For the first time since 1998 and for only the second time in the history of Syracuse University, the official university Web site has a new contemporary look.

The Web site, www.syr.edu, was redesigned by Electronic Media Communication Director and Senior Manager Stu Lisson and Bob Gerbin who began the project in January.

“Usually Web sites stay up for two to three years, so it was time for a new look,” Gerbin said. “It was starting to look a little dated.”

Among the noticeable new changes to the website are a set of changing news stories on the opening page from SUnews.syr.edu that, if clicked on, links the user to the site along with new graphics and menus. The original plans for the redesign were shown to the Commission on Strategic Communications which is comprised of the Chancellor Kenneth A. Shaw, academic deans, directors, department heads. Gerbin and Lisson said that the feedback so far has been overwhelmingly positive, with over 25 positive E-mails and phone calls far outweighing the one complaint they have received.

This was not the case the first time the site was redesigned in 1998. Before the original redesign, the site was comprised of a picture of the Hall of Languages and over 150 links to various smaller sites on campus.

“People screamed bloody murder,” Lisson said. “They asked why it was orange.”

Gerbin chalks up the success of the new site to the general rise in internet savvy individuals over the past four years.

“They are used to seeing sites that are professionally done, so it doesn’t look like a guy in a corner did it,” Gerbin said.

Adam Peruta, a Information Studies and Technology professor who specializes in the look, usability and flow of Web sites said that although the new site is a big improvement it still needs work. He said that the biggest problem is that the new changes, which on the whole are very positive, have not yet been completely implemented throughout the site.

“The navigation is pretty boring,” Peruta said. “Some of the sections still have the navigation of the old site, which doesn’t look very good.”

Peruta added that of the three things that he considers most important to a Web site, design, technology and content, it is the content that suffers the most on the new site. He noted that having a picture accompanied by one sentence, something that appears all too often, is lacking in getting across a clear message.

Lisson acknowledges that the site is still a work in progress but pointed out that the advantage of the internet is the ability to constantly make a good product even better.

“It is a constantly evolving media and nothing is cast in stone,” he added.

Published on August 26, 2002 at 12:00 pm