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Thursday, April 01, 1999 OnCampus/News   Future's so bright for site   On the up and up: Overhaul of website's look, content drawing hits from community   Robert Quan STAFF WRITER   UK's website has a bright future ahead of it.   Chuck Ham, UK web coordinator, said the UK web site is a constantly evolving entity.   "Not a week goes by that we don't do something to it," said Ham. "It is still not done and will never be done."   Ham said the web site has seen some major changes over the past year.   "We wanted it to be more modern," Ham said. "We looked at other universities and corporations and felt that this design was practical."   Ham, who works through the department of public relations, said the University was looking for someone on campus that knew something about design to take over the web site. Not just from a look, but a navigation perspective.   "One of our main goals is easy navigation, especially for students," Ham said. "We don't want people to search all over for something."   Ham said they used to get complaints on the old site from people outside the University they couldn't find anything.   Ham said the website is coded by a private company called Orbit. The site was contracted out because the project was bigger than what anyone on campus could handle. When the site was revamped, Ham said they held over 26 meetings with people on campus to see what people wanted.   "Orbit took what they got from those meetings and added color," Ham said. "They're really just responsible for the coding."   Ham said that during the meetings, they felt like students were one of the main groups they wanted to attract and make the site easier to use.   James Temprano, a medical student and candidate for a masters in health administration, said he finds the site useful and easy to navigate.   "The student information system is great," Temprano said.   "It's bland, yet functional," said Jonathan Moore, a senior art studio major and web designer for UK. "It's much more user-friendly than it was. Although, I don't know how much concern they gave to slower modem speeds."   Moore said he thought the site was on-par with other university sites, if not better than most.   "I've looked at other sites like Northwestern's and Harvard's," Moore said. "The UK one is just as advanced if not more so."   However, Moore said he doesn't think the web site is representative of the student body. He noted that not all of the University's departments get equal time.   Billy Hylton, WRFL's webmaster, agrees. He finds it frustrating that WRFL isn't mentioned anywhere on the main site. Hylton said there's a list of popular sites at UK, but some of the sites are included because the administration thinks they should be.   "If it were a fair thing, where it was just a matter of hits received, that would be one thing," Hylton said. "But it seems to me like the University would want to promote something like the radio station if they use the site as part of their recruiting strategy. I mean, here's this great opportunity for students to learn about radio and it doesn't even get mentioned."   Current Headlines OnCampus/News

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