Calvin Template - Benefits

1. Six upgraded templates

As part of upgrading the footer region of Calvin's website, we have created six different color templates (or designs) for Calvin departments. You may easily choose from any one of the six templates when you have your website's footer upgraded. Each color template is based on Calvin's official color pallet.

Switching between two templates is very easy. It literally takes only a couple seconds! If you want to switch your department's template color, please feel free to contact us. Or, you may change your template's color yourself by editing your department's configure.inc file.

2. Faster Page Downloads

The new header and footer have another significant advantage: all of the pages on your website will download faster. Currently, the header — and especially the "older" footer — contain rollover images and javascript.

The new header and footer will use text styled with CSS instead of images, meaning that each page will be at least 10 kilobytes "lighter" yet still look and function the same. This will save Calvin's web server more than 1.6 gigabytes of bandwidth every month!

3. Simpler Maintenance

We are changing the way the header and footer are managed so that they will now be automatically added by the web server. The Web server will need to look in only one place to find Calvin's global header and footer.

This will simplify the maintenance of your site because you will never need to worry about the header or footer. We take care of it for you.

4. Improved Flexibility

With the template's header and footer stored in one location, the Calvin website will be very flexible and easy to update. Indeed, by changing only one file we will be able to change the header and footer on every page of Calvin's website. Obviously, this will save a ton of time.

In essence, by upgrading Calvin's departments we are laying the groundwork to make future changes easier, faster, and cheaper for both you and the College.

5. Updating Obsolete Code

An update we made to the web server in June 2005 rendered certain Javascript code obsolete. The result was that the date a page was last updated was always printed as today's date, even if the page hadn't been updated today. This new header and footer will fix that problem so that the correct date is displayed.

What do I need to do?

All you need to do is let us know that you want to upgrade your department's website. We will gladly do the work for free. It only takes a minute to sign-up!