Hamilton Unveils New Web Site Design!On Monday, Jan. 23, 2006, Hamilton launched a newly designed Web site in "beta" mode. Many changes occurred instantly, but we'll continue to refine the site in the days following launch.
History
Because Web technology changes rapidly, it's normal for us to review the site's performance each year and to undertake a major redesign roughly every two years. Take a look at past Hamilton home pages to see a little of the progress we've made.
Goals of the Project
The overall goal of the project was to improve the visual presentation of information on the site -- the site's so-called "look and feel." Some of the outcomes include:
A modernization of the site's appearance. The new site better represents current standards for Web design and fits more seamlessly in the family of College publications and overall College visual identity.
A new home page concept. The "Are You Ready" student profile concept has been replaced with something new. Student profiles will continue to exist in a different, evolving format.
Improved variety for layout and design. You'll see new color schemes, changes to typography, and better, bigger images as we expand the site's template system to allow a greater variety of design options.
What's New?
The home page: The new home page generally includes all the elements that were there before, but it's been redesigned with an eye toward cleanliness and focus. The new central area includes different photos each time the page loads and conveys a summary statement about the College. Student profiles are still included though emphasized less.
The new home page has a cleaner, more focused design than its predecessor.
Variety and color: Hamilton's old site used a three-column layout and identical color scheme on nearly all of its 8,800+ pages. The new site includes five templates with different color schemes, two-column and three-column variations of each, and more image options.
The new site has much more variety than the old site.
Typography changes: The new site includes some new fonts for headlines and increased leading (space between lines of text), which will improve readability.
Typography has been updated on the new site.
Less Intrusive Navigation: We heard from many of you that the menu bar at the top of the page occasionally "got in the way" when you were trying to access content high on the page. To correct that, we've added a slight delay to the menus. Now, the menus are less likely to appear when you don't want them to.
Speed: Due largely to changes that ITS made to the Web servers during winter break, Hamilton's Web site is performing much better than it was last semester. Early reports show that pages load 60% faster.
What Hasn't Changed?
Although the site looks much different, its menus, text and pictures remain largely the same. Content and navigation needs will be addressed in future projects.
