By Becky Kerner
Over two years ago, SIAM set out to update its main website: www.siam.org. The project’s primary goal was to increase the site’s usability, functionality, and value for the community. Through surveys, focus groups, and hundreds of conversations, we talked to you—our community members—about what features would be most helpful. With an updated look and feel, better organization of information, and more robust technological integrations, we hope that we have delivered. Read on to discover more about the new website, and please take some time to peruse it yourself.
Responsive/Mobile Friendly
Our website is officially smartphone-friendly! If you visited our old site on your mobile phone, you know that navigating it productively was nearly impossible. The new site, on the other hand, was strategically designed with a mobile user in mind. Notable features include readable text without the need for zoom, adequate space for tap targets, and no requirement for horizontal scrolling.
Emphasized Areas of Research
Through countless conversations with members of the community, we learned that people found the content on the old siam.org useful but struggled to access pertinent information. A significant focus of this redesign project was to better gather and organize relevant content. We mapped all SIAM publications, conferences, activity groups, and general fields of community interest to 17 core research areas, such as data science, linear algebra, optimization, etc. These pages cross-pollinate materials regarding SIAM publications, activity groups, and related events.
Synchronization with SIAM’s Database
New integrations with our database allow information about key volunteers on SIAM committees, editorial and activity group boards, prize selection committees, student chapters, and things like affiliations or email addresses—which have historically been displayed on the website—to update automatically as soon as users revise their profiles. Remember to always keep your information up-to-date so that it displays accurately on our website and SIAM knows how to best contact you.
Comprehensive Cross-Domain Site Search
If you ever wished that there was one place to search for content spanning all SIAM web domains—our journals and books sites, the SIAM Job Board, and SIAM News—the new website has made that wish a reality. The search function on the top right delivers results from all of these important information hubs, making it easy for you to find anything of interest. We plan to iron out a few outstanding kinks involving search results over the next few months, and appreciate your patience as we work to improve this feature.
Archive.siam.org
Do you use our website to reference historic data? It would not surprise us if you did, considering our conference archive alone gets over 20,000 views every year. We have ensured that you will not lose access to the decades of information from our previous site by creating archive.siam.org. This is essentially a duplication of our prior website, where you can access old content that is now frozen in time. Some sections will pop you over to the new site for updated information, while others will keep you on the page in reference to older content. A link to the archive is available on the top left of the new website.
Resources for Getting Involved
Not only are we providing more information about SIAM’s participation in the global applied math and computational science communities, now you can also more easily discover opportunities for involvement. From volunteering your time and making a donation to simply spreading the word about SIAM and the fields we represent, you can have an impact. Check out the pages on collaborations, getting involved, and our Newsroom for resources—flyers, videos, logos, social media photos, etc.—to share with your own networks. And do not forget that you can now share helpful content via email and social media right from our website through the “ShareThis” widget (a black circle with an arrow), which resides on the bottom left of our key resource pages.
If you would like to offer feedback on the new site, simply click the “Feedback” widget on the bottom right side of your browser.
Read more about the new website in SIAM President Nick Higham’s corresponding column.
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Becky Kerner is the digital communications and brand manager at SIAM. |