Project Website Support

Early in the planning process it is important to draw a distinction between the graphic design, information architecture and the website development itself. Graphic design could include the look-and-feel as well as the functioning of the website, covering such things as colors, fonts, navigation aids, decorative images, etc.

• Graphic design. Available platforms generally either allow you to apply designs of your own making, though the creation of custom HTML and CSS, or offer premade templated designs that you can select and apply to your site. The former method of course offers much more flexibility, but be a quite difficult, (or expensive) prospect. Using platforms that offer premade designs is of course much easier, but you will likely need to choose between a small number of designs offered. It may be surprisingly difficult to change some seemingly basic things such as fonts and banner images. Examples of platforms that offer pre-built design include Princeton Site Builder, Wix, Wordpress.com, SquareSpace and Google Sites.
• Information Architecture. The structure of the content presented on a website may require decisions about hierarchy, grouping, searchability and granularity.
• Web development. Web development may refer to custom HTML, javascript, database connectivity or other coding that provide special functionality to a website. Creating a searchable archive or a websites that solicit information or data from users might be examples of websites that require some custom coding.

Many scholarly research websites include some sort of searchable collection of data. This data is most often stored in a database running alongside the website responding to search queries submitted by users on the site. The complexity of the data you might like to make available and searchable on a website is a determining factor in choosing the proper platform.

• A relational database is one in which different types of information are stored in multiple tables but that can then be joined together via queries. For example, one might construct a database with a table for books, but a separate table for authors. This would then allow you to associate a single author with multiple books. For larger databases, it is almost always necessary to separate types of data in this way. If however your data consist of a list of one type of thing and can be easily contained in a single spreadsheet, you might want to consider simpler options that do not require a database. A Jekyll website, for example, is one in which records in a spreadsheet can be displayed in dynamic ways using only a spreadsheet as the data source.
• In some cases, the platform itself can be thought of as the database.  A Wordpress website for example, although commonly used as a blogging platform can be use as a rudimentary database with the additional of tags and categories.

A common assumption is that some sort of grant funding is needed to make a website. Some sources of grant funding may offer website development assistance and consulting as part of the award, but in many cases funding for the development of a website may not be strictly necessary.  One thing to keep in mind is that outside, non-Princeton designers and developers can be very expensive. While that may be completely appropriate in many cases, it might also be possible to begin with a simpler design at the start and to add functionality as the need arises. Making use of custom coding and design many also require that you establish and maintain a more sophisticated platform such as an OIT or externally hosted server for the project. Servers such as these will require that you keep the website software up to date and secure.

Funding sources to explore include:

• 250th Anniversary Fund
• Humanities Council Grants
• McGraw Digital Pedagogy Grants

Are you interested in sharing data and datasets? Please contact the Princeton Research Data Service to learn more about the many platforms available to you.