Issue 146

Waterfront is Online

09th October 2006

The waterfront's new website is live and online! Over the past few months, the website has been completely redesigned and rebuilt, due in no small part to Dafydd Vaughan and James Gawn - the hardcore techies of our resident web team. The design now "looks like the BBC website, but blue" - and it will change its colour to match special events happening at the University. For example, this week it will be turning pink to promote the upcoming Pinkathon! More importantly however, Dafydd says it's now much more user-friendly. "It's much easier to use. The new menu structure means that you can now find articles that interest you much quicker."

On top of that, articles are no longer 'lost' in the website - they can all be found by looking at each section's archive.

Lots of other new features have been added to the website as well including the ability to track a particular author's articles. James explained, "If you have a favourite author you can now view a profile of them and see all the articles they have written for the Waterfront."

He added "Also, the new RSS Feeds mean that you can subscribe to their feed and be kept up-to-date with their work using one of the many websites on the net that uses feeds." added James.

This new website replaces one that was extremely difficult to keep up-to-date. This meant that very few articles from the Waterfront were added to the site.

"This update allows us to add on every article that makes it into the Waterfront every month, but there is also the possibility that in the future we could have special features and put on exclusive articles you won't find in the normal newspaper" commented Dafydd. Although the Front is not currently published on the website, there are plans to make some of the articles available over the next few weeks.

Even though the website has now gone live, the work doesn't stop there. Dafydd and James will be working hard over the next few months to introduce loads more features.

"The biggest problem with this website is that currently it is entirely one way - us providing content to the students. It doesn't yet work the other way, but this is something we urgently want to address." said Dafydd. "Over the next few months we are planning on introducing polls and a BBCstyle 'Have Your Say' section where users can post and discuss their views on the issues raised in the Waterfront."

Andrew Gwilym, Editor for the Waterfront commented on the new look website, saying, "We wanted a website that took Waterfront into the 21st century. I believe that Dafydd and James have delivered this for us, and we hope that our readers will enjoy using and interacting with the features available on the site."

The new website can be seen at waterfrontonline.co.uk. Dafydd and James are eager for comments and suggestions so take a look and contact us here.

Charlie Duff