Out with the Old and in with the 2.0
Photo credit: the web
You know that feeling you get when you look around you and you see that everyone else seems to have much newer stuff than you? Sometimes it's new shoes or a new t-shirt or a new smart phone. I have kind of been getting that feeling lately, and not just because I have a cell phone that is big enough to stop a bullet. It just seems that things are getting newer so much faster... it is hard to keep up.
I say this because it was time for us to retire an old friend of ours - our old website. Our first website was launched in 2008. It was designed to be an information repository for the campus about all things sustainable. The site was jam packed with almost 100 individual webpages and countless links to other sites and green info.
But in 2010 the University of Ottawa decided that it was going to move in the direction of creating a new 960 template (this refers to the width of the website). Most older sites use 780 pixels for their width of their site but with new computer screens being much wider... 960 was simply the new reality.
And so we decided that the folks at the Office of Campus Sustainability needed to get with the times. Goodbye old friend, you served us well, you served us proud, and we will never forget you.
Now with that out of the way, here comes our new site. TA DA!!!
Our new site is much wider and spacious. It has more room for widgets and a better layout. We wanted to do this to make it a little easier to find content. We add some new features too. Our Social Media offerings are now located in one simple area at the top right hand side of the screen. We also added a calendar to ever page so that you can see any green events.
The hope with our new site is to make it more of an information portal where we can bring together all the content on campus related to sustainability and help move you to the content you want in a much more efficient way. But to do this we need your help!!!!
We have finished the architectural side of our website (with just a little more tweaking to go) and we are now going to move into the content side of things. So this is your chance, tell us what we need, tell us what you want, and tell us how we can be better. Essentially we would like to know the reason you visit our site or what it would take to make the site more appealing to you.
Be harsh, we can take it. And don't be afraid to dream a little. Sure if there is a spelling mistake we want you to tell us but if you also want to see more pictures, more maps, more videos, tell us that too. Even if you want us to make new tools that don't already exist (like a CO2 labels for the campus or a nutritional map for the campus) we want your comments.
-jon
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