Fresno State plans to clean up and streamline campus Web sites

By Jackie Womack
The Collegian

Fresno State officials said over the next few months, major changes will take place on the school’s Web sites. Sites housing the different colleges, departments and offices will have a more standardized look and be easier to navigate.

“It started because there was a need to replace the old standard,” Dawn Truelsen said, a Web developer for Digital Campus, who’s heading up the campaign.

It’s been five years since the standard has been updated, Truelsen said, and many of the Web sites are “old, have outdated information and no one knows how to maintain them.”

Kelly O’Boylan, a help desk supervisor for the university’s Information Technology Services, said people had commented on the lack of a uniform look.

“People have complained that going from one [Fresno State] site to a different one, it looks like you’re not at the university,” O’Boylan said. “People wonder, ‘Am I still on Fresno State?’ We’re trying to make it look like we’re all one university.”

The new look has built-in “headers and footers,” which carry the university’s name. However, the content can be customized, according to Truelsen.

One of the reasons the system hasn’t changed sooner is because the university hasn’t had a university Web master for over three years, Truelsen said.

“There’s no mandated time to change but everyone is so ready for a change, for a new solution,” she said.

Tim Kubal, a sociology professor who maintains his department’s Web site, was one of the people ready for a change.

“I was doing the Web site myself and it was difficult and it wasn’t clean,” he said. “It just used to be such a huge hassle to update.

Now, I can update it in a minute.”

A few of the other sites that have “cleaned up” their look are the Office of the President and the College of Health and Human Services, according to Truelsen.

She said the my.csufresno.edu site would also be changing its look soon, but it will be a separate project.

Truelsen said 147 people have signed up for training on the new system and 45 Web designers have the “tool kit” that lets them make the change. And the training isn’t limited to faculty and staff.

“If any official student organizations that have a faculty adviser want to update their site [with the new system], their Web developer can come to training,” Truelsen said.

She said the faculty adviser should contact her to request the training.

Another big emphasis with the new system is accessibility - the system is able to work with software for the disabled, such as screen readers, according to Truelsen.

Other elements play into accessibility too, O’Boylan said.

“It is how the [Web] page is designed,” he said. “Certain ways of displaying can make it harder or easier.”

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