College Relations and Marketing
Web Site Development
Most Popular Areas
College Relations oversees the design and management of the Washington College Web site. Please contact Web Editor Shane Brill at sbrill2@washcoll.edu for more information.
At a Glance
- Over 4,500 external links lead to the Washington College site
- The average site visitor looks at four pages—there are over 9,000
- About 20 individuals regularly maintain pages within the site
Site History
Spring 2008
Following a comprehensive audit of the site, global navigation increased and internal navigation segmented into smaller menus more easily scannable.
Web Definitions
Calls to Action: provocative icons intended to help visitors reach content through clear instructions.
AJAX - Asynchronous JavaScript and XML: technology enabling increased interactivity with site content.
October 2007
Artistic embellishments customized the site appearance as browsers became increasingly CSS compliant. PHP applications resulted in more dynamic and useful information.
Web Definitions
Google Analytics: a Web traffic reporting tool that enables methodical navigation improvements.
Google Applications: interactive Web features developed by Google, such as Google Calendar, Google Maps, and Google Search.
May 2006
A home page coded entirely in CSS/XHTML was unveiled, streamlining content and featuring global navigation.
Web Definitions
Standards Compliance: Coding understood by all browsers.
XHTML - Extensible Hypertext Markup Language: Transitional coding from HTML to XML.
PHP - Hypertext Preprocessor: Server-side scripting that enables dynamic data processing.
Global Navigation - menus accessible from any page within a site.
2005-2006
Department and office sites were converted from traditional table-based layouts to lighter CSS layouts, separating form from content.
Web Definitions
Separating form from content: The first step toward content management, eliminating the need for individual site authors to understand complex table structures to maintain their sites.
CSS2 - Cascading Style Sheets, Level 2: A method of controlling site layouts without tables.
2001-2005
Tables governed the site infrastructure and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) were introduced to control the appearance of text.
Web Definitions
JavaScript: A client-side scripting feature (run within browsers) that enables interactive forms and image rollovers.
CSS1 - Cascading Style Sheets, Level 1: A method of styling content globally supported by most browsers, reducing the need for many traditional HTML tags.
1999-2001
The site introduced the table-as-grid layout scheme, unifying form and content.
Web Definitions
Table-as-grid-layouts: The practice of slicing up images to fit within boxes intended to display tabular data. Most websites today still use this design method.
CGI - Common Gateway Interface: A server-side scripting feature enabling searches of the site and e-mail form submissions.
1997-1999
The site was primarily text-based as the need for varying sections began to surface.
Web Definitions
HTML - Hypertext Markup Language: A tagging syntax enabling text to be displayed with images.
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