Do graduate students ever do web design for their graduate student departments?

[InquilineKea]

It's not difficult, but it does take time. And many current department webpages are not designed very well either. astro.columbia.edu has 91 errors according to the W3C markup validation service. astro.washington.edu has 25 errors. astro.caltech.edu has 88 errors. astro.princeton.edu has 36 errors.

And yes, design does matter, since many people do form first impressions based on how good the website is. Especially when they're comparing between departments.

The fact is, that if it's not difficult *and* takes time, then grad student labor can be used for it. Just like TAing. Plus, it doesn't take much time to make a crappy webpage, but it does take more time to make a website that's actually good.

Plus, many professors may want better webpages. Lots of professors have pretty crappy webpages, but they could use labor to make better ones that would also help advertise themselves better.

[neuropsych76]

It's not difficult, but it does take time. And many current department webpages are not designed very well either. astro.columbia.edu has 91 errors according to the W3C markup validation service. astro.washington.edu has 25 errors. astro.caltech.edu has 88 errors. astro.princeton.edu has 36 errors.

And yes, design does matter, since many people do form first impressions based on how good the website is. Especially when they're comparing between departments.

The fact is, that if it's not difficult *and* takes time, then grad student labor can be used for it. Just like TAing. Plus, it doesn't take much time to make a crappy webpage, but it does take more time to make a website that's actually good.

Plus, many professors may want better webpages. Lots of professors have pretty crappy webpages, but they could use labor to make better ones that would also help advertise themselves better.

i'm wondering this as well! my department's webpage is not impressive looking at all. and my professor's lab doesn't even have a webpage! i want to ask my future professor if i could help make her one but i don't know if that would be weird to ask considering i haven't worked in the lab yet..

[adinutzyc]

I don't think W3C errors matter that much... really (I find it pretty useless but I do still obsess about it meh)

But design does! It's even funnier when you look at CS prof's website and it hasn't been updated since 2005... That being said, I wouldn't design a webpage for them (too much tiiime!). I rather see undergrads than grads being hired for that. Why? Because grads are meant to learn research/teaching, not web design! That's why you TA, theoretically...

[neuropsych76]

I don't think W3C errors matter that much... really (I find it pretty useless but I do still obsess about it meh)

But design does! It's even funnier when you look at CS prof's website and it hasn't been updated since 2005... That being said, I wouldn't design a webpage for them (too much tiiime!). I rather see undergrads than grads being hired for that. Why? Because grads are meant to learn research/teaching, not web design! That's why you TA, theoretically...

I think it looks bad for a program when their department has a poor web design, broken links, and faculty webpages from the 1990's. I really wouldn't mind building a lab webpage for my program though. I always thought it was cool to see a lab have it's own webpage

[rising_star]

We used to pay a grad student in our program to do web design for our department but now the administrative assistant does that. The switch is mostly because our college (within the University) recently standardized the formatting for all department websites so there's no real design to do, only updating content.

[neuropsych76]

What about just creating a lab webpage? I know some undergrads and RA's do this but would grad students ever just create a simple lab webpage?