Texas State University widespread uses the Content Management System GATO, where departments like Academic Affairs needed a web Designer to convert and re-design pages into new CMS template, Calico. I have been working with the Academic Affairs department as their web Designer since May of 2022. Since then I have launched six websites, about to be seven, Academic Success, University College, Minors of Campus, Honor Code Council, General Education Council, and University Seminar.
The process of launching a website through Texas State University can take up to two weeks or a month. Web Designers at Texas state can publish their own sites, but will need to be approved by ITACs review process for the site to be officially launched. This includes undergoing a tedius Technical, Security, DMC, Marketing, and Accessibility review. In this case, I have been throught the site launched review six times and have learned something new each launch.
For each launch ITAC reviwers will make suggestions based on content layout and require certain edits pretaining security, DMC, and technical review that each editor and web designer must abide by. The most important review requirment has been Accessibility for alternative text, PDFs, and Word Documents.
University Seminar, also known as US 1100, is a course taken by first-year students that teach them the most essential ways of a college student. These first-year students learn how to manage their classes, organizations, and assignments with this course and are also taught how to get around campus as well as the Texas State campus benefits and offers.
This has been an ongoing project since 2022, but as things in the department are ever changing, so is the department website.
The biggest challenge for this website has been Accessibility. On this site we have more than a handful of un-acessibile Documents and Word Documents that I have spent months correcting. In this proccess I have became skilled and text hierarchy and awareness for those who are unable to see our sites.
Pull resources from previous sandbox and list hierarchy importance.
Once we highlighted what resources, document, and content have needed to be pulled, I created various mock-ups of site homepages. All pages have the same order of information, but the content is displayed differently. By displaying content differently, the user will recieve the information on the webpage differently than the other content in a different format. Each mock-up made for this sandbox are designed to appeal to a specific audience like campus instructors or students at Texas State.
My duties as a Web Designer for Academic Affairs at Texas State University includes:
Website Design
Website Consulting
Word/ PDF Document Accessibility