University of North Texas

The Division of University Relations, Communications and Marketing has unveiled a new UNT homepage design that features drop-down menus for easier navigation, adapts to an array of mobile devices and integrates UNT’s social media components.

Charity Beck, manager of the web development center for URCM, said the page is designed to be engaging, yet simple. It offers access to a lot of information without being too cluttered.

One key feature is the “responsive design” technology that allowed the team to build a site that adjusts to the screen resolution on desktop computers, laptops, tablets and smart phones.

“We wanted to give it a fresh, modern design that was easy to navigate but also increases the access and improves the homepage experience for everyone,” she said.

The site senses the type of device that is being used to view the page and alters the dimensions of the page to fit.

The dropdown menus at the top give the page a cleaner appearance, while making information about the university available with just one click, Beck said.

The feature photo on the home page is also slightly larger and more emotive to help the page feel more engaging, she said.

Beck said the web development team also plans to make templates patterned after the new responsive design to implement in other pages on the UNT site. The new templates, in Drupal, will include design conventions and technologies that allow sites to be built more efficiently and to be of higher visual quality.

Web developer Greg Altuna said the team researched and implemented 3,800 lines of script to make the site behave similarly on various browsers, older versions of those browsers and on multiple devices.

“The main idea behind any good design is to make sure that no matter what browser or device a visitor is using, everyone gets as close to the same experience as possible,” he said.

Altuna said five main groups of visitors come to the site — future students; current students; faculty and staff; parents and family; and alumni and friends—and the site was designed with all those in mind.

“We tried to integrate features that showed our unique UNT atmosphere rather than just being an academic site.”

• Learn more.

—Matthew Zabel, University Relations, Communications and Marketing