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HOLBROOK — It’s new. It’s secure. It’s hot out of the box and it is mobile-friendly while being up-to-date on Google rankings. It is the new Northland Pioneer College (NPC) website that was launched on Jan. 3.
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In her update to the Navajo County Community College District Governing Board during their Jan. 15 meeting in Holbrook, NPC Marketing Director Ann Hess stepped through the new features, which includes up-to-date security, an information-based menu structure and the ability to size the site for any device.
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“This website is built with brand-new software that is the latest and greatest out of the box,” said Hess, who believes the software will continue to be a top level for several years to come enabling greater security while being user-friendly.
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She explained that the new website is built with secure hypertext protocol. “For those that are not computer savvy,” Hess explained, “It means that when our website talks to the server and they exchange information back and forth, it is coded so that it cannot be intercepted and is more secure than our old site.”
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The security issues are significant for Google ratings as well. Hess said that about a year ago Google decided that anyone who did not design their website to be secure or mobile device friendly would be ranked lower in the ratings.
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“Fixing those two things should help us to appear higher in the rankings during a search,” Hess added.
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The new website features a re-imagined menu structure that will sort information based on the audience. “The way we used to sort the website was based on our internal structure, which could confuse people,” continued Hess. “The new structure sorts information based on who you are and what kind of information you are looking for. I think it is a much more user friendly and straightforward approach than the prior one.”
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People can now search for classes based on the program categories or by the class in an A to Z menu. “The good thing is you don’t have to know the exact term of the class in order to find what you are looking for,” said Hess, as she gave an example of automotive classes that can be found by searching vehicle repair.
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Large areas of the college that have a lot of information such as financial aid and the library, have one main landing page with a menu for all the things contained within that area. “It allows the user to decide what they want to see without having to rummage through a bunch of stuff that they don’t care about,” continued Hess.
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“It has been an arduous process creating this,” concluded Hess. “I want to thank Everett Robinson in particular for his hard work and dedication to this project.”
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The new site can be accessed at the old address: www.npc.edu.
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