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Bethany College CMS and Flash Virtual Tour

Company Overview

Bethany, a prestigious liberal arts college in West Virginia, was founded March 2, 1840 by Alexander Campbell who provided the land and funds for the first building and served as the first president. Now more than 160 years later, Bethany College is a contemporary institution dedicated to a tradition of liberal arts as seen in their wide array of studies. The award of bachelor of science and bachelor of arts degrees is offered in more than 30 fields of study, many with options for emphasis.

Bethany College

Opportunity

Bethany was looking to better utilize their website in attracting new students from all over the world. They also requested a content management system (CMS) in order to allow staff and students to effectively manage the ever-expanding website as it moved forward. Working with our partners at ConcreteCMS, Swipht deployed a comprehensive WYSIWYG content management system which is both powerful and easy to use.

In addition to a contemporary website that would appeal to more savvy prospective students, Bethany requested a Virtual Campus Tour which Swipht built in Flash to complement the website, as well as provide website visitors with an engaging interactive tour of the campus and the college’s many facilities. Like the website, the Flash based Virtual Campus Tour is dynamically driven by Concrete CMS. This aspect allows staff and students to add and update the tour whenever they want, keeping it fresh and up to date.

Bethany College Virtual Campus Tour

Solution

Beginning with design, the Swipht creative team provided Bethany with a wide selection of design options ranging from an "urban-hip" approach oriented towards students, to a refined, contemporary feel geared more towards the professors and alumni. Collaborating with the Bethany team and an iterative design process, we came up with a clean and organic design style that appeals to incoming students as much as it does to the professors.

Our PHP partner ConcreteCMS deployed the content management system in parallel with site development which led to an extremely timely project schedule. In addition, Bethany students and staff were provided with e-learning tools and remote training in the use of the CMS by Concrete’s training staff and were up and running within hours.

Results

Bethany’s new website launched in May, and the Virtual Campus Tour launched in July to rave reviews from students and staff alike. The Virtual Campus Tour is constantly evolving as content is added, as is the website. The CMS affords the Bethany webmasters with the ability to make rapid updates while adhering to an organized version control and approval system inherent in Concrete CMS’s product, thereby ensuring a sane and timely website management process.

Technologies

  • PHP
  • Concrete CMS
  • MySQL
  • Flash
  • Action Script