Faculty Websites

ITS provides several ways to create faculty websites.  There are also many external services that provide website hosting.  

Types of Faculty Websites

From generally less technical/time-consuming to more technical/time-consuming:

Profile page in Drupal

The main college website is run on a system called Drupal.  All college employees get a profile page.  After logging in to Drupal, you can edit your profile page, adding the typical content of a faculty page (CV, biography, courses, publications, etc). 

Some examples:

• www.swarthmore.edu/profile/bradley-davidson 

• www.swarthmore.edu/profile/dominic-tierney 

• www.swarthmore.edu/profile/sibelan-forrester   

A link to this profile shows up automatically on the faculty-staff page of the department.

This is a nice, quick way to add typical content.  ITS takes care of all the theming, so the page matches the college style.  As time goes by, the site navigation and appearance will be updated, so you only need to worry about the content, not the appearance of the site. 

Learn more about editing Drupal profile pages. 

Mini Website using Drupal

It is possible to create a faculty website within Drupal that would let the faculty member create multiple pages of content and adjust the layout of the pages.  This makes it easy to focus on the content of the site without worrying about the theme. 

Some examples:

• www.swarthmore.edu/k-david-harrison

• www.swarthmore.edu/joshua-goldwyn

If you like the idea of using the Drupal profile, but want to have more than a single page, this is a good option.  

Some faculty have Drupal mini-sites for their research. Examples:

• www.swarthmore.edu/howard-lab

• www.swarthmore.edu/ssx-lab

Externally-hosted sites

Some faculty choose to host their pages off-campus and just put a link in their profile to their website.  This works fine, especially if you want to use a service to host your site.   Services such as SquareSpace, Wix, or WordPress.com are easy to use and usually have an attractive, modern look.  There is usually a yearly cost and there may be ads on the site.  

Some examples:

• www.formicalab.org 

• bakirathimani.swarthmore.edu

One consideration is that the site won't have a "swarthmore.edu" domain name.  This can be an advantage if you want to have a specific name.  It is still easy to link to an external site from the Faculty page on the departmental site. 

Other Options

Domain of One’s Own

Domain Of One's Own is a service available that can be used to create a WordPress site or host HTML pages.  This type of site is usually more work for professors to set up and maintain, so is best suited for specific use cases.  

Some examples:

• darkuniverse.swarthmore.edu 

• barranca.domains.swarthmore.edu

Google Sites

Google Sites is an easy, free way to build a site and recent versions have the ability to look more sophisticated. Google Sites are part of Swarthmore’s Google Workspace, so are available to Swarthmore employees and students. It is possible to embed Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and even Google Drive folder listings into a site. For instance, the site will be automatically updated when a Google Doc is changed. Get started at sites.google.com.

Example:

• sites.google.com/swarthmore.edu/biomechanics/home

Additional considerations

• The Drupal profile is the quickest and easiest way to get a good looking faculty page.  The site theme is updated periodically to keep it looking modern.

• If a faculty member is on a limited term position (e.g. leave replacement), they may prefer to have the site hosted externally so that they can keep it when transferring to another institution. 

• Make sure to review the "Fast Five" Essentials to Preparing Materials to understand accessibility issues when preparing your materials.

• ReviewBest Practices: Webpage Creation for specifics about accessibility and webpage creation.  

If you have any questions, get in touch with your Academic Technologist.