Have you experienced any trouble navigating the new Fresno City College website? If so, you’re not alone. Some students and staff have expressed their frustrations at the new website that launched last year.

“Overall, I like the new design and what is to come for the website,” Stacy Bracamontes, dispatcher at the SCCCD Police Department, said.  “Being an employee here on campus, I often use the search bar on the FCC website to help direct me to any information I need from different departments.”

However, Bracamontes added, “Not having the staff directory online yet can make it hard to do my job.”

Debbie Nichols, FCC webmaster, explained that building “a website can take up to a couple years.”

Among the many steps that go into creating a website, Nichols said, include making sure the needs of all departments are met, meeting with design companies and coming up with new look, along with a formal bidding process and collections of data.

“When the semester first started, I was trying to search Canvas or Webadvisor on Google, and I kept getting linked to an error page,” said Samantha Hernandez, said. “It made it hard for me to do simple things like accessing my homework or looking up my class schedule.”

Nichols said that creating a new website is a work in progress, and people forget it is more than a one-person job; yet, only one person is tackling this huge task at FCC. 

Additionally, the webmaster must ensure that the website meets the section 508 of Electronic and Information technology (EIT) accessibility requirements set by federal and state governments.This code makes sure that those who are disabled can still access the website.  “This can take up to 8 months,” Nichols said.

“We finally fixed the calendar online last week,” Nichols said. “We have not started on the staff directory because we are in the process of data clean up, and the student portal is an ongoing process of testing that we are working on.”

“The search bar on the FCC website is now fully functional and has no errors,” says Nichols.

Nichols said she welcomes feedback regarding changes in the website from students and faculty.  Forms to provide feedback can be found at http://www.fresnocitycollege.edu/about/accessibility/index.html

“Our goal is to accommodate the students as best as we can,” Nichols said. “We are always looking for someday and future changes that come from our feedback page.”