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New Look Starting To Appear On National Park Websites

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A new, trimmer, look is being rolled out on national park websites.

As we told you early this week, the National Park Service is revamping its websites in advance of the agency's centennial next year. Some of the changes can already be seen on a number of park websites.

Currently, the NPS's IT staff is working on moving all non'“Plan Your Visit sections of park websites (i.e., Photos & Multimedia, History & Culture, Nature & Science, For Teachers, For Kids, News, Management, Support Your Park, and Bookstore) into two top-level navigation items, Learn About the Park and Get Involved.

Park Service staff say the creation of this new navigation structure for park websites "resulted from a year of interviews with internal and external stakeholders, testing with website visitors and volunteers, work with a design firm (Threespot), and an analysis of best practices. These changes are designed to improve the visitor experience, assist in making NPS.gov mobile friendly in the spring of 2015, and prepare NPS.gov for the centennial designs that will launch in January 2016."

As of this week, the automated process moving the park website content has made its way through park websites in the Alaska, Intermountain, and Southeast regions. By Saturday, parks in all the other regions should have gone through the migration.

As you'™ll see on sites that have already had their content migrated:

* The park navigation is now collapsed into three top-level navigation labels of Plan Your Visit, Learn About the Park, and Get Involved.

* The two new landing pages for Learn About the Park and Get Involved are live.

 

Comments

The new site for Glacier NP is working fine. The new layout seems logical; once it's in place for all the parks and users get used how the homes pages are organized, it will be easy to follow the same "path" to similar information on all the park websites.

If visitors can easily find information they need to plan a visit before they even leave home, they can make better use of their time once they get to the park - even if the visitor center is closed, or not close to their point of entry.


As just sent to Grand Teton National Park and spokesperson Ms. Jackie Skaggs:  Not surprising Grand Teton National Park's HOME website pano image of the Teton Mountain range is not level and very amateaurist...of course what could we expect for millions and millions of wasted dollars...professionalism?


Interesting that if you go to the spanish version the layout totally changes and there is no return link to the English version 


When we came back from the national parks in 1959, my mother bought my brother and me a World Book Encyclopedia after the salesman was smart enough to show her a picture of the Teton Range--and Grand Canyon--and Yellowstone. Gus and I read those books until they virtually fell apart.

Few websites can compare with the wonder of a book. You get to hold it; you get to smell it; you get to "feel" all of the work that went into it. And you know what? Teachers in American elementary schools are beginning to find that children still love books. So please, good people. Send in your articles for the National Parks Portfolio. We are going to put a BOOK on the desks of Congress. True, they may not know what to do with it, but more than anything electronic it will say work, and passion, and thought. If the children of America are beginning to understand that again, there is hope.


Alfred, great idea! Can you provide a few details about sending photos for that Portfolio (where to submit, format of photos, etc,?)


Ohh gosh, here we go with the "it was way better back in the past...  nothing these youngsters do today will ever be like what it was back then..."..  Please.   I guess, anyone that does anything digitally doesn't put passion into their work.  How utterly offensive. 


If someone is willing to organize a project that would put a book of quality photos of parks into the hands of members of congress, more power to them. That's one more way to try to keep the value of parks in front of them.


I don't have a problem with that.  What I have a problem with is Alfred assuming that anything digital lacks merit, and won't evoke emotive responses towards the parks.  Truly, I shouldnt be offended by such lack of insight.


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