News

The Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences at Penn State is dedicated to life sciences research, scientific degree programs, professional training and encouraging new perspectives across disciplinary boundaries. Its online presence is made up of separate web sections that represent 11 research units, 12 graduate programs, and 8 instrumentation facilities. Six Feet Up and partner Abstract Edge teamed up to help The Huck Institutes embark on a complete overhaul of their Plone 4 based web presence. Plone is a great Content Management System (CMS) for large sites and custom solutions.

One priority was to drive visitors to the Graduate Programs section of the site. This section was emphasized across the homepage as the primary link in the navigation menu as well as the primary content section below a new slideshow.

A new slideshow was implemented using Six Feet Up's EasySlideshow for Plone to feature selected content from the various sections of the site on the homepage. To highlight the expert scientists that advise students, a Faculty Spotlight section was created on the main Graduate Programs page.

Additionally, a new search solution was developed to allow visitors to the site to find scientific instrumentation that the Institutes are equipped with. This provides direct access to pages with detailed information on the equipment and its location from the main instrumentation page. Adding search made it easy to find a piece of equipment quickly. Six Feet Up has developed enterprise search solutions that can provide multi-site search, weighted search, and user-based search.

Check out Huck Institutes' new site at http://www.huck.psu.edu/. Organizations interested in improving their website or intranet are encouraged to contact Carol Ganz carol@sixfeetup.com, Six Feet Up's Director of Customer Relationships, to investigate options.

If you would like a live demo of this website let us know at info@sixfeetup.com.