By Alex Sorrells / The Jambar
The official Youngstown State University website is getting a redesign from the university web team, working on improvements to the user interface and information systems.
Anthony Hake, YSU portal administrator and website manager, said the biggest challenge is migrating information from the old content-management system, Drupal 7, to the new one, Drupal 10.
“We’ve made all our changes to the Drupal 7 one, because that’s the one everyone can see. Before we flip the switch on them, we need to take all those changes and make sure they are done again in Drupal 10,” Hake said. “I don’t see us pushing this new website any sooner than [the] end of the semester.”
AJ Minotti, associate director of marketing, said changes will make the website more user-friendly, allowing visitors to easily navigate information between pages.
“The main point of going to ysu.edu, for anyone not currently at the university, is the goal of enrollment and application,” Minotti said. “We created that to be very easy, very user-friendly and very visible.”
Hake said the home page received many changes including a “mega menu,” allowing page links to be accessed through a drop-down menu at the top of the page. Web designers updated the aesthetics of the website while keeping the focus on usability.
“We’re going for a very brutalist-type design structure here, where other websites may be flashier,” Hake said. “We’re more concerned about the user navigating to the resource they’re looking for, and we’ve built features to support that.”
Along with visible design features, the website is also getting a redesign on the back-end, the part of the website visitors do not see, improving security and information systems.
“Every version of Drupal, in the code base itself, is more secure, built to protect against modern security threats,” Minotti said. “Because we do so much coding in-house, we’re able to update that code base ourselves [and] make sure it’s talking to all of our systems here on campus.”
Minotti said the team received positive feedback following an open forum Feb. 19, which allowed members of the YSU community to test the new website.
“Lots of people were very pleased with the look of the site. A lot of people were very pleased with how easy it was to find things like the application link,” Minotti said. ”We do have a few little points of usability that we’re going to go back and address.”
Minotti said he credits the university web team for their hard work on the project. Plans for the redesign started two years ago and the team started information migration March 2024.
“I’m there to kind of provide guidance and design feedback, but really the team themselves have done 99% of the work on this,” Minotti said. “The credit to this whole project belongs to them.”
Hake said anyone interested in YSU web design should take advantage of training materials that explain the difference between the old content-management system and the new one.
“For those who do have an interest in supporting the content for their department, we are going to have training material available,” Hake said. “Other than training material coming out, I’m just excited to hit the big red button.”
