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Building a Website at Tufts
Websites are a primary tool for communicating the work of students, faculty, and staff across the Tufts campuses and the value of a Tufts education. Each website on the Tufts domain is a window into the research and scholarship of our community.
To deploy consistent and effective digital experiences to our audiences, Tufts Technology Services, in partnership with the Office of University Communications and Marketing, ensures that university websites conform to policies and standards that reflect the mission and brand of the university.
If you plan to build a new website or redesign an existing site, we encourage you to schedule a consultation with TTS as soon as possible. We will outline the available options (core sites, custom developed, DIY Wordpress) and provide expert guidance on design, content, user experience, security, and analytics.
New Website Consultations
Deploying a new website can be a resource-intensive process. The primary goal of a consultation is to save you time and funds. Consulting with TTS will help you understand your needs and match them to the option that is best suited to your audience and budget.
In addition, consultations can help you:
- Learn about fully-supported and partially-supported website options at Tufts
- Define your goals, needs, and audiences
- Review example websites to better understand design and content capabilities
- Ensure that your project aligns with university requirements, including the domain name and branding policies
- Determine your need for ongoing website maintenance and updates
- Find and engage vendors that meet our requirements, if necessary
Email us at tts-webconsultations@tufts.edu to set up a consultation.
Core Sites
To support the world-class teaching, learning, research, and scholarship that makes Tufts distinctive, TTS provides design, development, and hosting options for schools, departments, official centers, programs, and institutes. New core sites are created on a limited basis for mission-critical Tufts functions, with oversight approval from school and/or central administration leadership, and are specifically developed to meet the needs of these organizations. Core sites are designed, developed, and supported by TTS and provide full-service training, support, and ongoing development. TTS covers the external hosting cost of core sites.
Examples
Custom Developed Sites
TTS has developed robust platform options designed to eliminate the need for custom designed and hosted websites. Before planning to produce a custom website and host it externally, we encourage you to request a consultation at tts-webconsultations@tufts.edu. We likely already have a solution that meets your needs!
If you decide you must move forward with a custom project, TTS can help you explore options for creating a website in either the Drupal or WordPress platforms. These platforms provide vast libraries of tools, a variety of flexible layout options, and state-of-the-art design systems. Building a custom site in collaboration with TTS ensures that your site adheres to industry standards and best practices for design, hosting, data security, and coding.
There are upfront and ongoing costs associated with custom site development and hosting. In addition, TTS will need to collaborate with the communications director of your school or department to determine the scope and potential solutions to meet your needs. To make this process cost-effective and keep your costs sustainable over time, TTS will help you identify and contract with approved design, development, and hosting vendors.
Examples
DIY Wordpress Sites (sites.tufts.edu)
TTS offers a vibrant WordPress platform, sites.tufts.edu, that enables anyone with an active Tufts account to create and manage websites for Tufts-related activities. Currently, there are more than 1,000 websites on sites.tufts.edu created by students, faculty, and staff.
You can use sites.tufts.edu to create a personal portfolio, showcase a class activity, promote a student organization, or keep the community informed of an ongoing project or initiative.
The sites.tufts.edu platform provides a secure, high-performance option that conforms with all university policies and has Tufts branding and logos built in.
To get started, log in and then review the quick start guide and terms of use. After that, you can pick a template and start adding content to your new website.
Examples
Provided by Design and Digital Solutions