Tea-and-Crumpets

One of the current project’s that I am involved in at the moment is redesigning my College’s Intranet website. Originally, I was given the site to try and fix some major php bugs which had caused the site not to work as it was intended, but after reading through the documentation and getting to grips with the inner working of the system it was pretty clear that the 4 year old code needed a revamp all together. After a few chats with Steven (Head of IT) we said that if it was in the best interests of the site then striping it down to it’s bear essentials was fine for the time being.

At the moment I am in debate with myself on which design template to use. I have take the header from the College’s website as to keep with the house style.

First up is a simple 2 column approach, navigation on the left, content on the right.

NEW College Intranet – 2 Columns

This format does look fine, as with all the designs I am not so sure about the menu. I can see myself going through quite a few navigation idea’s before it’s finished.

Now the second design uses an abandoned part of the existing system called, events. A user used to be able to add new events to the database and, if the it was in date it would be shown on the homepage of the site. I would really like to see events being used in the new site therefore I have incorporated it into a design, this one is a 3 column template.

NEW College Intranet – Full Design

Finally, I have a copy of the full design template, but this one however does not include the dropped shadow beneath the header. Not sure which way I swing with this but thought it would be best to include it.

NEW College Intranet – No dropped shadow

(In the end I found out the reason why the site stopped working correctly, it was because the programmer in charge of maintainece had left the institution, which was nice)