Frequent visitors to the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh’s home page (www.uwosh.edu) might mistakenly think they took a wrong turn in cyberspace.

The University of Wisconsin Oshkosh recently launched the first phase of a large-scale project to rebuild the University’s Web presence.

The new home page reflects a shift in focus to reach external audiences. Since the University balances the needs of many constituents and purposes — such as recruiting new students, recruiting new faculty and staff, maintaining relationships with alumni and supporting fundraising efforts — while supporting current students, faculty and staff.

The new home page provides easy access to the tools the campus community uses most, including one-click access to such resources as Titan Mail, D2L and Polk Library, in the upper right corner.

The new site represents the first phase of an ongoing project to update key areas of the University’s online presence. Through extensive research on University Web site best practices and emerging trends as well as an enormous amount of collaboration and focus groups on campus, the new site was designed specifically to help UW Oshkosh reach its goals.

While the first phase encompasses a large portion of the Web site, a significant fraction remains to be updated on this work-in-progress. Going forward, more sections of the site will be updated, with a major focus on making the site more functional for current students, faculty and staff.

The project has benefited from the campus community’s feedback.