About the Website

The main page of the website gives a news slide show where the top nine stories will be displayed. The left column (displayed on all pages in the website) displays a search box, latest news snippets, upcoming events, RA on duty, face of the month and the weather.

The website is divided into seven broad categories which are displayed in the top menu.

1. About Mercator - The top link 'About Mercator' redirects you to the front page of the website. This sections gives you all the information about Mercator College - from a short overview of the college and collegiate system to the house rules and the mascot.

2. The College Office - This section gives you an overview of what the college office is and the subsections give you detailed information about the services and facilities provided by the college office. Information about reservation of conference room, to renting out games or books from the college office or information about where to go when you have a gripe about the college facilities is all provided in here.

3. People - contains information about the residents of the college - from its administrative bodies (the College Masters, RAs, College Office Team and College MPs) to its students, represented in the 'Mercatorians' and 'Mercator Face of the Month' and not to forget the honorary members and the Aramark staff.

4. Events - In this section you can find more information about the rich social life and traditions of Mercator College.

5. Hot Links - Collection of various interesting links that you would find very useful during your studies at Jacobs University. Links to LDAP (the Jacobs people search), the college FAQ, the drivers (for the printers and scanners in the college office and the quiet study areas), the weekly Aramark Menu, pizza delivery services delivering to the campus and blogs - the student run blog and the college office team blog. Of interesting note however is the link called Mercator Places that gives you walking directions to important places around the campus.

6. Gallery - Capturing moments from Fall 2004 - it is an extensive collection of images depicting the rich social life in Mercator College.

7. Emergency - All the information you need during an emergency. It is however important to memorize the two important numbers - 4800 (Porters) and 5301 (Mercator Emergency Number).

Why a new website?

The original Mercator College Website (it is still accessible here - please bear in mind that we are still working on archiving it so most of the links on there would not work) was launched in 2004 and was the first college website amongst the then three colleges at Jacobs University. Over the past five years, our excellent webmasters (Ivan M, Ivan St. and Ango Paul) have done an excellent job in maintaining and updating the website. However, during this time the way that information is presented on the web has undergone a sea change. Our original website, while maintaining a clutter free and clean appearance was beginning to feel outdated. The other colleges, meanwhile, had redone their websites and also switched over to content management systems. Mercatorians, in general, felt it was time for change. The college website is our information portal, it is a window for the people outside the bubble to get a glimpse about our life inside. It is also an important information tool for the prospective students and their parents. Current students should also feel motivated to visit the website and read reports and view the images regarding future and past events.

Thus the change. The new website runs on Joomla! - an open source content management system making it easy for anyone to add articles. No need to know HTML/CSS to add simple articles anymore. Enjoy the new website, folks!

Credits

Creator: Rahul Jain

Amazing help: Billy Okal (the first webmaster for the new site) and Roy (RA - valuable input on designing the menu structure)

Template: elveSocial (Gavick Pro)

Mercator Logo: Octavian Druta

Banner : Ayşegül Büşra Todil

A big thanks to Vikram (our college master) for his constant feedback and supervision and the amazing Mercator college office team for their suggestions and journalistic skills.

We dedicate this website to all the Mercatorians.