New site debuts in time for fall sports
It’s new, it’s different and it’s infinitely better.
I’m talking about the latest and greatest incarnation of the Linfield Athletics Web site.
What makes the site better?
There is more color, thanks to the focus on color photography and new Flash slideshow technologies.
There’s moving pictures, in the form of video clips that will spotlight coach and player interviews, game highlights and occasional features. There also a new video archive to view previously published videos.
You’ll notice we have introduced an innovative three-pronged approach to delivering fresh content involving current and former Linfield athletes and coaches. The “Latest News” tab on the home page will always showcase the most recent stories and statistics. A new “Wildcats in the News” section provides links to stories written about people with Linfield connections in the online news media. And the “Feature Stories” tab takes you to slice-of-life profiles written by Linfield students.
The revamped home page Scheduled Events box not only displays the next 7-10 days of upcoming athletic events but also highlights every home event with a shaded background for ease of use.
Each varsity sport page features its own photo gallery, video viewing area, plus an expanded record book section, including lists of letterwinners, season-by-season win-loss records and coaching chronologies.
Fans of Linfield Athletics have easy access to information about the Hall of Fame, past championship teams, the TopCat Club, Wildcat Open golf tournament, and where to order Linfield Wildcats clothing and apparel on-line.
Other features include an improved search mechanism, comprehensive news and video archives, and a complete online Visitors Guide for out-of-town guests.
While you’re exploring the new site, stop by the “Newsletter” section to sign up to receive quarterly email summaries of the happenings of the Linfield Athletics department. Or sign up for the “CatsEyeView” pay-per-view football video Webcast package.
The site offers consolidated commentary section, including links to this blog, and occasional columns by Linfield director of athletics Scott Carnahan and NCAA compliance officer Amy Dames Smith.
Keeping up with the times, Linfield offers fans the opportunity to connect with Wildcat sports through their Facebook and Twitter accounts.
What’s still to come? More content! We’re busy tweaking rosters for the fall sports teams, writing countless athlete bios, and interviewing coaches for season outlook stories. Those will be implemented over the next 10 days, I expect. And once we hit September, you can expect an ever-changing news source about Linfield Athletics.
The new site has been a year in the making. Thanks to the many behind-the-scenes folks who help foster its funding, design and construction.
6 Comments
August 26, 2009 at 2:10 am
Kelly–the new website is fab! Great job….
August 28, 2009 at 2:25 pm
All the hardwork paid off! What a beautiful website, with great new features, I especially enjoy the new video clips.
Since I’m stuck in the middle of the Pacific. I watched the games via Stretch, but couldn’t get copies of the games. I did manage to take a trip to watch the Menlo game. I would love to have copies for sentimental reasons.
Where can I get them?
Aloha and Mahalo,
#93’s Dad
August 29, 2009 at 2:54 am
Check with Stretch Internet (stream@stretchinternet.com).
While they do offer you the option to go back and view online the game you subscribed to as many times you like, I am not sure about they offer the option of receiving a permanent hard disk copy of the game.
At one time, they did offer a means to receive CDs of archived audio broadcasts.
Thanks for the compliments and for asking the question.
September 4, 2009 at 9:41 pm
The new website looks great! I check the football page regularly for updates. When the 2009-10 roster came out I was very excited. My only disappointment was in the bio page. The sizing is off as it is too big and you cannot scroll up or down on the bio page. I have to manually resize this page to see it in its entirety and you cannot close out that page as you could last season. When I’m done with a player, I have to “go back” and click on roster and bio again and select the next player. Also, whoever wrote the bios this year was not as exciting and colorful as last year. The colorful bios was just “a little something” that helped that feeling of excitement for the season. Other than that, I love the football page and all the great info!
#97s Mom
Go Wildcats!
September 4, 2009 at 10:03 pm
Thanks, Mrs. H. We’re happy to know you are enjoying the site. Sounds as though the resolution on your monitor is set very low to the point that the bios overwhelm the screen. On all my many computer monitors and even my iPhone, the bios simply overlap a portion of the roster page which you can still view in the background. To return to the roster from the bio page quickly, simply hit the escape key.
The same person as last year (me) wrote the returner’s bios. So that didn’t change. What did change was the increased workload of implementing and de-bugging the new site. The “superlatives” that you wrote about had to take a back seat this year in favor of the greater good.
What you can also hopefully appreciate are the fact that our office writes bios and presents updated portraits of all 130 football players. That’s no small undertaking, especially when you factor in the other seven fall sports which have the same needs and expectations.
Thanks for the feedback! Keep checking back for news, photos and videos of all the Wildcat sports teams!
September 7, 2009 at 3:27 am
I’ve been experiencing the same problem running Firefox on my PC. Not so using Firefox on the Mac. We’ll work on getting that bug fixed, thanks.