The Athletics Department unveiled a brand new website this fall, tossing away the unwieldy domain name ase.tufts.edu/athletics in favor of gotuftsjumbos.com.
To make its new site, the Athletics Department bypassed the Tufts Information Technology Services (ITS), which handled the former site since its inception, and outsourced the job to a third−party vendor named Presto Sports, a Maryland−based company whose client list of over 200 universities includes nearby schools like Brandeis, MIT and Babson.
"We wanted a different look, since the old site was kind of out of date," Tufts Director of Sports Information Paul Sweeney said.
"We felt like we were stuck back in time a bit," he added. "This new site has all of the bells and whistles."
Upon entry to the new site, visitors are immediately greeted with a plethora of Tufts multimedia, including a video about the history of Tufts Athletics and a large photo slideshow featuring the latest athletics news for the school. Next to the slideshow is a scrollable scoreboard of current and upcoming Jumbos sporting events.
Each time the site is refreshed, different images of Tufts' athletic teams, students and campus are shown at the top of the screen. The site also features revamped home pages for each varsity team, complete with rosters, statistics and schedules, as well as pages with information concerning recruiting, camps and physical education classes.
Administrators and athletes agree that gotuftsjumbos.com is a far cry from the old site, which many say was in desperate need of a visual makeover.
"This one is way better and more legitimate looking," Samantha Jaffe, a sophomore on the volleyball team, said. "If I was a recruit looking at Tufts, I would be really impressed by how professional it is."
Sweeney and his staff started working with Presto Sports on the new site in March 2009 and finalized it late this summer, though some archived rosters and statistics are still in the process of being transferred.
The Athletics Department decided to go with Presto Sports because they were impressed with the work the company did on the websites of their NESCAC neighbors Trinity and Williams.
"The recent pattern has been to have one of these [third−party] companies develop your site," Sweeney said. "The fact that it's top−notch and as good as anybody's is just another sign that athletics matters at Tufts."
Tufts ITS had handled the athletics website since its launch in 1999 and had recently redesigned the site in the winter of 2007, work that Sweeney described as "exceptional support."
However, ITS's role in creating the new site was decreased, with its only current job being to temporarily house recruitment forms that Presto Sports is unable to handle.
"Our involvement with the new site was very limited," ITS's Will Hilley said.
Hilley, who was part of the team that rebuilt the site in 2007, says that he has not yet looked at the new Presto Sports−powered site. "For the time being, all that we are doing is hosting the recruitment forms," he said.
As for the new name of the site, Sweeney says that he considered a few others (including gojumbos.com, which had already been taken by the Tufts cross−country and track and field team).
But gotuftsjumbos.com was quickly agreed upon as a powerful and easily marketable name for a site that should last well into the decade.
"There were a couple other [names] we would have wanted, but this was the best one available," Sweeney said. "People will have no problem finding gotuftsjumbos.com on a Google search."
