DURHAM, N.C. - Duke's online home is about to get a makeover.

A campus team has begun planning a new look for the university's home page and top-level pages, which were last refreshed almost four years ago.

Visitors come to Duke's home page, www.duke.edu, about 1 million times each month, looking for everything from admissions information to sports scores. Michael Schoenfeld, Duke's vice president for public affairs and government relations, said the redesign will better reflect Duke's identity and strategic priorities, while also helping visitors find information quickly.

Schoenfeld said the current design, with its emphasis on photo essays highlighting Duke themes, will give way to a richer approach filled with more dynamic content, including a series of gateways on topics such as research, global activities and the arts. The new site will also highlight the growing array of multimedia resources Duke offers on sites such as YouTube and iTunes U, with direct links to videos and podcasts produced by Duke schools and departments.

"The home page is now the busiest, most visible ‘front door' to Duke, so we want to present Duke's unique array of intellectual resources in a compelling, fresh, logical and easy to navigate way," Schoenfeld said. "We'll also continue to highlight the stories, videos and other material that appear daily on Duke Today and other campus sites."

The navigational items on the home page are unlikely to change much, according to team members. "We've been well-served by the existing navigation, which is similar to what you find at other universities," said David Jarmul, associate vice president for news and communications. "The biggest change will be in the design and in the site's use of the multimedia material Duke has been creating, as well as the increasingly rich content available on the sites of many of the schools and units."

Denise Haviland, director of communications and brand strategy, said the redesigned site will also provide a touchstone for university efforts to define and promote a clearer visual identity for the institution. The design will incorporate elements of the university's new admissions publications and coordinate with efforts under way to redesign Duke's administrative websites and those within Arts & Sciences.

The team shared a preview of the new design Wednesday morning at a meeting with people from across the campus involved with communications and web activities. It will meet with faculty, students and others to solicit feedback, and will seek comments on a blog that tracks the project, http://dn.duke.edu/dukeredesign/. The new site will be launched in the fall.

Three other team members -- Ben Riseling of in the Office of News and Communications (ONC), and Samantha Earp and Blyth Morrell of the Office of Information Technology -- are taking the lead in soliciting advice and feedback from Duke's web and technical experts.

Viget Labs, a local design firm, is assisting with part of the project in coordination with Blackwell Interactive, Duke's web services division, which is working with ONC to implement and deploy the new site.