The Seton Hall Advancement Department launched the redesigned school website on Feb. 8.
The University's website has not been changed for seven years. The homepage launch kicked off the 12-to-18 month redesign for Seton Hall's entire website, according to the project's leader, Michael Hyland, director of web and digital communications.
According to Hyland, the web team works to improve the experience that users have with the site.
"Our goals are to enhance the website's engagement and presentation of community and academic life of the institution through key messages, news, events, rich media and social networking," Hyland said.
Hyland added that the main page is where most of the recent updates take place because it is the first thing that users visiting the site can see.
"Responsive design and engagement is important for both prospective students and our Seton Hall community, including our current students, faculty and alumni," Hyland said.
Planning for this project began in 2010 and work on the website began during the summer of 2012. According to Hyland, the website's launch was scheduled for the end of the fall 2012 semester.
"(The University) originally planned on launching the new look at the end of the fall 2012 semester, but we experienced a few issues and elected to postpone," he said.
In his blog post on the website, Hyland quoted University President Dr. A. Gabriel Esteban,"Spring holds the promise of new beginnings," he said.
"This holds true for the University's homepage, which received a delayed redesign this (past) week," Hyland said.
Major link enhancements were done to the homepage of the University website, according to Hyland.
"We have consolidated all the navigational links previously on the index into one set of drop-down lists, added a dynamic carousel of messages, added more news, events and media features and redesigned the header and footer of the page," Hyland said.
Student Gloria Vasquez said she found that this new homepage made it difficult for her to access her email.
"I dislike the fact that I have to go through Pirate Net to get to my email," Vasquez said. "It is going to take some getting used to."
Professor Leslie A. Bunnage of the department of sociology also said she experienced problems with Blackboard.
Bunnage said that she has been having trouble posting assignments to her classes since the beginning of the semester.Bunnage said she is unsure whether or not the new website design has anything to do with the Blackboard problems she is having.
"This has caused minor inconveniences (in class) when I believe I've posted something, it isn't there," Bunnage said.
She also said that sometimes reposting the assignment a second time "seems to rectify the problem."
"I believe I've had only one occasion in which a second posting didn't take either," Bunnage said.
When asked, the IT department did not report on the Blackboard issue.
On the other hand, freshman Samantha Jasiak said she thinks this is a step up for Seton Hall.
"Our new website finally looks like the other universities' websites," Jasiak said.
Patrick Maroun can be reached at patrick.maroun@student.shu.edu.
