COS creates new Political Science website

The College of Sciences is in the process of redesigning each of the college’s department websites. The first site to undergo a complete makeover was for the Political Science department. You can view the full site here.

The new sites will be powered by WordPress, a popular blogging software that news organizations and companies use because of its various plug-ins and easy-to-use application. While originally created as software for bloggers, WordPress has evolved into a full content management system (CMS), enabling organizations and individuals the ability to create full web sites with the software.

WordPress was chosen because its CMS is simple enough that almost anyone can begin using it immediately. The software was first released in 2003 and as of December 2011 version 3.0 had been created and downloaded over 65 million times.

Beginning in March 2012, the COS web team, lead by JP Peters, Director of Technology, met with the Political Science department to learn what type of features the department needed on their new website. The team, which includes Jonathan Hendricker, Jesse Ferraro and David C Khourshid, met with the Political Science department three times before completing the site. Hendricker also trained one of the Political Science staff members, Nick Schenk, on how to update the site via the WordPress content management system.

The Political Science department now has the ability to update their site on their own. Additional support from the College of Sciences is also still available.

Here is a photo of the homepage of the site, which you can view here.

The site has several customizable features. The COS team has the political science news story from the COS News Blog displayed on the homepage. (Photo below).

Another feature, also displayed on the homepage, is the office hours for each political science professor for the day. (Photo below)

The bottom of the homepage has several important widgets pulling in necessary information for students, faculty and staff. The political science staff is very active on Facebook so a feed of their recent posts was incorporated into the design. Internal links to important political science documents are listed in the middle column while important COS links are displayed in the footer graphic. (Photo below)

Explore the new site further and users will find more helpful links, documents and contact information.