Update for Web Authors

I hope you’ve had a good summer. It’s been great to work with many of you on improvements to your sites.

Perhaps the best news for all web authors is that Jill Olsen has begun her position as CommonSpot administrator (replacing Steve Cox, who retired at the end of May). Jill has a great skill set and ‘can-do’ attitude; she has already assisted many of you via the ‘webmaster’ email.

White Backgrounds: 

We’ve changed the background color of the center content area on the site from light blue to white. Our web team members have been reviewing this on the development server, and found no problems with it. However, we haven’t checked every site! Please review your own site; you may need to adjust images, for example. If you don’t see it right away, refresh your page.

There are some style changes in the works as well, but we are still testing those and will send you the details when they are ready for release.

Design Ideas:

Some of you have been doing great things with layouts and images produced by University Marketing designers. There are a number of sites being redone that haven’t launched yet, so watch for those early in the school year. Here are few examples:

·         Office of International Education:  http://www.uwstout.edu/oie/

·         Alumni Association:  http://www.uwstout.edu/alumni/index.cfm

·         Research Services:  http://www.uwstout.edu/rs/

·         School of Education:  http://www.uwstout.edu/soe/

·         LAKES project: http://www.uwstout.edu/lakes/

New Graphics:

Some of these sites are using a more open layout for their index page, and contain new graphic styles which are being developed by designers in University Marketing. We are behind on updating our sample graphics document (here: http://www.uwstout.edu/webdev/standards/graphics.cfm) but we are starting to move away from the older buttons. If you’d like new graphics designed for your site, please submit your request to University Marketing (https://fox4.functionfox.com/timefox/InHouse/RequestForm/?id=86A9303746E74ED9A0B5BED554E081C9).

Responsive Design:

There are a couple of technical issues in the responsive design phone display. The RD layouts are available in CommonSpot, although they are not working correctly on the iPhone. We’ll communicate with you about the transition and launch once those are resolved.