A new design for Sacred Heart's website
Sacred Heart’s new website, viewed from a laptop and iPhone. Alana Galloway ’16
The development of new athletic facilities is not the only construction that took place at Convent of the Sacred Heart over the summer. The school also spent the last year working with its website vendor, WhippleHill, to remodel its website. The new design launched Wednesday, October 29, and includes novel features, graphics, photography, and page layouts.
The site now includes Responsive Web Design technology to resize each web page according to the device from which it is viewed. The updated sizing is compatible with smartphones, desktop computers, iPads, and tablets.
“The reason we changed the website was to make it mobile friendly so the website automatically resizes to every device. As the device gets smaller or larger, the website resizes,” Webmaster Mr. Salvatore Rotondo said.
Students appreciate the accessibility of the redesigned website because it allows them to stay up-to-date with the latest announcements, sports schedules, and school news.
“It’s so much easier now that I can go on the website directly from my iPhone. I can access all the information wherever I am, without needing a laptop,” junior Lillian Pura said.
The Sacred Heart administration realizes that the Internet world is evolving, and wants to ensure that the website adapts as well to suit modern expectations.
“I am thrilled for our community because I think the new website will make it easier to access information. The graphics will be very exciting to look at, and I feel it is more user friendly in that it is better organized and designed,” Head of School Mrs. Pamela Juan Hayes said.
With its updated design, Sacred Heart will retire the traditional TigerNet, ParentNet, HeartNet, and Faculty Intranet portal links. Now, the homepage implements a new login feature that allows students and parents to log in once directly to the site. After logging in, users can click a resources tab that displays the old TigerNet and ParentNet features.
“We wanted to implement a new model for delivering content,” Mr. Rotondo said. “I hope that current parents, students, faculty and staff will benefit by it and that it will effectively promote the school to perspective families visiting our website.”
Sacred Heart has also added a modernized news tab and an activity log that presents recent news in the same format as the Facebook homepage newsfeed. Users are now able to look at past news and photos by simply scrolling down the page.
The school made the majority of the changes for the purpose of improving and increasing website usage.
“Like everything in education and in life, we have to adapt and be flexible with change. We always want to provide the best product and services for our community,” Mrs. Hayes said.
– Alana Galloway, Co-Features Editor
Sara Galloway • Nov 1, 2014 at 2:36 pm
I appreciate this information! Thank you.