browsers and computers. |
| Define rules that apply new design to all content found on Williams sites (body text, headers, tables, sidebars, footer, etc) | Partial preview scheduled for all stakeholder groups and full community week of 11/12 | Styling of content in progress. | Most of the styles should be ready for the next preview phase, but this work is substantial and will continue for the next couple of weeks. |
| Header/banner image library | This collection of images will continually expand based on community input and requests | In progress. | Continue to collect banner images for use by sites adopting the new theme. |
| Develop process for WordPress website development/migration | In progress. | Technical migration procedure is known. What will be developed by the redesign launch is a guide to the consultation process for a site’s development, which will include conversations about goals and audiences, an assessment of content and structure, and training in the WordPress theme. The guide will include basics about steps in the process, an expectation of time and effort involved, and decisions to be made. |
