As UCSD’s new Web site continues its metamorphosis, users
will witness developments in coming months that include a feature allowing
students to change their major online, more department-specific pages and
general alterations that hope to accommodate the results of usability surveys.

Web sites linked to the campus’ main site will eventually
boast features and graphics similar to the main TritonLink page.

“We’re actively developing a mini-Web site that will provide
campus entities with everything they need to adopt the new UC San Diego web
brand,” Brian E.C. Schottlaender, Audrey Geisel university librarian and Campus
Web Site Executive Committee chair, said in an e-mail. “This will include all
of the code, graphics, templates and documentation needed to quickly and easily
build Web sites that integrate seamlessly with the new UC San Diego home page.”

Visitors can expect to see the addition of departments and
new content within the next six to 12 months.

Schottlaender said that feedback on the redesigned site has
been mostly positive.

“We’re seeing a bell curve of responses, strong positive
feedback along with some confusion, but overall indications show us that
students like it better than the old site,” he said.

Additions that students have labeled helpful include more
information about on-campus events and the addition of the athletics schedule
to the TritonLink home page.

However, some students and staff members involved in
producing the site have criticized it for having noticeable flaws, saying it
fails to address content concerns in order to please users.

“I think the committee really needed to spend a lot of time
looking at what information was actually going to be available on the new
site,” former ACT Security Engineer D.J. Capelis said. “The navigation needed
to be built around the content they had to present, not who they were
presenting it to.”

Capelis said the site’s weaknesses stem from the content
management system used to develop it, called Vignette, which requires specific
knowledge to operate it. The system minimizes the chances of rapid alterations,
or changes made by departments without members that have received the training
necessary to operate it.

“Vignette simply allows the organization with the content to
communicate it with an audience, not the actual person who is in the best
position to create it,” Capelis said.

Sections of the Web site that have not yet been developed as
planned include the “My TritonLink” page, a student profile page that will
display money owed, a current class schedule and any holds on a student’s
account. While the page has been advertised for weeks as launching at the
beginning of Winter Quarter, it is instead now expected to appear sometime
before the close of the term.

“There is additional testing required to make sure students
can successfully sign off of TritonLink if they are using public labs before we
can fully activate the My TritonLink feature,” Schottlaender said. “This is to
protect student privacy.”

Another issue confronting administrators is the lack of a
sign-off option when students are using the tools listed on the TritonLink
homepage. While the sign-off link is available on the tools themselves, it is
missing from pages that students access through the tool they are currently using,
making it difficult to sign out of the entire site.

Providing useful content on the TritonLink home page to all
the different possible viewers that access the Web site has proved a difficult
task to accomplish without cluttering the homepage with extraneous links,
Schottlaender said.

“We have a diverse base of constituents and users — all
different people who visit the UC San Diego Web site for different reasons,” he
said. “Trying to provide adequate tools and information to satisfy as many of
those visitors as possible while still maintaining a clean, clear and usable
site was and remains a difficult endeavor.”