This month the UAB CIS IT team launched the new UAB CIS website. The new website builds upon many of the features from the old website, but also solves some challenges and shortcomings of the former site.
Our goals for this upgrade were:
- Make it easier for users to navigate and find information on our site
- Create stronger differentiation between categories of information. For example, separating routine announcements from headline news, and separating date-based information such as seminars and deadlines from immediate information such as news releases.
- Reduce complexity for content providers among the faculty, staff and students and make it easier for more people to contribute content to the website quickly
- Increase automation and information sync between UAB websites and CIS site for course-related material
- Update the look and feel of the site with a clean, modern design
As you navigate through the new site, you will notice a number of visual changes. The front page has been reorganized to better separate and highlight the various forms of information. As you navigate into the subsections, you will notice we have introduced color coded headers to help visually identify each subsection. We've used a wider layout on the entire site to better utilize today's increased resolutions and widescreen monitors to minimize scrolling.
Many of the functional improvements took place behind the scenes, with new tools and automation to make it easier to keep our course and class schedule information in sync with UAB's central database, and avoid the need to maintain data in multiple places. We've also implemented new workflows to allow more people to provide content for the website.
We hope these changes result in a dynamic and easy-to-use website that the CIS communities enjoys visiting every day. We'd love to hear any feedback you might have - just use the Contact Us form in the About Us section to send us your thoughts.
- The UAB CIS IT web team
