Fresno State Web page gets makeover

By Brent VonCannon
The Collegian

If some students are feeling the blues lately while navigating through some of the Fresno State Web pages, it may have to do with the recent image makeover.

The My Fresno State portal and PeopleSoft system were offline for several days in mid-October for a scheduled upgrade. The change has, among other things, turned the traditional school colors of red and gold into various hues of blue and apricot.

“We needed to keep up with the vendor,” said John Briar, Director of Campus Information Systems, regarding the need to change the format. The recent upgrade to a newer version from Oracle, also known as PeopleSoft, was in the works for nine months, according to Briar.

Briar added that only student services under the My Fresno State portal and Human Resources, which includes administrative services, have been changed thus far, but the entire Fresno State Web site will ultimately follow suit.

“The university is changing the look and feel of the site,” Briar said. “The new look, as a result of University Communications, is colored in blue and apricot and red.”

Under the new format, a band of red can still be seen at the top, with an apricot-colored band below it and most of the rest permeated with a blue tint.

Also, the former Student Portfolio and Personal Portfolio sections have been combined into the “Student Center,” which is listed under Student Self Service and displays important student-related information, as well as provides links for further updates from the same page.

Briar touted added functionality as a positive change with the new format. “Lots of key information is on the front page,” Briar said. “It’s a good tool to get right to things like class schedule, finances, stuff like that. All the same processes are there. They just act a little differently.”

He also mentioned what he called better messages, referring to the pop-up bubbles that inform about a specific link or function when the cursor is placed on it, which are more developed and frequent in the new system.

The new online style comes as a not-so-welcome surprise to many Fresno State students, particularly upperclassmen who have used My Fresno State frequently over the years.

Zhou Yu, a senior business major, said the new system will take some getting used to. “They totally changed everything,” Yu said. “It’s like comparing a 1960 car and a 2005 car. There’s a big difference.” But Yu said he liked the new colors because he thought they looked more modern.

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