“Behind the times” might be an understatement when one thinks of Guilford’s former athletics website. However, Feb. 17 marked the launch date for something entirely new and improved.

While both the athletics website and the entire Guilford site were in the works for an upgrade, the athletics website was the first to go live. Both redesigns were implemented with Guilford’s new marketing plan in mind.

“The overall web redesign project is a component of the integrated marketing plan and the athletic site was a component of the overall Web redesign project,” said Web Project Manager Aimee White in an e-mail interview.

PrestoSports, the website design company to whom Guilford outsourced the project, collaborated with Guilford on ideas for the redesign.

“The new site was created because the redesign project included an upgrade of the athletic pages, and we decided that going to a third party that could build the functionality we needed was the best way to go,” said White.

An overarching focus of the athletics website redesign was to create something uniquely Guilford.

“We looked at a few sites Presto had done and gave them an idea of the look we wanted and they did the mockups and we tweaked,” said White. “They built the site and we populated it with the content.”

“The company asked some questions along the way to get a sense of what we were looking for,” said Sports Information Director and Assistant Director of Athletics Dave Walters. “There is still room for growth and change as time goes on, which is nice.”

Collaboration between Guilford and PrestoSports produced a new and different look for the college’s athletics page. Now, the athletics website is easier to operate because of collaboration with PrestoSports and the ODAC website.

“The ODAC is also a Presto site and we now only populate on our (Guilford) site and it pulls the information into the ODAC site,” said White.

“Once we have plugged the information into the system, it is amazing how the ODAC can receive the information on their site and it is instantaneously up to date,” said sophomore Sarah Cutright, assistant in the Sports Information Office.

One of the other intended goals of the new site was to be more user-friendly. Through this new upgrade, users will be able to more easily access press releases, statistics, and student-athlete profiles.

“I was able to have a photo, story, and stats up from the women’s basketball win over Bridgewater last night in around 30 minutes while sitting in the Salem Civic Center,” said Walters. “On the old site, I wouldn’t have been able to do that at all.”

“It’s awesome,” said junior Andrew Thayer, a member of the golf team. “The site allows you to get instant stats and scores so you can see how other Guilford teams are doing.”

Although the new site is officially up and running, it has not yet reached its full potential.

“While the site is live, I would say it’s still very much a work in progress,” said Walters. “Hopefully over the summer we’ll be able to work on getting more archival data and other new elements in place.”