Website Rebuild/Redesign/Consolidation

The UGA Griffin Campus website was showing its age with an outdated design that was not mobile-friendly. Previous administrators had not kept the website up to date, and it was approximately 5–6 years behind on updates when I assumed responsibility for it. This included not only Drupal and its plugins but also the Ubuntu server. In the process of attempting to bring the site up to date for security, I encountered dependency issues and had to use intermediate versions that were no longer publicly available from trusted sources. Consequently, I took the opportunity to re-evaluate our entire stack and redesign the website from scratch, collaborating with stakeholders from three other subunits to consolidate their websites under the new site.

The redesigned website is up to date with the latest security standards, mobile-friendly, accessible, and aligned with UGA branding guidelines. We chose WordPress as our CMS, aligning with UGA’s transition toward WordPress as a preferred CMS solution, making it a more sustainable choice for ongoing support. The new website consolidates the original UGA Griffin Campus website along with the UGA Griffin Campus Continuing Education, UGA Griffin Campus Library, and UGA Griffin Campus Experimental Statistics websites. Previously, each of these had separate websites and servers with different designs and domains.

Additionally, the website’s directory is now integrated with the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CAES) directory, ensuring consistent and accurate information across both the Griffin and CAES websites. This eliminates the need to update a faculty member’s profile in two locations. When a CAES faculty member’s profile is updated on the Athens website, the change is automatically reflected on the Griffin website, and vice versa.

D2L Brightspace Campus Engagement Course

In collaboration with the Assistant Director of Student Affairs, I developed a D2L course that serves as the primary student engagement platform for the UGA Griffin Campus. This course provides a centralized hub for various student resources, including scholarship information, disability services, key contact details for assistance, and student benefits/discounts. It also features a campus events calendar to highlight all activities happening on campus and includes functionality to push announcements and reminders directly to students.

This platform was implemented at no additional cost, as the university already had a license for D2L Brightspace. Its adoption was immediately successful compared to other attempts made by the campus like Campus Bubble and Presence, as students were already familiar with D2L for their classes. This eliminated the learning curve of a new platform and ensured seamless integration into their existing academic routines.