New athletics website up and running

After a series of delays, the revamped Portland State athletics website, www.goviks.com, launched last Monday. While not all of its features were active, the site should eventually offer Vikings fans much more than the old site.

The redesigned site was developed by JumpTV, a Canadian multimedia company that also maintains sites for University of Oregon and Oregon State University athletics.

“We give them the parameters of the things we want,” said Mike Lund, assistant athletic director for media relations. “We just kind of dummied up our own version of how we want it to appear. Obviously the features tend to be similar. It just depends on what you’re doing.”

The site will be maintained and updated by the athletic department using a versatile management tool that will allow more control over pages, Lund said.

“There’s more versatility in terms of the photos we can post and the links we can create,” Lund said. “We’re still kind of learning some of the different features.”

Over the next several weeks, Lund said he expects to add more features and pages, such as player profiles and some multimedia features. By next week, live stats should once again be active for games.

“I think it gives us a lot more potential than our old site. I like the look and feel,” said Athletic Director Torre Chisholm. “We’re going to look at doing a lot of podcast stuff highlighting the week’s activities.”

In addition, e-mail updates and newsletters should be available in the near future, though Lund could not specify a timeframe. More sports may be broadcast online, including women’s soccer games.

“It just takes time to get everything going,” he said. “We’ll be adding things in next weeks and months. We’re going to have other things online including e-commerce. We’ll be able to sell merchandise online.”

Chisholm said the site will cost $10,000 a year to maintain and that the university has entered a three-year contract with JumpTV.