A Modest Proposal for a New Grinnell Website by Mark Root-Wiley '09

I believe that Grinnell College would greatly benefit from a redesign of their current website. What I propose on this site, with the words and mockups would require complete overhaul of the site, inside and out. I understand this and advocate for this because I think the current state of the website leaves much to be desired, and a new site would reflect well on both the college administration and students. After many people had many conversations with the people in charge of the website, there is the chance that a new site could be implemented in the coming years.

This is my vision of a new site.

EDIT (from Septemberish 2007): I have received multiple critiques and ideas in the past two weeks and I've tried to respond to them with the revision of the homepage (of course, inner pages would be modified accordingly to match the homepage). Of particular note, I think the ideas I've gotten have really helped come up with a couple minor innovations, the placement of quicklinks drop down menu (proposed links: Library, Faulconer Gallery, Technology Services, Off-Campus Study, G Magazine, Employment, S&B, and Campus Map), a combination of role-based and non-role-based navigation devised specifically for Grinnell, and the NEWS/EVENTS/MEMO/SCORES box, a way to pack in a lot of content in not a lot of space.

I've left the distinction between the top and bottom sections (General College/Student and On-Campus) and tried to push the content and layout as far as I can. In general, the "ON Campus. . ." side bar would highlight events you would see on the Events tab (films, concerts, art exhibits, symposiums, etc), while the featured link would highlight websites important to the time of year (NSO, OCS, Breaks, Dining Services, etc). Critique away!