This is a brief timeline marking major changes to the College’s website over the past two decades. All archived versions of the website are provided by the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at
www.archive.org.
Summer 1994 – Version
1.0
Hendrix website launched by the student web team. Students continued to design and maintain the Hendrix website until 2003 when the College hired the first staff member devoted specifically to working with the website. That staff member was a former
member of the Student Web Team. No pictures of this website exist that we know of though we are told it looked much like version 2.0 but was less animated.
January 1995 – The
Profile Online
The Profile is the first newspaper in the state of Arkansas to “go online”.
Summer 1996 – Version
2.0
The first major redesign of the website which implemented HTML 3.0! This site was more animated than the original.
Fall 1997 – Version
3.0
The first site redesign to be focused on presenting content to multiple audiences. This is the first appearance of the global navigation and the link depot/site map on the homepage.
Fall 1998 - Version
3.1
A refresh that modified the homepage with slideshow. This is also the first appearance of real-time content on the website with the launch of the short-lived Hendrix College Live Cam. The camera was mounted on the outside of Fausett looking north and
was taken down over concerns of privacy for people sitting around the turtle pond.
Fall 1998 -
Refresh 3.2
The audience based navigation was removed to a secondary page in order to clean up the layout.
Spring 2000 -
Refresh 3.3
The homepage design was modified to include more focus on students. It also featured the first real focus on marketing pieces with a featured item on the "the New Houses".
Fall 2000 - Version
4.0
This was a complete homepage redesign with focus on news stories and new "javascript" menus. Removed the link depot and greatly simplified the navigation.
Fall 2001 -
Refresh 4.1
The navigation was modified to allow users to self-select their audience (Prospective students, Hendrix Community, etc.)
Fall 2002 - Version
5.0
The home page was completely rebuilt and implemented a homegrown PHP / MySql based news CMS. The site also imported events from the master calendar system. The navigation was a hybrid approach of the audience navigation and structure based on divisional
structures of the College. First appearance of "Highlights", small news items with an image and summary text. First appearance of the "Quicklinks", as an attempt to give high traffic content a home on the page. The site also included dynamic content generated
from the custom CMS to display the news stories. Though this was a major development project, it was still a product of a student web team.
Spring 2003 -
Refresh 5.1
Google search was added to the home page and is noticeable as one of the few mentions of an unaffiliated business on the Hendrix website.
Fall 2005 - Version
6.0
This version was the first professionally designed website created in partnership with a third-party marketing and design firm. The homepage design focused on Highlights, News and a larger marketing presence on the page, especially the prominent presence
of Odyssey on the Homepage. This was the first noticeable and measurable attempt at interactive marketing for the College. The Odyssey mini-site linked from the homepage was designed to generate or refine leads that were then updated in campus databases.
This version of the website was the first to include a site-wide CMS. Prior to version 6, pages in the website were designed and maintained according to the desires of the content owners. This design enforced a site wide style guide along with a policy
requiring all content owners to use the CMS. This was the longest lived version of the site and the one most often identified as being “stale” since the content was not often updated on the homepage and no major project to refresh the design was undertaken
for several years.
Spring 2009 - Version
7.0
This was the first version to be built entirely by College professional staff. It featured a modernized design for larger screens and a focus on rich media. The home page included a flash carousel for marketing pieces as well as audience and feature
based sub content on the home page that allowed different layouts for different audiences. The subpages of the website were three-column pages with the ability for content owners to designate certain “third column content” pieces for their pages or sites.
Spring 2011 -
Refresh 7.1
The homepage carousel was replaced with a billboard focused on Odyssey. This was the first step in a direction of a more focused website with specific goals and audiences.
Spring 2012 - Version
8.0
The site was redesigned to support mobile and tablet devices. The overall look of the site was to create a focused, clean design that got out of the way of the content. The homepage was redesigned with a primary audience of prospective students. The
site pages were designed to adapt to screen width and user input (touch or mouse) and it was the first design that was followed up with planned refreshes of the homepage billboard content.