Comments on: Georgetown website debuts beta campus map, still no launch date

By: Vox Populi » Georgetown debuts beta website, will officially launch in two weeks

Vox Populi » Georgetown debuts beta website, will officially launch in two weeks — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 18:01:27 +0000

[...] this semester, rumors on HoyaTalk suggested that the website would launch in late October or early November. According to University [...]

By: typical

typical — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 19:31:53 +0000

The top blue bar is still kindof ugly. Any chance it could be condensed so there’s not so much empty space and things are better aligned?

Props on having all these interactive features, though. We’re finally moving into a realm of modernity. Hopefully this is something that can spur other cool innovations (iPhone/Droid/Blackberry app, Student individual and organization websites, common templates across departments, etc.).

By: @mohammed

@mohammed — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 23:50:40 +0000

Please fix the campus boundaries to match what they actually are. That information is easily found.

By: Shameful.

Shameful. — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 21:56:56 +0000

@Mohammed
How is it anything but a frontend for Google Maps? And more importantly, how does this multi-million dollar site overhaul contribute anything to our school, after one takes into account the time (years), the cost (in software, new employees, and labor), and the dozens of bugs the new site will have that will never get fixed (vis a vis MyAccess)?

All 14,000 of us at GU KNOW where admissions is. The thousands of prospectives that visit every year will STILL stand at the gates and ask the first kid with a backpack they see where WGR is. Don’t get me wrong, this is a cool app, but what value does it add that Google Maps with Street View doesn’t? For that matter, what value does this new site add that a WordPress Multi-User implementation wouldn’t? The latter would be a) likely less than 10% of the cost of this new site, b) able to be rolled out in weeks, not years, c) extendable to all campus departments/groups, d) less buggy than this new site will be, and e) admittedly, SLIGHTLY less visually appealing.

Look at http://www.umaine.edu/. What value will our new site add that UMaine’s WordPress site doesn’t have? Is this difference in value worth the money?

By: Mohammed

Mohammed — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 21:29:33 +0000

@shameful Bugs aside (remember that this is a beta), the new campus map is miles better than the current version and isn’t nothing close to being merely a front end for Google Maps. That said, there are probably plenty of things that would need improving upon-though being snide isn’t going to help much.

@matt, I am actually involved with the the website overhaul and our team has gone through sweat and tears to get everything up and running. We cannot simply roll out pages over a weekend, nor can we release pages piece meal as soon as they are completed- as much as I would like to see that happening. So… yeah.. I could very well code and design a page in 3 hours, but what good would that do when there are 300+ pages too?

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 17:29:35 +0000

So, in essence, it’s taken them a year or two to get the same map design and features that Vox Pop did in a weekend?

By: Shameful.

Shameful. — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 17:22:27 +0000

$2 million for a google map.

By: nice site, but

nice site, but — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 16:37:45 +0000

It doesn’t match with the actual campus boundaries.