If you haven't searched for something on Carleton's web site recently, be prepared for a pleasant surprise. The Web Services Group has rolled out a new search interface powered by an on-site Google server, so the search page and the results you see will look a lot like what you expect from Google's own site.

Our previous search solution had been showing its age and not producing consistent results, so we decided to follow the lead of many other colleges our size and adopt the Google-based service. Because the Google server places some limitations on how fully we can integrate with other data sources, we've had to simplify the search experience somewhat, but we've preserved the campus directory results sidebar that many people have come to rely on.

We hope the new search page helps you find what you need!

We recently conducted an informal survey of higher education institutions to get a sense of the range of support offered for the personal websites of faculty. We thought this information would help us and others decide where we wanted to position ourselves in this range of support. Full results from the survey are posted after the break!

It’s no secret, the world is going mobile. And here at Web House, Carleton’s mobile website strategy has been a hot topic. While a standalone Carleton mobile site is in the plans, we’re already taking a big step toward mobile optimization with Responsive Design.

On Tuesday we launched the 2009-2010 Report on Giving. We had a tough time trying to come up with something that matched last year's Singing Knights thank-you; we hope we succeeded with this year's humorous and (we think) entertaining illustrated thank-you messages. We were lucky to work closely with the amazing illustrator Joseph Adolphe, who helped bring our extremely sketchy concept to life, and with Marin Amundson, who has since moved on to be Director of Stewardship at Macalester. Check it out!

I presented a poster today at the HighEdWeb conference in Cincinatti. Click below to download PDFs of the poster and the handout!

Campus Map Attack! Poster (3.8 mb)

Campus Map Attack! Handout ( 1.2 mb)

Did you know you can subscribe to a Carleton events calendar in your calendaring program? It's quite easy, and we've put together instructions on how!

How to subscribe to a Carleton events calendar in your calendar program

Mark Heiman gave a presentation on October 6 at the HighEdWeb conference in Milwaukee on the recent redesign of our Admissions website. Find out about how we came up with the idea for the site – illustrated by hilarious historical photos and anecdotes – from Mark's slides and notes (17.2 mb pdf).

If you haven't yet visited Carleton's new Admissions site, you should.

When we set out to redesign the site, we first did a lot of research, trying to get as good an understanding as possible about what prospective Carleton students want to know about us. The main thing we discovered (we had a hunch, but our research confirmed this) was that the last thing a prospective student wants is to be told a list of superlatives by a faceless organization. Instead, it's far more interesting and useful to be shown the school rather than told about the school.

Next week, Carleton College will launch a redesigned home page and other new web site features. We invite you to check out a sneak preview of the new look and content.

Gerry McGovern explains why the simple link is the heart of the web in his article "The Collaborative Web."

Carleton College web services staff members Mark Heiman, Matt Ryan, and Nate White were honored with coveted ‘Red Stapler’ awards at the HighEdWeb National Conference held last month in Rochester, N.Y. An annual gathering of higher education web professionals from over 200 colleges and universities from around the world, HighEdWeb is committed to “advancing web professionals, technologies, and standards in higher education.”

We've made a subtle (but we think significant) improvement to all the photo galleries hosted on Carleton's website. Previously, photos would open in a popup window, which you would have to close to see the next image. Now the galleries behave more like a slideshow, allowing you to go directly from one image to the next.