Newman Today news site gets a makeover

Jul 22, 2021
Daniel Murphy redesigned the Newman Today news site

The University Relations team likes to keep things fresh across all the Newman University websites, which is why a major redesign is completed every three to four years. 

Over the past few months, Web Technology Specialist Daniel Murphy has worked diligently to wrestle the code-heavy project into a reality. And today is the day when Murphy publicly launched the Newman Today news site redesign.

Web technology specialist, Daniel Murphy, shows off the site's newest display features.
Web Technology Specialist Daniel Murphy shows off the site’s newest display features.

Time for an upgrade

Four years ago the Newman news site featured a gutterless full-width design. This design was all the rage because everything had to be more “app-like.” Nowadays web designers are a bit more reserved and prefer layouts that have room to breathe, while placing more focus on page speed performance and ease of use. 

“I have gone with this route and I think it does look a lot cleaner,” Murphy said. “I think the way the grid layout is designed really pulls you in and makes you want to scroll down to view at a glance all the wonderful content our University Relations editorial team comes up with.”

Senior Graphic Designer Matthew Miller tests out the new site design.
Senior Graphic Designer Matthew Miller tests out the new site design.

Newman Today is self-hosted with an installation of the world-famous open-source content management system WordPress. WordPress has competed with many of the other online hosted solutions by continually evolving its “Gutenburg” block editor, Murphy explained.

“I was able to develop new custom blocks that allow the editor to simply drag, drop and edit,” he said. “It was a little tricky to learn but now I have a few more ideas for different custom blocks we can use within the site.”

Take a moment to explore the news updates, stories and videos that the Newman Today news site has to offer. Visit our homepage here.

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