IU gateway page to be redesigned by August

The IU Office of Creative Services plans to change the IU gateway Web page, www.indiana.edu, by August.\nThe Web page's last redesign was in 2002, said Rebecca Salerno, associate director of the Office of Creative Services and leader of the office's New Media Team. The Web page is redesigned to keep up with new Web technologies and trends.\n"One of the things we want to attempt with the redesign is to make more technologies available to people," Salerno said.\nOne of the ways this will be done is with RSS news feeds, which have been up on the current gateway page for about a month, Salerno said. People can subscribe to IU news headlines using the RSS feeds if they have a news reader, also known as an aggregator. Salerno said news readers will be installed by default with Microsoft's new operating system, Windows Vista.\nThe University Information Technology Services told the Indiana Daily Student last month that Student Technology Centers will likely be upgraded to Windows Vista by the summer of 2008.\nSalerno said a link to the new podcast portal on the new Web site will make it easier for people to access IU's podcasts. People can use RSS feeds with their "podcatcher" software to download or subscribe to podcasts, Martin Wagner, podcast project manager, said in an e-mail interview.\n"The new podcast portal will make podcasts much easier to find using our simple registration and storage system," Wagner said.\nSimilar to iTunes' , Yahoo's and others' podcast portals, IU students, faculty and staff will be allowed to register their podcasts in the portal, Wagner said.\nAfter registering, people can browse for podcasts by category, keywords, popularity and featured podcasts or by searching the registration database. In addition to registration, the portal can also serve as storage for podcasts, Wagner said.\nThe Web page serves a wide variety of audiences, such as people in the business community, students, alumni and prospective students, Salerno said.\n"We really do want prospective students to find information about all our campuses at a glance from the Web site," Salerno said.\nWagner said podcasts can help to do this. \n"Podcasts that will be served from the portal could benefit prospective students who want to see what a day in the life of a Kelley School of Business student is like," Wagner said.\nPodcasts can also help alumni who want to keep up with current events or current students who want to hear, for instance, IU men's basketball coach Kelvin Sampson discuss the Hoosiers' victory over Wisconsin, Wagner said.\nA survey to gather feedback from people visiting IU's gateway Web page was taken down Friday to analyze results, Salerno said. The survey's questions for the site's visitors included who they were, how often they use the Web page and how easy it was to find information.\n"Our philosophy is that to build a really good Web site, you have to understand your audience and their needs," Salerno said.