|
Hey guys, I'm creating a website for my little brother as a fun side project of my own (to practice my web designing skills).
The main focus of the website is for an online discussion board (such as TL.net) for any and all students from his university. Kinda like Facebook, but without all the app requests!
Currently, here are the following things I have considered for the website: 1. Guide: For new students to see what's around the campus, and for senior students to give reviews of businesses / places around the campus (e.g. restaurants, shops, etc).
2. Forum: The heart of the website - an online discussion forum that also includes sections for posting on student clubs, a help section for your course section.
3. Events: Students can submit events that they are organizing so that all the events happening around the campus are easily consolidated.
4. Trading: Students can post things to buy and search for things to sell (an advertising board).
I felt that the above are fairly comprehensive of the student life, but as I left mine a few years back, I might have missed some things.
If this were your university's community website, I would like YOUR feedback on what you think would be a critical addition that would make it your favorite online hang out spot!
|
I think a very useful feature for a University website would be a calendar marking when and where to get free or heavily discounted food.
|
Study group chat rooms, attachable to events, so you could set up a time to work on homework for a class in a virtual study room.
|
What I noticed from my unis website and a couple attempts at community ones.
1. It has to be easy to use.
2. It needs to provide something the students can't get elsewhere. If all you provide is an event calendar forums and basic info of the region no one is going to use it when the forums can be replaced by just setting up a study group with current members of the class and using Google to find restaurants. This depends on how serious this is and how that campus scene is but in my city it's impossibly hard to figure out drink specials at bars without just showing up or checking each bars website. Having something that students will find practical outside of academics will help you to spread via word of mouth much easier. Another example would be something like getting in touch with whoever runs s HvZ game or something similar at your campus and offer to host their game on the site. It gets people to go to the website for something they want and they'll be much more likely to check out the other content.
|
@Chairman: 0.o never heard of such a thing here (apart from Groupon), but I'll take note of that for possible promo / marketing strategies for the local shops around..
@CatNzHat: That's a brill idea! I'll look into connecting a chat room for events then. Thanks.
@Mufaa: What do you mean by HvZ games? Sounds interesting.
|
Humans versus zombies. I don't know if campuses still do it but it was an event with a, couple hundred people where there are humans who wear armbands and zombies who have to tag them to turn them into zombies. The zombies win by eliminating the humans and the humans win by starving the zombies (24 hours without s conversion). Where s website is helpful is that it is tracked by player cards the humans carry that if they get tagged they have to give to the zombie. The zombies post their kills on the website to track the number of humans left and if a zombie is still alive. Additonally there are objectives each day for the humans for bonuses that are scheduled events. They have free sites for that but what your site could offer is something like a forum to post events and a place for humans to post "hey don't go by the student center, you're pretty much guaranteed to die" type deal. Obviously it doesn't have to be HiS but if recommend something along those lines that gives people an incentive to go on there instead of just for academics as most people do that in person.
|
@Mufaa: Ok thanks man! I'll have a look into that idea. Cheers!
|
|
|
|