It’s almost that time: after just more than a year researching and working to re-imagine how the MCC website can best support prospective students as they plan their future success at the College, the first phase of the long-awaited whole new .edu is almost ready to debut!
With the launch of a redesigned www.monroecc.edu <https://www.monroecc.edu> just ONE WEEK away, there are some things to keep in mind:
1. The changeover is expected to take place during the day of Monday, Sept. 21. The Web and Technical staffs will be standing by to handle any minor hitches, but no downtime (or problem!) is expected.
2. The first thing you will notice is that our MCC homepage will look very different (as you may have seen at one of our Lunch-and-Learn presentations) – it’s been reworked to provide the most useful information, tools and stories for prospective students and their families as they explore the College.
3. You’ll also notice throughout the day that already-existing academic and administrative department Web pages will have their header, footer and color palette change to match the whole new .edu. Please know that your Web content remains exactly the same, in the same place as it was; this is a purely cosmetic shift so that our whole Web is visually unified.
4. All around the new www.monroecc.edu, you’ll find more emphasis on academics, success stories, and greater visual appeal – the kind of content that highlights the excellence of MCC. When you visit the Admissions and Tuition & Aid pages, in particular, you’ll also see that they model clear, everyday language; easy-to-follow pathways and instructions; and a strong use of our established College brand.
5. You’ll also notice that there are new central pages created just for Current Students and Employees. We understand that our already-existing MCC community has very particular needs from the College website. These customized landing pages, developed by an Internal Web Management Committee of faculty and staff from across MCC, will include links, information, and other familiar content (including the A-Z index), to make it easy for all of us to get to the information we need in our daily MCC lives.
* The Current Students page will be found at www.monroecc.edu/students; there will be a “Current Students” link in the audience navigation bar at the top of every Web page.
* The Employees page will be found at www.monroecc.edu/employees; there will be an “Employees” button/link in footer at the bottom of every Web page.
6. The URLs/Web addresses of academic and administrative department Web pages will remain unchanged; if your URL before the change was www.monroecc.edu/depts/yourdepartment, for example, it will remain so after the redesign launches. In the case of rare exceptions (like Admissions and Tuition & Aid) we’ve set up automatic redirects so that if the old address IS used, visitors will automatically be redirected to the new areas.
7. If you visit the new pages of www.monroecc.edu, using your phone or tablet, you’ll notice that these new areas are designed to be fully available on whatever device you’re using. This is great (and critical) for prospective students who value 24x7 mobile access.
We’ll share another update in a week as we launch the whole new .edu! Until then, you can catch up on the whole process at <https://www.monroecc.edu/go/web> .
Colleen Brennan-Barry & Randy Bowen
Web Re-Envision Project
09/14/2015 |