Chris Wiegman

As a web developer it is absolutely necessary that I work to keep up with the trends around me. To do so requires more than just browsing through sites looking for the results of a Google search, it requires dissecting what makes great sites great and bad sites bad. As such I’m going to review a site I find as often as I can get around to doing so (ideally once a day).

Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC)

SIUC has had a long history on the web dating back about 20 years. The current version of the site does it’s best to help users navigate with links targeted to the demographic of the visitor. As a whole the site does a descent job at getting users where they need to be, however with a decentralized web structure in which each campus department, unit, etc is tasked with the development and maintenance of its own site it tends to confuse users as they browse for various academic programs and other information most students would need. It does so by not providing any central summary of programs, but instead directly links users to various departmental sites which often bear little or no resemblance to the main SIUC site.

Other than the decentralized nature, the site does do an excellent job of trying to make navigation as simple as possible as no department is more than 2-3 clicks away. In addition, although not quite in school colors, the main page has a pleasant design and color scheme that avoids both being overly harsh or overly generic, a problem seen on far too many sites today.

Overall, SIUC has an excellent long-standing web presence limited only by it’s decentralized nature.

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