With summer fast approaching, work began and then proceeded faster than expected to make updates to the district website.
The new layout (ver.5) is the layout that will be in place for the next year or so. I think we can get a lot out of the current design and it will be able to scale with some upcoming changes without redesigning the whole thing and starting from scratch with the code.
The biggest improvement is the navigation. All school websites can now be accessed from any district page with ease. A special thanks to parents at EFHS who wanted this feature and pushed me to implement it. The new navigation system built on CSS and a bit of Java. We also added some commonly used links as icons near the top of the homepage such as Contact, Enroll, PTSA, Forums, and iLearn.
We also did a lot to de-clutter the homepage and hopefully all sub-pages. The biggest change was adding all the color and nifty icons. We went from an earth-tone brown and greens to bright blue and oranges.
Another cool feature is the blogging search. Parents and students can now search teacher and district blogs.
One other launch is iSeek. We opened iseek up so parents can search the same links teachers are using in the classroom. Think of iSeek as our very own educational Google. Teachers add links and you can search them. This should come in handy for elementary parents looking for educational websites for their little ones to explore.
-Chris