Prospective and current ISU students will soon have a portal into information specifically tailored to their needs.

The Office of Admissions is working on “My Cyclone Cyberspace,” an Internet portal that makes it easier to find ISU information.

Having the portal allows students to access information they need from the ISU Web site more easily, said Marc Harding, director of admissions.

“It allows us to organize information in one place,” he said.

The portal has been in progress for a year and a half. Currently, there is a pilot version of the program online.

Tailoring the Web site to individual students is a simple process. For example, prospective students entering the chemistry department would have links to the chemistry Web site, information on related courses and photographs of Gilman Hall.

The site also featured streaming camera feed of the Campanile, as well as virtual postcards.

The portal is based on Active Server Pages, a Microsoft scripting language used to develop interactive Web pages, said Jeff Sorensen, system analyst at the Office of Academic Information Technology.

“It is a programming language used to do active things on the Web,” Sorensen said.

There are three stages the portal must go through before completion. Currently, it’s in the “infancy stage,” which involves organizing the information on the ISU Web site in a useful manner.

“It’s all in one place instead of this big bucket of stuff,” Harding said.

The next stage of development will make the portal “push” information to certain groups of users, Harding said. For instance, certain users would receive links to news items, application deadlines or notices for speakers coming to campus.

The final stage of development would customize the portal to specific individuals.

Harding hopes the portal will encourage prospective students to visit, apply and enroll at Iowa State. A paperless system reduces the cost and time used to send information by mail and allows for quicker delivery of information, Harding said.

Harding said the Office of Admissions probably needs to go gather feedback from users before determining whether the portal will be used in the future.