Campus & community, Campus news

How the web was won

By Ram Kapoor

The pioneering spirit of UC Berkeley is reflected in the new berkeley.edu website, which launched Saturday, Feb. 7. Designed to provide visitors with an immersive experience of life on our beautiful campus, the site features a mix of compelling campus stories, powerful videos, social media feeds and a lovingly detailed historical section with five separate timelines and 248 milestones with images or videos.

While the Berkeley website pays homage to the riches of the past, it is very much a product for the future. The site uses the latest responsive web technologies to ensure the best viewing experience on desktops and mobile devices. It has a flexible backend platform that enables easy switching of modules (news, video, photo, social media) for greater variety of content. The navigation is more intuitive and streamlined to help users find what they need faster. This is especially important since the site is a gateway to hundreds of campus websites and receives more than 700,000 visits per month.

Faculty, staff and students will find customized audience links in the top left corner of the new site. On these pages, we provide one-click access to campus sites and services (caltime, blu, bcourses and more) that are used most often by each group.

The new site was conceptualized and built entirely by the Office of Communications and Public Affairs, with site architecture and visual design handled by a local vendor. You can follow the journey of the web team on the redesign blog, and, of course, we are always looking for feedback.