Hardin-Simmons University Website Blog

Website redesign surveys closed

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 12:00:00 CST

We have closed the Community and Prospective Student Surveys, but we still want to hear from you. Leave comments here on the Website Blog and keep the conversation going.

The surveys are giving us some great insight into how our site is used and how our visitors would like to use it in the future. There's a lot more information to come, so keep checking back.

Sidebar issues

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 12:00:00 CST

Facing some strange quirks with the filters on the sidebar here on the blog. Working to figure out why they don't want to sort properly, but since this isn't a critical portion of the site, it isn't very high on the list of priorities.

Browser Stats

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 12:00:00 CST

As we work on redesigning the website, we are looking at data that isn't covered in our Community Survey and Prospective Students Survey. One such piece of information is which browsers our visitors are using on the website.

You might be wondering why that matters, so I'll explain. Each browser—Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, etc.—follows its own set of rules. Unfortunately, each browser, and each version of each browser, handles things differently. If we try using a feature on our site that isn't supported by a particular browser, it can make the site look strange or stop working entirely.

Preliminary results*:

Internet Explorer: 61%
Safari: 19%
Firefox: 14%
Chrome: 5%
Other: 1%

No surprise that IE is still holding strong at #1, though the margin isn't as great as it once was. If you break the IE results down by each version, it gets more interesting (to web nerds like me).

IE8: 87.3%
IE7: 11.3%
IE6: 1.3%

What does this mean? IE6 has long been a source of frustration in the web community; it doesn't follow web standards (the suggested set of rules) very well at all. The result is that web developers have had to hack their way through sites to get them to look correct in IE6. IE7 and IE8 are incrementally better, and the fact that they have almost completely replaced IE6 means that we can finally consider dropping support for it entirely.

I was a little surprised that Safari has overtaken Firefox for the #2 slot, but since they and Chrome handle standards very well, it's good regardless.

All that to say that it appears we will be able to focus more on a better web experience, and less on fighting browsers to make them behave the way we want them to. It's a win for everyone!

* Browser statistics from Google Analytics, analyzing the traffic to http://www.hsutx.edu/ from Oct. 31, 2010 - Nov. 30, 2010.

Department of Theatre Updated

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 12:00:00 CST

We've launched the first round of updates to the Department of Theatre to get the design matching the new style.

Visit the Department of Theatre here.

We'll be rolling out more updates in the near future.

Department of Communcation Updates

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 12:00:00 CST

We launched the revised Department of Communication pages last night.

Visit the Department of Communication.

The Department of Communication pages now contain a lot of content produced by Communication majors, including some award-winning pieces. Swing by and check it out, and let us know what you think in the comments!

Website Blog RSS Feed

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 12:00:00 CST

The HSU Website Blog finally has an RSS feed so you can get automatic updates about what's being done on the HSU website and the redesign.

You can subscribe to the RSS feed by clicking the link in the address bar, or by using this address: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/HSU-Blog-Web.

Department of Art Launch

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 12:00:00 CST

We have launched the redesigned Department of Art pages on the website. The new pages can be viewed here: Department of Art.

I've also updated the "More Events>" links in the Art and Theatre pages' sidebars to stay within their respective schools/departments when viewing their details. Hopefully, this will make things a little less jarring when switching between various views of the site.

There are a few more things to polish before launching the Theatre Department's pages, but those will be rolling out soon.

Survey Updates

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 12:00:00 CST

We've had a great response on the website redesign survey so far, but we want to hear more! Please, take a minute or two out of your time to fill out the short Community Website Redesign Survey.

Kelley College of Business updates

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 12:00:00 CST

Two new major fields of study have been added to the Kelley College of Business section of the site: Nonprofit Management and Public Administration.

We have also pushed the spotlight filtering through to the entire Kelley College of Business section of the site, so only KCOB majors/professors/alumni (when available) will show up on those pages.

New homepage banners

Tue, 26 Oct 2010 12:00:00 CST

We've put some new banners into rotation on the homepage and retired a couple of the older ones. If you have your own pictures from HSU that you would like us to consider putting on the homepage, email them to us!

Speak up!

Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:00:00 CST

We are opening up the HSU Community Web Survey today, and would appreciate your feedback!

If you are currently connected to the university (current students, employees, alumni, and family members) we want to hear from you. Please take a couple minutes to fill out the HSU Community Web Survey and let us know your thoughts. The survey will close November 20, 2010. If you feel you have more to say than what is on the survey, leave a comment on the blog — we'd love to hear what you have to say.

We will be running a separate survey for prospective students and their families soon, so if you aren't already part of the HSU community, please skip this survey.

Updating the Campus Directory

Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:00:00 CST

We've made some modifications to the campus directory in preparation for more extensive updates to come.

We pulled faculty/staff photos. A significant number of faculty and staff either had out of date pictures, or no picture at all. Since we are building up to a full re-shoot of all university employees, it made more sense to pull them entirely until we have everything sorted out.

Secondly, a minor tweak, but helpful from a usability standpoint: we've updated the search field to clear itself out when you click it; no more having to delete the search box's contents for yourself.

Surveys being posted online

Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:00:00 CST

If you're following us on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, you should have seen the link to the surveys about the website. We'll likely be sending out an email blast in the near future as well. For those of you that have already filled out a survey, thank you!

Decentralizing website updates

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 12:00:00 CST

Just a quick note to say thanks the faculty and staff that are already making updates and corrections to the website on their own. We hope it is relieving some of the lag in getting simple updates taken care of that previously would be held up by our department's queue.

If your department is interested in making its own updates to its section of the site, select a faculty or staff member who will be in charge of making those updates and have them get in touch with us so we can set up a training time. If your department is not interested in making updates to the site on its own, by all means use our update request form and let us know what you need/want; that's what we're here for!

Welcome!

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 12:00:00 CST

Welcome to the HSU Website blog. University Communications has begun the process of upgrading the university website, and we need your help. We've been working hard to deliver a great website that the university can be proud of, but we know we can do better.

We aim to make the process of upgrading the site as transparent as possible so we may incorporate your ideas into the project to make it the best it can be. Please, feel free to post comments, content and functionality suggestions, accessibility recommendations, other sites for us to look at, elements and tools, etc.

The more we hear from the HSU Community, the more the site will be a reflection of it.

Thanks in advance for your help!

The new website blog

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 12:00:00 CST

In an effort to let everyone know what is going on, we've created this blog to act as a general hub for the HSU website. We'll be adding in an RSS feed soon, so you can automatically get updates when they are posted.