New IUSA website to launch later this month

Despite a recent hacking of the IU Student Association’s website, plans for a revamped online site have been in the works since April 2011. The project is expected to be completed by Oct. 21, though it might run into late October.

After the current administration entered office last spring, one of its goals was to update the website, which it began doing early this school year. IUSA operated a WordPress blog, but it didn’t quite meet the needs of the organization due to inflexibility and lack of customization, IUSA treasurer Kyle Straub said.

As a result, IUSA’s agenda included plans to update its web presence.

The problems began in September, when University Information Technology Services notified IUSA that its website had been infected with some combination of malware and viruses, and the website would need to be shut down to prevent potential harm in the future.

“The problems with the web have expedited the process, (so we will) make sure to get the website up and running as soon as possible,” said Jarad Winget, IUSA chief of intergovernmental affairs.

Winget said UITS told him the attacks against the website were not directed solely at IUSA, but rather at a number of IU domain sites. In fact, since many WordPress sites were disrupted by the bugging, he speculates an automated program, not a person, most likely bugged the site.

“It wasn’t so much a direct attack as it was the danger of being on the Internet,” said Keith Weisberg, junior and IUSA CIO. “It was kind of bad luck, and it just happened to IUSA.”

The website, http://iusa.indiana.edu/, originally displayed an alert saying it had been hacked, though it now reads, “Currently under maintenance.” This placeholder page will stay until the new website launch tentatively set for Oct. 21.

IUSA recruited campus talent to aid in the building of its website.

Weisberg announced IUSA’s plans to redesign its website to his informatics capstone group, which included senior informatics major Lindsay Hicks.

Though she said she had never visited the old IUSA blog, she saw the website redesign as a way to boost her experience and show off her creativity, so she accepted the challenge. Her main goal is to improve website usability and increase IUSA’s web presence, she said.

IUSA formerly used only the WordPress blog but will now have a blog and a website. The website will contain more static reference content, such as contact information and history, while the easy-to-use blog will be updated more regularly with news and events, which will appear on the website’s homepage.

Hicks will build that website from scratch, incorporating old content from the blog with a new design. The new site will be modeled to look like the official IU-Bloomington homepage with familiar cream and crimson tones. IUSA members want to make its new site look like it belongs to the IU system of web pages, Straub said.

Unlike the old IUSA website, which Hicks noted contained dead links and under-utilized features, the new site will have an easy-to-use navigational toolbar and active links. 

The blog will still operate on WordPress but will be given more security than in the past, when there was virtually none.

“We’ll put on a whole new world of security to our new blog,” Weisberg said. “We won’t have to worry about a random occurrence.”

IUSA executives met with Hicks on Sunday to give her final necessary content and guidelines for the website. She will now plug the new information into a design she’s had in place for weeks. 

“It’s just making sure I get them what they want and how they want it,” Hicks said.