Lab Websites

[mechengr2000]

Hey,

I am redesigning my lab's website from scratch. I am looking for good ideas on what to do with it. What makes a good lab website? And, equally important, what makes a bad lab website?

[Behavioral]

One of the ones I liked a lot:

http://nanomag.ucsd.edu/

Don't make it gimmicky. Keep it simple so that anyone else can edit and modify it in the future. Don't make too many pages/subpages -- you want it to be easy to navigate. Don't put too much detail -- keep only relevant things (research, members, grants, publications, etc.) and be concise.

[jendoly]

For the love of all that is holy, keep the research sections up to date. That's what prospies reference when they're looking at your lab, and if all the info is outdated, it's hard to tell where they would fit in if they're referencing projects from five years ago... *speaking from personal experience as a prospie...*

[Eigen]

Research Section up to date...

Publications up to date! Link to available PDFs if you can.

Keep the group photo/people up to date- it's much easier to find who you're looking for that way.

I recommend having a synopsis of each graduate students project in addition to the overall research sections, but that's my personal preference.

I also think a "news" section for announcing grants/fellowships/authorships, etc is good.

And I really like the group pages that have updated "alumni" sections- it lets you see where people from the group have ended up.

[SNPCracklePop]

This thread has been a great help. Also designing a website for my advisor's lab.

To contribute, there are some great free programs to create your page with. I've been happy with Seamonkey so far:

http://www.seamonkey-project.org/

[SNPCracklePop]

Unfortunately, http://nanomag.ucsd.edu/ is down, but they followed the Mystique template from Wordpress.

[MoJingly]

For the love of all that is holy, keep the research sections up to date. That's what prospies reference when they're looking at your lab, and if all the info is outdated, it's hard to tell where they would fit in if they're referencing projects from five years ago... *speaking from personal experience as a prospie...*

"Prospies" ...