A makeover months in the making is finally complete. HottyToddy.com is excited to announce the debut of its brand-new website, now updated to reflect the needs of its growing platform and audience.
Set to launch at the end of August, the new and improved website will still be found at the HottyToddy.com web address, where users can continue to access their favorite Oxford and Lafayette County news content.
The website overhaul, led by graphic designer Hannah Vines at the School of Journalism and New Media at Ole Miss, will feature a variety of stylistic and functional changes intended to modernize the HottyToddy experience. Vines, who has been hard at work since the spring on the new interface, said that her goal was to make the user experience as interactive as possible.
“For this website, we wanted it to be a little more interactive because the old website is very stagnant,” Vines said. “There’s nothing rotating. There’s nothing animated… We wanted to make it as dynamic and visual as we possibly could.”
HottyToddy’s new visual features will streamline its browsing experience, showcasing the website’s most important content in one central location. A “rotating slider” at the top of the homepage will act as a banner to display stories that are receiving the most attention on both the website and social media. Other features include sections for live social media updates and the latest videos from the HottyToddy Youtube channel.
The website revamp is the result of input from many different sources. Ideas for the new design were also contributed by integrated marketing and communications students at the School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi. Students from Professor Scott Fiene’s IMC campaign class worked to create interesting concepts for the website during the 2019-2020 school year.
“Having the campaign class, their input was really important,” Vines said. “Since they’re a younger generation we really wanted to pay attention to what they were saying and some of the ideas they were throwing out.”
Members of the HottyToddy staff are more than ready to embrace the new changes to the platform.
“Due to the growth of our platform and users, it was necessary for us to update and modernize the look of the website and the way we deliver information,” HottyToddy Manager Rachel West said.
Sports Editor Adam Brown said he believes that the update brings a fresh look and user-friendly interface to the website.
“I’m excited to have a new platform to bring the LOU community vital news,” he said.
Users may be unable to access the website as updates are applied prior to the launch at the end of the month. These issues should only persist for a few hours before the site returns to normal.
Staff Report
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