In a Flash, Home Page Has a New Look

By Powell McVay

For those of you who have been to the college’s website recently, you will have noticed a profound change since last fall’s website changes. For those who haven’t, checking out the new site is a must this semester.

The Web site’s designer, Amy Anderson, pointed out that changes have been made to the college’s homepage to make it more appealing not only to current students and faculty, but to prospective students and other people who come to the home page for the first time. New student Savannah McVay said. “It’s very easy to use and it’s a good setup for a new student.”

“This is the first year that the website utilizes Macromedia Flash,” Anderson says. Previously, the college administration did not allow Anderson to utilize Flash in the website because they wanted to use HTML for the ease of usability.

Other changes have been made to the organization of the page. Anderson said that every year, she works to streamline the user’s interactivity with the site. The drop-down menu provides links to all major RVCC pages, 50 to be exact, without cluttering the space of the home page with lots of buttons. She also works to cut down the number of clicks it takes users to get to their desired page.

Macromedia Flash is an application that inserts animation into websites. For the college’s Web site, the aerial view of the college with the boxes fading in and out on the grid is an example of Flash.

Because of these new changes and the use of Flash, everything on the site is very well laid out and anyone who accesses the site is able to go to almost any page on the college’s Web site. Anderson hopes that these changes will help new students and prospective students feel at ease when they visit the site.

Since September 2001, Anderson has been in charge of the Web site and has been given the task of redesigning it every fall. For the home page redesign, she worked with the college’s graphic designer, Laura Wilson, to visually link the Web site with Marketing’s design ideas.

This is no small task when you look at the number of active Web pages on the college’s site. Anderson puts the number at around 10,000, and not only that, she is the only person in charge of running these pages. Anderson also said that she wants students to email her with feedback so that she can get an idea of the job she has done so far.

“When I did the redesign, I received about eight emails from people saying that the change was very positive and I’ve been stopped in the hall by three or four people saying how much they liked the redesign,” Anderson says.

She doesn’t mind this amount of work. “I feel it’s a challenge to manage a website of this size and sprawl, and I feel it keeps me on my toes,” she says.