The school website has been modified to allow for a more user-friendly experience on computers and mobile devices. Though the primary change is decorative, the overall change makes navigating through the website much easier.
“I worked with our OPHS Webmasters, Erik Amerikaner and Randy McLelland on the design for OPHS,” Principal Kevin Buchanan wrote in an email.

Principal Kevin Buchanan and Oak Park Webmasters Erik Amerikaner and Randy McLelland worked collaboratively on the design for Oak Park, Buchanan wrote in an email.

“The main change is cosmetic, but when you click through some of the links in the channel bar you land on a page with all the pages listed alphabetically rather than the pull-down menus we use to have,” Buchanan wrote.

The district has been using a template from the company Schoolwires to manage its website for seven years; the modifications resulted from an updated Schoolwires template, which allows for more security and accessibility for the average user.

“The old website, if you wanted to look at the website on your smartphone, you had to scale up little pieces because it did not scale up to your screen. However, this new version now scales to whatever device you’re, using like iPad, phone, or computer,” counselor Randy McLelland said.

The new website provides a faster, user-friendly way to locate necessary information.

“So, one thing we wanted was a cascading way of accessing the content it was limited to 15 topics. Now people can access the content faster — with only one click,” McLelland said. “These are prettier, for a lack of a better way to put it, than the way we were trying to put forward. We can put up the upcoming plays, college information, sports broadcasting and the Talon, so now people can access it quicker than they could before.”

The webmasters researched the current trends in school websites before making the change.

“Since we are a college preparatory school, we spend a lot of time looking at college websites. For example, University of Washington, has big pictures cascading the home page. It is sort of like the thing right now, for school websites,” McLelland said.

Students have varying opinions on the new website change.

“I think that it is overall better on a computer or laptop, but way worse on a mobile phone,” sophomore Shaan Malhotra said. “This is because on the old mobile website everything I needed to access was on the first page I opened. Now everything I want or need to access on a regular basis is buried behind a bunch of other pages I need to open to get there.”

The last major design upgrade to the site was made five years ago.

“The content has always been up to par. Well, now all of this information has been made easier to find,” McLelland said.