UPDATE: The new WUsports.com is now up and running. The athletic department’s website redesign was delayed by technical difficulties, as it was originally supposed to launch Thursday, May 27, at 10:15 a.m. However, the site made it’s debut Friday morning.

THURSDAY, MAY 27: The Washburn University athletics department is planning to unveil their new website Friday morning.

The website redesign, located at the same URL as the current one, www.wusports.com, was originally set to launch today at 10:15 a.m., but was pushed back because of technical difficulties.

“We’ve had the same design for the last two years with Sidearms Sports, who are the folks who host our website and designed everything on the back end,” said Gene Cassell, Washburn’s sports information director. “We couldn’t be any more thrilled with them and that’s why we re-uped with them for another three years.”

Cassell said the purpose of the redesign is to make the website more user-friendly and to make photos and social media links more accessible than the previous website allowed. Sidearm Sports made the redesign based off input from Cassell and assistant sports information/marketing director Mike Knipper.

“We’ve had those buttons on the current website with the ‘Follow us on Facebook’ and ‘Follow us on Twitter’ and we’ve made those buttons more prominent,” said Cassell. “We’ve also added an RSS feed and a Twitter feed logo and a Facebook logo up at the top of the page. Those logos are pretty wide known, people can see those and click right on those and be able to sign up for our fan page and follow us on Twitter, as well.”

Cassell said the most notable changes to the design were the size and shape of the photos.

“Folks like seeing photos and athletes like seeing their photos, so we’ve done a pretty big change with the photos with the size they are on the website,” he said.

To get your last look at the current Washburn athletics website, go to www.wusports.com.