Spring Lake Park Schools to launch redesigned district and school websites April 17
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Summary
District communications staff told the school board the district will replace 13 sites with upgraded designs, new navigation and improved search on April 17; staff warned bookmarks and search indexing may break temporarily.
Spring Lake Park Schools staff told the school board on April 8 that the district will launch redesigned district and school websites on April 17.
Communications presenter Erica Tylen said the district is replacing 13 websites with an upgraded technical platform and refreshed visual design to improve mobile experience, search and navigation. "Our launch day is April 17," Tylen said, adding the district has used a data-driven design process and preview sessions with content authors.
Tylen told the board the project began with a discovery phase and a content audit. The redesign will move each school to a subdomain and include a consistent "Find it fast" search button and prominent icons for the district's top pages. "We are moving all of our school sites to subdomains. So that means all the URLs are gonna break. So if you have anything bookmarked, you'll wanna update those," Tylen said, and she warned that search engines will need time to re-index the new site.
Tylen described steps the district has taken before launch: card-sorting user tests, three prototype designs, a refreshed style guide, and a quality-assurance review with the vendor. She said staff preview sessions for content editors and a prelaunch communication to families and staff are under way.
Board members and attendees who previewed the site praised the visuals and school-specific photography. Board member Schmidt said the preview looked "beautiful," and another attendee called the site "easy" to navigate. Tylen credited Jessica Johnson for project management and Mackenzie Finley for photography and graphics; she also thanked Will Wachman for a photograph used on the site.
Tylen said some content areas (including a staff intranet) will be completed after launch and asked for patience on launch day if content is temporarily unavailable while DNS and back-end settings update. She gave an email for post-launch issues: communications@district16.org.
The board did not take formal action on the item; the presentation was provided for information.
For more detail, district staff recommended users update bookmarks after April 17 and noted they will submit sitemaps to search engines and monitor for broken links after launch.
