The Integrated Marketing Communications Working Group was tasked with redesigning the College website and admissions publications in 2012-13.  The Working Group began hearing presentations from design firms in the summer of 2012 and chose AdCraft of Richmond to begin work in August 2012.  The website was the first task.  Over the course of four months, the Working Group agreed to the following designs:

H-SC Home

Secondary Page

Tertiary page

The site will be responsive and adapt to the device viewing the site. You may see the draft pages live at http://test.hsc.edu/2013/ (only available on campus networks).

Questions and comments may be sent to:
Tommy Shomo, Director of Marketing & Communications
Cheryle Dixon, Webmaster
Kelly Dudley, Web Editor

July 2011 will see several important changes in Hampden-Sydney’s web presence.

The Homepage has a new look. The design is simpler and places an emphasis on videos. The new Website design was launched a year ago and was well received. We have made minor improvements in response to user comments and suggestions. Prior to last year’s redesign, the look of the Website had not been substantially altered in seven years – much too long. The Website is now on an every-three-year redesign schedule.

The over 6000 alumni, parents, and friends of the College who receive Tiger Headlines will see a significant redesign introduced in mid-July. Tiger Headlines is a constituent e-mail, sent twice a month during the academic year and monthly during the summer, which calls the attention of recipients to upcoming events and reports on happenings on campus. The new design will be more colorful and graphically pleasing and provide a brief introduction to featured stories. All constituents for whom the College has e-mail addresses are sent Tiger Headlines unless they unsubscribe.

Before August there will be a significant change in regard to The Network. The Network was created in 2008 to provide a private on-line community for Hampden-Sydney alumni through yourmembership.com. It also provides the College with secure membership and event management capabilities. When The Network was created, it did not entirely supplant the alumni section of the Website. This dual approach to providing information and services to our alumni has resulted in some confusion. The Network will be renamed the Alumni Association section of the website and linked from the College homepage. The features that alumni have come to use and like will remain. All Alumni content will be maintained or linked at alumni.hsc.edu in a consistent design.

A new mobile site, m.hsc.edu, will launch in August. It will provide News, Events, Athletics, Maps, Directions, Food, Social Media, About, Contact, and links all optimized for mobile devices.

Constituent input is always important. If you have comments about the Website, Tiger Headlines, The Network, or a mobile site, please comment here.

Thanks for the comments received here and through email! The Design Committee has made changes to the draft web design based on the comments received from Faculty, Staff, Students, and Alumni.

Over 50% of responses expressed concern over the column with the student image and profile.  While most liked the idea of personal stories about students, alumni, and faculty, the column with the cut-out images was deemed distracting, breaking the flow of information on the page, and difficult to adapt department level content around.  The people have spoken… the column has been removed.

General comments included: too busy, needs to be simpler and cleaner, add video to homepage, make font larger, needs global navigation, some images too slow loading, department name not evident on pages, add diversity in images, show off athletic successes more, dislike audience links, put crest in banner, dislike cut-out images background is important, would like a liquid layout.

In response to these comments, Quick Links was added at top, a few text links were dropped there.  The header now has a background image that expands to the full-width of the viewing screen.  Global navigation was added under the Audience links that will show on all pages.  The bottom row of images was dropped to simplify the design.  Fonts were increased in size.  The three stories with the small images on the College homepage may include still images or videos.

Please consider all content as placeholder.  These are templates only.  The real content will be developed over the coming months.

See the screen shots below.

Feel free to comment here or send email to cdixon@hsc.edu or tshomo@hsc.edu

College homepage

The Web Oversight Committee is undertaking a complete redesign of the College website this year.  Preliminary templates have been developed.  The Committee is seeking input from all of the College constituencies.  Please feel free to comment here on the design.

The design may be viewed in the screen shots below. There are a few links down into the site as indicated below.

College homepage

Prospective Students drop-down area

Try the audience links from the homepage for Prospective Students, Current Students, Faculty & Staff, Alumni, and Directories.  Each audience drop-down can be managed by the various departments and change content as needed.

Admissions homepage

Academics homepage

Sample Department homepage

Each department will have a homepage and separate menu.  Each department may highlight their strengths or special characteristics on the page.  The little images are placeholders and will change often.  Sample links under the Psychology Dept:  Overview, Professors, Requirements, Graduates.

Athletics homepage

Stories from all of the sports will appear on the Athletics homepage.  An individual athlete will be highlighted on the homepage and change randomly.  Each sport’s homepage will highlight its own athletes and link to more information about them.

Site index

From the Wayback Machine
(links from the last crawl of site of that year)

1997

2000

2002

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2005

2006

2008

2009

2006