UA.edu receives high praise from EDU Checkup

I wanted to share the following independent review of UA.edu, which was recently conducted by EDU Checkup, a higher education blog and review site. The review was very positive – in fact the reviewer (Nick DeNardis) tweeted that UA.edu is “one of the highest scoring sites on @educheckup”, and called it “rock star work” (http://twitter.com/nickdenardis/status/5894882926).
Overall, [...]

UA Mobile Web Templates

As mentioned in our announcement of UA Mobile Web, resources on how to get started designing and developing your own mobile site are now available on UA Web Guide.  Currently, this documentation provides themes for the iPhone and Blackberry devices.  As UA Mobile Web expands functionality to other devices, so too will Web Guide’s resources.
The [...]

Announcing the launch of UA Mobile Web (beta version)

As part of an ongoing strategic process to optimize our web presence for all users, the Office of Web Communications has completed the initial development and rollout of a UA Mobile Web site for The University of Alabama.  This site is a custom web site and suite of applications which deliver top-level content, services, and [...]

New UA Web Templates are now available

Web templates based on the design and functionality of the current UA Home Page are available for usage by any official unit of The University of Alabama. There are three basic versions of the templates available, each of which offers numerous options for customization and arrangement of content. The template packages are organized into three [...]

Strategic iPhone/Mobile development for key UA web sites

I’d like to share the outcome of a project we’ve been working on that positively impacts our top-level strategic web sites.  Below is a high-level summary of the project.  If you have any questions about this, please ask them in the comments section and we’ll be glad to answer.
Background/Challenge
We have recently been working to optimize [...]

A new UA Home Page debuts

I’m sure most of you know by now that we rolled out a new UA Home Page yesterday at http://www.ua.edu.  This new version refreshes the Home Page with a modernized look and feel, simplified navigation, updated functionality, and close integration with the new Touching Lives campaign.  You’ll begin to see more about the latter as the fall [...]

Keeping the A-Z Site Index current & accurate

I’m sure you’re all familiar with the A-Z Site Index on UA Home (http://www.ua.edu/site.html), which contains an alphabetical listing of UA web sites.  This list is intended to be a semi-comprehensive listing of all major web sites on the UA campus, in order to help guide visitors to the information they’re seeking.  It has historically [...]

Welcoming a veteran rookie

It sounds silly to welcome someone to the team who has in fact been a part of it longer than yourself, but no matter. I’d like to announce the permanent addition of Lisa Sandy to the Office of Web Communications, and welcome her to the team. Lisa has served as a student and [...]

UA HTML E-mail Templates

As part of our effort to use the UA Web Guide as a fluid and regularly updated toolkit, a new resource has been added:  HTML E-mail templates.  Because HTML email has become more important recently and with it comes more and more questions about how to develop and send these emails, we went ahead and [...]

New Virtual Campus Tour launches on UA.edu

Today we are excited to announce the official launch of UA’s new virtual campus tour on UA.edu. Certainly 360-degree tours have been around a while, but we feel this tour differentiates itself from traditional smaller Quicktime-based 360-degree movies in a number of ways, and injects new life into the format by creating a pretty impressive [...]