With limited time and experience on its side, the Stanford Institute for Chemical Biology needed a user-friendly tool to help establish its presence on campus.
At the end of 2012, Chaitan Khosla opened a new independent lab, the Stanford Institute for Chemical Biology. As a brand new campus group, the institute wanted a website to establish its presence and recruit new talent. In the words of Institute Administrator and primary editor of the site, Carolynn Beer, “The best way to get any publicity is to get a website.” However, Carolynn was the only staff member on the team, and she did not have enough development experience to start from scratch. “I’m not a developer, and I don’t have the time,” she said.
The institute did not know where or how to begin. Carolynn sought help from the Stanford Web Services team to develop a site that would be easy to use and provide enough control to make updates as the institute grows.
The Challenge: To enable clients with limited time and development experience to setup and launch their own websites.
At the time Carolynn submitted a HelpSU Request to Stanford Web Services, the team had already begun working on building the Stanford Sites Jumpstart service. Stanford Sites Jumpstart allows individuals with little to no technical expertise to quickly and easily create simple and elegant websites - the perfect solution for Carolynn’s needs.
Simplifying Drupal to Maximize Usability
Stanford Sites Jumpstart is hosted on IT Services’ Drupal-hosting platform, an open source content management framework. Drupal is an extremely robust tool that our team uses to build and manage sites for our clients. While the Drupal platform is powerful, it is not the easiest tool to use for those with little technical experience.
To overcome this challenge and build a simple tool, our team leveraged the functionality of Drupal, but masked a lot of its complexity. Stanford Sites Jumpstart provides clients with enough control to edit their own sites, but does not overwhelm users with too many features. This makes the product user-friendly, which saves both time and frustration. Carolynn confirmed that with only one Drupal training class, she felt sufficiently capable of maintaining the site. “I didn’t feel I needed to go to any advanced classes. Basic Drupal class was great. Glad I took it,” said Carolynn.
Providing Options, But Not Too Many
Stanford Sites Jumpstart offers two different themes for clients: Stanford Wilbur and Stanford Jordan. These themes are Stanford-specific and meet the style requirements for Stanford branding and standards. These themes allow for a balance of variety and consistency across the different Stanford Sites Jumpstart websites. As Carolynn noted, “[The themes provide] enough choices, but not too many.” The themes also provide potential clients with the option to view existing sites using a particular theme to see which they prefer.
Making the Most of Custom Work Time
All Jumpstart sites come with 10 hours of customization work from an SWS team member. This can include things like special landing pages, a custom “page not found” message, Google Analytics, and more. Because the institute was still young, it did not yet have a confirmed sense of what its viewers were looking for. To better understand its audience, the SWS team setup Google Analytics to allow the institute to optimize content and have a sense of where to focus its efforts. “[It is] good to see how many pageviews we’re getting. Whenever there are announcements, it’s interesting to see what pages [people are] going to to figure out what pages to update,” Carolynn said. Google Analytics allows site editors, of all levels of experience, to better understand their audience and make more strategic and productive decisions regarding content management.
The Stanford Institute for Chemical Biology was one of the earliest adopters of Stanford Sites Jumpstart. The institute’s needs confirmed the necessity for a quick start solution to serve clients with limited web development experience and time.
The Power of Limitations
The project of building Stanford Sites Jumpstart highlighted the power of limitations. Modifying Drupal to make it more user-friendly and curbing the amount of available themes allows clients to focus on the content of their sites, and not get too caught up in details that can become overwhelming. As Carolynn said, “Other sites require more building. If I’d done it myself, it would have far exceeded [the price of Stanford Sites Jumpstart] because it would take so long and it wouldn’t look like this. [This structure provides] enough control where I can personalize it...exactly what I was looking for.”
Overall, the Stanford Institute for Chemical Biology is pleased with the Stanford Sites Jumpstart service, and continues to leverage its site to establish a presence on campus and understand its audience to attract people to the institute. As Carolynn said, “We love our website, and would highly recommend it to anyone else.”
If you're interested in learning more about this project, contact SWS Manager, Sara Worrell-Berg SWS at swberg@stanford.edu.
