By Josh McGowan–Contributing writer

Depending on how long you’ve attended the halls of West Liberty, you’ve probably noticed the changes to the school’s website through the years. Jesse Gagich, West Liberty’s Web Communications Manager, commented on the past changes to the site, and the most recent ones.

According to Gagich, since he became an employee, he felt an immediate need to make the site usable. The previous site boasted an updated layout, fixed some of the problems with redundancy in links, and was generally more navigable. Gagich said there were still a few issues with content management, but he worked with the new site to help eliminate these problems.

The old website used Microsoft Server and .NET frameworks, but the new site employs a Linux Apache server, and uses LAMPstack php coding (widely used by sites like Facebook), and MySQL psp data basing, for fast and efficient updating.

The new choice in the site foundations makes it easier for administrators to do their jobs and  saves the University money, according to Gagich.

Previously, the old content management system required “a significant dollar amount”  to generate 30 administrative user accounts, whereas WordPress MU, used with the latest site, is a 100% free and open source.  According to Gagich, its learning curve is far less steep, enabling those who have the ability to run Microsoft Office to get involved with web content.

The new website features a Twitter application, RSS feeds and dynamic content embedded into each page for easier browsing.

Gagich added that he is very open to feedback and criticism.  The best of that, he said, comes from students who use the school’s pages. You can send your feedback about the new site to webmaster@westliberty.edu.

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