About the Project
Montclair.edu is a critical component of the University’s communication infrastructure.
In 2026, we are migrating all of the content on this website to a streamlined three-site system that optimizes our future web presence: a public facing site (montclair.edu) and two internally-focused sites (inside.montclair.edu) and (nest.montclair.edu). While Inside will be the comprehensive digital resource for our internal community: current students, faculty, and staff, it will it be a publicly accessible website – not a private, password-protected intranet. Nest will continue to be password-restricted.
Project Goals
This project has a comprehensive set of objectives designed to improve the user experience, support our university’s mission, and ensure efficiency in managing the website.
- Prioritizing Student Recruitment: While serving the needs of all user groups – prospective students, current students, faculty, staff, alumni and broader community – our primary focus is to provide prospective students with easy access to crucial information such as affordability, programs, student outcomes and the application process.
- Enhancing the Brand: We aim to strengthen Montclair State University’s brand and differentiate our institution effectively, elevating the first impression given when a user first discovers the site.
- Improving the User Experience: We want to create a website that offers a seamless and satisfying experience for all stakeholders, effectively supporting both internal and external university audiences, and optimizing for accessibility, sustainability and efficiency.
Guiding Principles for the Project
Simplifying and Strengthening Information Architecture and User Experience
We aim to reduce friction in accessing critical information and priority content while more efficiently organizing content intended for internal vs. external audiences. Including:
- Streamlining user paths for prospective students, reducing clicks, and improving enrollment funnel efficiency.
- Evaluating content distribution between internal and external audiences and optimizing the website for effective marketing. This will include identifying a new strategy for delivering content intended for students and employees, so that the website can focus more on recruiting students and engaging external audiences.
- Ensuring improved navigation for site users and easier maintenance for content editors and approvers.
- Providing user-friendly content creation templates and enhancing content accessibility
- Ensuring continued accessibility for persons with disabilities and compliance with federal regulations and global standards
- Finding ways to better meet the needs of non-English-speaking audiences, such as providing content in other languages and optimizing for online searches conducted in other languages
- Maintaining compliance with international privacy laws and data protection standards
- Aligning with the UX value framework, including business, brand, customer, and employee values
Improving SEO, Data Capture, and Analysis
We will work on enhancing optimization for search engines (SEO), including optimizing for voice search and addressing the deficits of the current internal search engine. We will enhance the collection and use of data to continuously improve site and content performance.
Clarifying Roles and Responsibilities
Caring for our web presence is a shared responsibility. This project will clarify roles and responsibilities for University Communications and Marketing, Information Technology, and the many academic and administrative units that manage content on montclair.edu. We will also seek ways to streamline production and management, such as use of workflows and a “publish once, appear many times” strategy. We also need to establish best practice approaches to keeping content current, including removing content that is no longer accurate or necessary.
Reviewing Technology
We will explore options to enhance our current web content management system (WordPress) or consider potential migration to a new system, taking into account project goals, user needs, content management strategies and governance requirements.
What We’ve Accomplished
Program Finder + Program Pages
- Completed full rebuild on current website (Sept 2025)
- UCM wrote and launched ~270 new program pages with support from college/unit SMEs
Web Information Management Plan
- Formalized UCM as sole publishing authority for Montclair.edu Academics & Aid content
- Began transition to a center-led, coordinated model of responsibility
- Full information management structure launches with new sites in 2026
inside.montclair.edu Project
- Leadership approved creation of new Drupal-based internal site (July 2025)
- Partnered with OHO Interactive to design and implement the platform (Oct 2025)
- Will support distributed publishing across colleges and units with UCM guidance and IT integration support
- Business Unit and College Web Editor Verification and Liaison process completed (December 2025)
montclair.edu Overhaul in Progress
- UX + sitemaps finalized across site sections
- Content Strategy team writing new site copy (complete by April 2026)
- Web Team building in Drupal — starting with new program pages
Project Leadership
Sponsor: Jonathan Koppell
Accountable Executive: Joseph Brennan
Project Director: Sandy Deane
Project Coordination and Support: Ariana Leyton-White
Project Vendor: OHO Interactive
Core team: Experts from University Communications and Marketing and IT
The project team will work closely with multiple stakeholders across campus, including the Web Content Managers and others who are engaged in producing and managing the website. All members of the community will have multiple opportunities to contribute their thinking over the course of the entire initiative, starting with a broad and deep assessment this fall. We will provide regular communications and maintain open lines of communication.
For any questions, please contact Joseph Brennan or Sandy Deane.