The IHSA has a new-look website, updating and expanding the Illinois high school group's online presence at ihsa.org.
The Illinois High School Association unveiled an updated version of its website on Friday morning in correlation with its 125th anniversary.
This is the first revamp of the Illinois prep sports governing body's website since 2011. The site is a hub of information for schools, officials that includes schedules, results and records dating back decades.
IHSA technology director Matt Jensen, a Peoria native, has been the architect behind the facelift.
“Building a new user experience that was more current with the technology, as far as being mobile and being more responsive," Jensen said of his vision of the new site. “Scores updating in real time. Making everything kind of searchable and putting more content out there that’s coming from MaxPreps, coming from our schools.
“Basically, creating a better user experience.”
Jensen says he’s been working on the upgrade for the last five months.
“We built it completely from scratch,” he said. “… It’s turned out really nice. All the data is coming from inside our data center, so as scores are getting updated from all of our tournaments and games, it will be out there.
“That’s pretty cool. That’s something we haven’t been able to do.”
A lot of the familiar features are a part of the upgrade, including pulldown menus for the "Sports & Activities," as well as "schools," which will now be searchable. Calendars will update regularly, and the video archive has been reconfigured with over 2,700 historic games available.
Not all the content will have made its way to the new page yet, but the old site can still be visited at archive.ihsa.org.
“A lot of it is really just kind of redeveloped into the mobile format and making things a little bit easier,” Jensen said, “Trying to limit the fact that there’s so many pages on our old site. … The idea is that we’re only going to bring over the current stuff; while keeping all the history and all the records will be the same layouts for the time being.”
As for the future of the site?
“There’s going to be a lot more to build in the future,” Jensen said, noting adding live results from state finals like tennis, golf and other sports.
New ihsafootball.com design
The official home of all things Illinois high school football has a brand-new look available online, mobile and in app form.
“Awesome,” Jensen said of the redesign. “It’s version 2.0 in comparison to the last one.”
Fans can sign up and select their favorite teams and conferences. This will generate a custom front page with schedules, scores and standings.
An added feature is the “championship predictions” where users can select their state titles winners for all eight classes as well as 8-man. These picks will be uploaded to the "Fan Zone" portion of the site and watch the polling results.
“That page has always been very mobile,” Jensen said, “but it is definitely a much easier to use. … Being able to personalize it, it will be a good point for people.”
Adam Duvall is a Journal Star sports reporter. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @AdamDuvall.
This article originally appeared on Journal Star: IHSA unveils new website to celebrate 125th anniversary
Category: General Sports
