The Virginia Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (VACRAO) is dedicated to the promotion of the professional preparation, effectiveness, and association of registrars, admission officers, and records administrators in colleges, universities, and other institutions of higher education.
VACRAO - after
VACRAO - before
This site was in desperate need of a makeover. Designed circa 2002, the original site probably worked fine, but it suffered from what happens to a lot of sites: the original designer goes away, and the folks left to update it don’t know much about HTML. So they do they best they can, the site gets worse and worse over the years, and nobody really knows how to fix it.
We gave them a whole new look which features rotating pictures of their member institutions, streamlined the navigation, and got rid of lots of old content.
Most importantly, we put them into a proper content management system. For a role-based organization, this is key. Anyone in the organization with the proper credentials can update it from wherever they are, because it lives on the web, not on somebody’s computer. The design elements are completely separated from the content, so it’s nearly impossible to break.
We also got rid of their rather clunky email-based mailing list and replaced it with a proper discussion forum that can be accessed either on the site, or through RSS feeds. They really wanted their members to be able to register for events and pay online, so we provided that functionality as well.
The next phase of this project is to re-do their membership database and enable online payments and invoicing.
Here is what they said:
“I've heard nothing but rave reviews about our new site. I'm getting the hang of updating the pages! I've added three job listings this afternoon in about as many minutes, tweaked a few things, fixed some typos, etc., and no problems so far. Another happy drw Design customer! ”
—Robert D. LeHeup
University of Virginia