Louisiana State University (LSU) unveiled its new LSU.edu website on Monday that accomodates mobile, tablet, and desktop devices.
The Daily Reveille reports that making the site accessible for mobile and tablet devices was the main reason for the update. It has been four years since the website underwent major changes.
“The previous version of the website wasn’t responsive to multiple devices, so with more people accessing the web with mobile devices, it was important to have a site that was dynamic and provided a custom experience,” said Ernie Ballard, LSU’s Director of Media Relations.
In order to make the website mobile-friendly, the university used Bootstrap, a framework that develops mobile versions of websites.
The new website is grid-based, meaning that it will automatically adjust its size to the device it’s accessed on. Integrated video content and social media features have been included to meet up with the latest trends. The website’s new design primarily focuses on prospective students.
The website was developed by the LSU Office of Communications and University Relations as well as by Information Technology Services. In development since 2013, the homepage started off with several proposed designs and group studies. It also used a different content management system, switching to the vendor Rhythmyx from its previous one, OmniUpdate.
“It’s just a way that a web user, so any department or the main university, that is updating the website,” Ballard said.
The LSU.edu domain contains approximately 109,000 webpages and 425 subsites. Although the site is up and running, Vice President for Strategic Communications Linda Bonnin said that it will take at least another year until all the pages from the old system are transferred to the new.
University officials hope that the new webpage will be faster in loading, particularly since 40% of Internet users will abandon a page if it take more than three seconds to load.