Monday, January 07, 2008

Now this is a functional website...

You'd think that after years of dealing with the same start-of-semester rush of website usage, and several semesters of statements that upgrades are being done to allow greater utilization during said rush, that the organization in charge of a website could be prepared for said rush.

Well, you'd be wrong. At least in the case of the BYU website. The above pictures are screenshots taken about 15 minutes apart while I was trying to check my progress report to see if I need to change my schedule before tomorrow. The astute observer will notice that the progress meter in the lower left of the window says, "Done". The second one indeed looks done, but the astute observer will also notice that the _one_ thing I need right now is missing. That's right, no log in button. I don't care if that's the only thing that shows up on the entire screen, that one little button is the only thing I need right now. Way to prioritize, OIT.

Now you may ask, isn't there another way? And at first glance it appears that there is. By trying to directly access the page/service I want, I get this nifty page, which at first glance looks like it will let me log in and take care of business.
But after entering my login info, I am miraculously led straight back to the _exact_ _same_ _page_!!!
Oh, and that outlined link at the top of the page that presumably leads back to the BYU homepage? It goes to:
Again, hats off to BYU's Office of Information Technology. So the old website wasn't "pretty" or whatever they thought they were gaining by changing it. At least it worked.