We will be creating a web page for the Wellesley College Medieval and Renaissance Studies Department. As Medieval and Renaissance Studies is an interdepartmental major, the client with whom we will be working directly is Professor Kathryn Lynch of the English Department.
At the end of the semester our web page will reside on the Wellesley College server as the Med/Ren Department website. It is unclear as to who will update the website once it is finished, though considering its purpose it will not need much maintenance: courses will need to be updated yearly, and faculty information will have to be changed as needed.
Professor Lynch would like to feature course descriptions, information about the faculty and major, and various research links. The goal is to make the site a reference point for students interested in Medieval and Renaissance studies. The intention is for students considering Wellesley College and interested in Medieval and Renaissance Studies to be able to get a sense of the department and curriculum.
The webpage is geared to students, prospective students and parents of prospective students interested in learning more about the Med/Ren major at Wellesley. Students should be able to quickly learn about all aspects of the department and find information on the subject through links outside of Wellesley College. It will be used by students majoring in the subject so that they can keep up with the courses and faculty in the department. Also, it will be a resource for students more casually interested in the topic, or those taking a class in a related subject, searching for research links.
There is currently a Medieval and Renaissance Studies department web page (click here to see it) but it is out of date (last modified in 2002). Our client would like several elements of the site changed, including the faculty list (much of the current faculty is not listed on the site, and many faculty members who left Wellesley are still on the site). The list of courses is out of date and many of the links to outside research sources are dead. Professor Lynch said, however, that she would not mind if we write an entirely new web site, which is what we intend to do in order to fulfill the project requirements.
The current page uses a Clique structure which works with the content and purpose of the site. We intend to use a Clique format for our site as well. We will have a a homepage that introduces the reader to the department, a page describing the department, a page describing the curriculum, a list of faculty, and a page with research links. Another page will describe the major and honors requirements. There are many images featured on the current website which are mostly decorative but add a lot to the aesthetic of the site as a whole. Images of artwork from the period will be a major design feature of our site since they will greatly enhance the visual allure.