Princeton Athletics moves to FANSonly
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On the Athletics Office homepage at www.princeton.edu/Athletics/ you'll find a cartoon Tiger hanging over an empty locker and a sign that declares "We've moved."
Athletics has indeed moved, from a modest site designed and maintained in-house to a site maintained by an outside vendor at www.goprincetontigers.com/.
Under a dynamic orange and black banner, the new site includes game recaps, feature articles, schedules, results, statistics, player profiles, facts about the University, online ticketing, audio broadcasts--and much, much more.
The site is produced by the FANSonly Network, the web's largest network of official college athletic sites. FANSonly maintains sites for approximately 60 other colleges, including Georgetown, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Stanford, Michigan and North Carolina.
User friendliness, proven record
What made Princeton choose FANSonly?
"User friendliness and a proven record of success with some of the country's finest athletic and academic institutions," says Kurt Kehl, associate director of athletics.
"FANSonly has created a publishing tool that makes updating our site easy and timely for members of the Office of Athletic Communications," Kehl explains. "We take the media release and game notes that we currently write, and copy and paste them into FANSonly's publishing tool. Within a couple of minutes we have new information on our site, and we don't have be concerned with html language. We can update or edit the site from anywhere we have access to the Internet.
"For larger files and publications," he adds, "we provide FANSonly with an electronic copy, and they handle the necessary coding to ensure that the text is web-ready."
Joint design, work in progress
FANSonly and Princeton jointly designed the site, which continues to be a work in progress, according to Kehl. FANSonly provides Princeton Athletics this service in exchange for the right to sell advertising on the site.
The design permits banner advertising at two locations, as well as an online partner section. Both Princeton and FANSonly can solicit sponsorships, and each will benefit financially from such arrangements, Kehl says. Princeton has the final right of approval for any changes to the site.
The new site has been up since the week of October 18, and it currently includes much but not all of the information available on the old site. By the end of 1999, however, the Department of Athletics expects to have everything available at the FANSonly site, and the old Tiger and his empty locker will become no more than a cybermemory.
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