Artemis ShmuelYou’re not alone if you’ve been experiencing technical issues with the Santa Ana College website. A redesign began in February, and updates have begun rolling out. However, students and faculty have reported a number of issues with the new website.
The website was redesigned because the old one was using an outdated module from 2013 to 2016; with that redesign came some unexpected issues with navigation and optimization.
“I was trying to click a link and kept running into dead ends. It would take a long time to load, then just give me a 404,” said Jair Suchite, a public fire service major at SAC. This presents an issue for students looking to find important information. However, it possesses a higher level of significance for students who engage in distance learning and online classes.
According to SAC Digital Media Specialist Young Kim, the 404 pages that don’t work are actually not the fault of the school. For the URLs to link to the correct page, the links need to be updated by Google.
Beyond just being taken to pages that don’t function properly, the ones that do aren’t running smoothly either. Christian Godinez, a criminal justice major at SAC, said the website was slower overall, was redirected to the wrong pages, and had the website crash while navigating it.
The old website was hosted on the SharePoint platform, a site that isn’t going to be supported after July 2026. The website wasn’t well supported on desktop, but even less so on mobile devices.
“You go on your phone, and more than half of the things that go on your phone screen don’t adjust to the phone screen. It’s like chopped in half, and you probably have to scroll sideways to see a page and all that stuff. It’s just not an intuitive design,” said Kim. “It just doesn’t fit like the modern standards that we need from a website.”
The new site is looking promising, though it isn’t without its issues. The technical issues are being worked on every day.
Faculty and students are in communication with the PIO’s office, informing them of the issues they face when navigating the website
“I do like the way it looks, and I know there are hiccups when you create a website. The issues are not hugely significant, but they did create barriers,” said Merari Weber, who also serves as Academic Senate VP of Community Operations.
Kim recommended using the search engine provided in the top right corner of the website. He also suggests, “If you’re more AI savvy, the chatbot that we have on the bottom right corner of the homepage.” This tool can help guide students to the resources they need amidst the updates the website is undergoing.
