West Kentucky
Off and Running
West Kentucky Community and Technical College’s web services team is excited and anticipating the launch of our new website early this summer. Through a lot of hard work from a talented and committed team, we are confident that visitors will be able to find the information they want easier and faster.
At the beginning of this project, the WKCTC web services team conducted surveys among employees and students to gauge their response to the brand new look and navigation of the web site. The results have been overwhelmingly positive and reassuring to those who are “making it happen”. After all, we want our pride in WKCTC to be reflected in a new and improved site that meets the needs of our students and communities in a way we've never been able to before.
Taking Pride in What We Do
In reality, this is what the Web Services Initiative is all about--taking pride in what we do. Yes, what Web Services is doing involves new software, new ways of approaching content management, and re-envisioning how we do business on the web. But all of this, really, is not simply for us. Rather, we work hard and implement cutting edge tools because, ultimately, we truly believe in what we're doing for the state of Kentucky. The software and services that we use are simply tools: their true values lies in the fact that they will help us to better provide valuable education and training to our students, employees and communities that transform and improve lives, neighborhoods and beyond. Now that's something be proud about!
FAQs
When is the new site coming?
Right now, we're planning on early summer of 2009, around the middle of July. As we get closer, you'll start to see a lot of communication that locks down the date, gives sneak peeks of the new design, and let you know about other important information relating to launch.
Is everything on the current West Kentucky site going to be moved to Sitecore at launch?
No. West Kentucky's new site will feature at least 100 pages of the current web site. These are the most visited and most critical pages for our audiences.
It will take a bit longer to migrate the other pages on our web sites. Migration of other pages will happen over a period of many months, as training and migration planning are completed. However, these legacy pages will remain available from the new web site, so our existing content will not simply disappear at launch.
Will I need to change my bookmarks/favorites?
In many cases, you will probably have to. Content will be moving to different URLs (web addresses), so your bookmarks may change. We will attempt to automatically redirect as many old URLs as possible to the new ones, which should make this easier for you. Remember too that many internally-oriented pages will be moving to thePoint, so there will certainly be some changes.
With the improved navigation on our new site, plus an improved search engine and a "what's changed" page, we hope the transition will be a fairly smooth one.
Who updates our new web site?
As we launch West Kentucky's new site, we will be allowing people to become content owners and authors. Content owners and authors will be responsible for updating the sections of the site where they are an expert. That means that the people who best understand the content are the people who are updating it for our sites. Of course, that means the information on our site is more accurate.