Goshen College is back online … well, mostly. Back in late July, the updated version of goshen.edu went live to the campus community and the broader public. It was clear within the first few days of its launch that the new website had some challenges. 

The main goals of the website rebuilding process included visual branding and design, content migration and content formatting according to the “Web Launch FAQ” document shared by the Communications and Marketing Office. The document also stated that the process officially began in September 2024. 

“It had been a while since we had done a complete update. The previous website had grown into a modern version of Frankenstein’s monster,” said Ashlee Hoogenboom, assistant director for web and social media, and a member of the Core Web Leadership Team. 

Rebuilding the website was a joint effort led by Information Technology Services and the Communications and Marketing Office. The team also partnered with Asher Agency, a marketing firm based out of Fort Wayne, IN. Other employees that made up the web leadership team included Angela Sienko, director of communications and marketing; Mindy Schlegel, executive director of IT services; and Paul Housholder, director of  ITS  and ITS media, technical and business services.

The biggest change to the GC website is the OnCampus internal intranet. OnCampus hosts institutional information for students, staff and faculty. Pages like MyGC, Campus Communicator and People Search can be found in OnCampus. This attempts to “provide an additional layer of security around potentially sensitive information,” said Hoogenboom. “The new public-facing website is much leaner, easier to maintain and refocused as a marketing and engagement tool for our external audiences.” 

Quickly following the website’s public launch, faculty, staff and students identified numerous mistakes. The website relaunch team anticipated finding broken links and missing content upon publication. A feedback form was provided at the time of the launch to streamline the cleanup process. 

An email to staff and administrators last week mentioned receiving “342 submissions about goshen.edu and 39 about the OnCampus site.” According to the email, the team has resolved 341 of the submissions and is working on the remaining ones.

As of Wednesday, Jodi Beyeler, vice president for institutional advancement and a part of the Steering Team reported 400 total feedback submissions. “Of those eight are still in progress,” Beyeler said. 

Hoogenboom said the amount of existing pages and multisites prior to the relaunch quickly increased the scale of the project. “Even just evaluating content becomes a challenge,” she said. According to her, there were approximately 25,000 pages across more than 70 multisites. 

The website updates also required the work of interns. Caoimhe Farrell, a sophomore communication major, worked as a summer intern for communications and marketing.“My main role was formatting and transferring content and data, so this was definitely a challenge for me,” Farrell said. She thanked Sienko and Hoogenboom for their unwavering patience. “Even when I had spent 7 hours dragging content and formatting a page, they still maintained a positive attitude and I found it admirable,” she said. 

Aside from technical issues, the team expressed fault for not including faculty earlier in the process. “One area where our communication has fallen short — and where we know many of you have felt frustrated — is around individual employees’ contact information and visibility on the website,” the email stated. 

Those involved are committed to fixing as many mistakes as possible. Beyeler adds, “We want people to continue to let us know when there are problems, and we have further phases of improvement to make over the coming months.”