<p>Hey. I’m new here, but I’ve been lurking for a while.
I remember a lot of posts a while ago about Brown’s strange new website. I had stopped caring about the issue, but then I found this article:</p>
<p>Among other things, it claims that Brown dropped over $50,000 on the site, and that their public relations guy is ignoring all of the negative feedback. What do you guys think?</p>
<p>Also, the article is from a magazine called “The Brown Spectator.” What is this publication?</p>
<p>Well, the Brown Spectator is a conservative student publication on campus... sometimes they have interesting and rational opinion pieces, and sometimes... well... I'll let you imagine the rest of my thought.</p>
<p>Anyway, I agree with the gist of this particular piece. Like much technology at Brown, the website was expensive and took way too long... and ended up being not so fabulous. Oh well.</p>
<p>$50,000 is not out of line for a project that big. The fact that a sharp 15 year old could do it in his spare time notwithstanding. Business is a funny thing!</p>
<p>A certain conservative student whose initials are SBQ and who has been the subject of ridicule after presenting himself in a kinda-silly way in an editorial letter to the Brown Daily Herald.</p>
<p>i actually really like the new site as well
a lot of current brown students are hyper-critical of it, but from the perspective of fresh eyes, it's much easier to navigate that almost all other school sites. nothing wrong will simplicity when well used</p>
<p>DCircle, I am all for simplicity, but I don't even know what's going on at Brown anymore, at least compared to last year, because I don't like having to navigate through panels and several pages just to get a smattering of the news. Visually it's appealing, but it's functionally lacking. I prefer the template for departments over the main page. The internet should not move back towards splash page design, we learned a while ago that this concept was not a great one.</p>
<p>I second that, modest. Also, there are a couple things that are truly objectively wrong with the new site, and they MUST be dealt with. See the debate in the herald...</p>
<p>MG, in all the articles I've read, I haven't found a point I missed essentially when I sent my initial 2 page feedback when teh site was first launched. I am so glad Chapman decided to read it.</p>
<p>Yeah. If it lasts two months with nothing being done to fix it, I might start sending him one copy of my letter in the herald (and the earlier guy's much more informative editorial) every day until it does get fixed.</p>
<p>coming from the perspective of someone applying to college, I honestly think it'll effect the number of applications Brown gets this year. Often the first thing people see in a college these days is its website, and I'll be the first to admit that when I see a website that sucks, it doesn't make me think well of the school. </p>
<p>Now, of course that's just a terrible way to judge a college, and I've done my research and I am applying ED to Brown, but whether the thought is conscious or not, people DO judge a school based on its website.</p>
<p>But, of course, Brown WAS shown on the OC, so maybe that'll balance it out, lol</p>
<p>oh, hey, I just got a flash of inspiration: next time Brown wants to redo their site they should just give $20,000 to a computer science class at a local high school and let them build the most awesomist site ever as a class project.</p>
<p>Sorry to bump this again, but I heard that the site is being replaced with a new design in mid-November. But I think I am actually starting to like it now! Gah . . .</p>