Tools to Manage & Maintain your School Website Structure

In the the first of this 2-part series on How to Structure your School Website we discussed the most important elements in making sure your website is easy to navigate. A great structure is a critical part of any school website design. Here we’re aim to provide a little bit more detailed, and sound, school website structure advice. We’re doing to look through what you should reasonably expect to be able to achieve through your website software. You’ll also find examples of school website structures to implement on your website.

Total, Unrestricted Menu Control

Your school website partner should be able to provide you with the option to take full control of your website structure. Don’t accept a system that creates a menu item automatically when you add a page. That will cause you all kinds of problems.

Likewise, expect to be able to control all menu options at all levels. You should be in control.

Document Groups

The Schudio School Website Software provides a feature that is designed to make policy display and management as easy as it can be. Simple create groups of documents and drop them in your content as you need to. Whenever you update a document within a group, it is updated right across your site. It’s one of the most powerful ways you have to keep your content in great shape.

Big Images (Hero Banners)

Think great big images on your homepage that draw users into your content. It’s a great idea to have beautiful photos that give an instant impression of live in school. But there’s much more you can do with them than that!

Go back to that important news article we were talking about a little while ago. One of the students has achieved something magnificent and you want to celebrate their success. A news article is the best way to do that. But if you add a banner image that celebrates that success and links through to that news article you’re shouting a few things;

• We celebrate the success of our students in such a way that we make it headline news; they’re that important.
• The life of school is rich and full and there are amazing things going on.

And do you see how that impacts all three of your audiences? They all care about this type of content and so you’re putting information front and centre that your three main stakeholders care about.

A Note About Multi Academy Trusts

More and more MATs are working with a greater degree of strategic thinking. Your Trust website structure, and the related structures of your academy websites are a great opportunity to stamp the ethos and brand of the trust on everything you do, without watering down the ethos and identity of the individual academies.

Think about what content sits across all your sites and how you can structure certain sections of your academies websites so that everything is incredibly easy to find. It will help create a uniformity that doesn’t compromise the school. it will also make it easier for you to find what you need when inspectors visit because there is a common framework in place.

Resources to Manage Your School Website Structure

This wouldn’t be much of a guide to your school website structure without some resources and some additional reading! Here’s some of our most useful information.

Example structure documents

All the files below are example website structures that, while aren’t necessarily suitable for every school, will provide a good framework that covers all the main elements of most school sites.

Related Articles

You may find it helpful to read some other resources we have available. They’re all written to provide actionable school website software advice, helping you to craft a successful school website structure. These are listed below.

How to write readable school website content
School Website Planning Guide
4 Steps to your Easy School Website
How to Structure your School Website (2013)
Engaging your Community with Great News Articles

Key Principles to remember about your school website structure

• Never have too many top level menu options
• Never go more than three levels deep (ideally two)
• Remember to always consider all your audiences
• Take a little extra time to think through position or use an expert periodically to keep on top of your content
• Never just lob your content on because you’re too busy to give it a little thought

Take this information, apply it to your individual situation and change how you structure your website content. We’d love to hear from you if you have any questions but don’t forget there is always the option to join us for some expert led school website training all year round.