Columbia Public Schools overhauls website with goal of being more 'user-centric and responsive'
The Columbia Public Schools website is receiving a makeover after seven years.
It's at cpsk12.org.
The work on the website continued throughout last week, but the homepage was the first to be refurbished.
"We're still plugging away on the content migration and it will still take a bit for the old files to be cleaned out so the search is more reliable, but we're working away on it," district spokeswoman Michelle Baumstark wrote in an email.
Families were notified of the planned website overhaul in an email a few weeks ago. It is a big task and work began in the 2021-22 school year, the message stated.
"A redesign is no small undertaking for a district of our size with a website of more than 17,000 pages," the message stated. "Throughout the 2021-22 school year, we made subtle changes and cleaned up older content. Once we concluded the research portion of the project we collected information and feedback from various stakeholders."
A more user-friendly website, regardless of device, was the plan, the message stated.
"After conducting the survey, our primary goal was to create a more user-centric and responsive website for our families to access across all platforms and devices, including a more mobile responsive layout," the message stated. "Specifically, we wanted to focus on making it easier for families to locate the information they need when they need it without having to resort to the search bar."
There's a Find It Fast area on the top right of the homepage; by clicking "contact," one finds a hand-dandy list of buildings and building contacts.
Was the building contact list a new feature?
"The building contact list actually isn’t new," Baumstark wrote in an email. "It was just buried. That’s why it was important for us to spend time gathering information about how our patrons were using the site and frequently searched-for items."
The old site was designed with a similar process, but user needs and habits change over time, Baumstark noted.
The layout of the site is based on "information we’ve gathered on usage," she wrote.
Also in Find it Fast: calendar, start times, transportation, lunch, find your school, CPS families portal, CPS staff and student portal, CPS app, and portal login help.
One can find the school year calendar in that section and at the bottom of the homepage under "helpful information." It tells us the first day of classes is Aug. 23.
In redesigning the website, the district took into consideration people with vision impairments and those who don't speak English, the message to families stated.
"All pages also include a high-contrast toggle, designed to aid users with vision impairments," the message stated. "When turned on, this toggle enables users to switch to a black-and-white, high-contrast version of the website. The website also includes built-in translation tools in a variety of languages to translate every page instantly."
The websites for each of the high schools had been redone by Friday, but the update hadn't been done on all the middle and elementary schools.
Roger McKinney is the education reporter for the Tribune. You can reach him at rmckinney@columbiatribune.com or 573-815-1719. He's on Twitter at @rmckinney9.
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Columbia Public Schools website gets an overhaul after seven years
