After five years, Penn is revamping its main Web site.
The site, www.upenn.edu, now contains one large photo that covers the page, changing upon repeated access to the site.
It also includes prominent text describing "Penn values," as well as a link to a new page called Penn Digest that describes current news and events on campus.
Director of Web and Publishing Services Deni Kasrel said the bells and whistles of the new site were a year and a half in the making.
"We want to show a bigger better picture of Penn to give people and especially prospective students a better idea of what the University is like," she said.
Kasrel said the old site had several limitations, including a difficult-to-use navigation bar at the bottom of the page that was not "reading well with users," as well as restrictions on the photos that could be displayed.
"We developed this new portion of the Web site because we wanted to provide a centralized source for news highlights in a visually attractive format that hits the high points that are of the greatest internal interest."
Thus far, Kasrel said she has received positive feedback on the home page's makeover through usability testing and promises that this is just "phase one" of the improvements she hopes to make on the site.
