School website design with a plan for every page, photo and form

Who is school website design for?

School website design is the planning, writing, design and build of a school’s or college’s site, and the running of it after launch. We would offer it at three levels. A local school is one campus where one head or principal makes the calls: a private school, a single charter or a small college. A regional one is a district, a charter network or a multi-campus college, with offices between the person at the top and each campus. A national one works across the country, often under more than one name, and already has a communications team or an agency.

The level changes the work. The page plan grows, more departments want a say in it, and the site links to more of the school’s systems. The market’s ranges for each level are in the pricing section of this page, and the full picture is on what a website costs. If you want the general case first, start with web design.

What changes when the site belongs to a school?

The content does. A school’s site can publish student names, photos of children, handbooks, forms, a calendar, and links into a portal and a payment page. Three federal rules touch that content: FERPA, the ADA Title II web rule and COPPA. Each belongs to the school, and the school’s counsel decides how it applies. They are set out with their section numbers on our education marketing page, so this page doesn’t restate them.

What this page covers is how they shape the build: the page plan, the photo workflow, the checks against WCAG 2.1 Level AA and the tools the site links to. Nothing we build is a finding that a school meets a rule.

Which pages does a school website need?

Start with the way in. For a K-12 school that is admissions or enrollment, for a college it is applying, and either way the next step sits on every page. Around it goes a page for each program or grade level, covering what a student does there, who teaches it and what it asks of a family. Then a calendar, a news page, a staff directory, a page for each department a visitor would look for by name, and an office page that says how to reach a person.

Add what only a school has: tuition and aid shown as the school publishes them, with a link to the source and the date it was last checked; a handbook and forms page; a page for closures and notices; a careers page when the school is hiring. A claim about outcomes, test scores or rankings goes on only when the school gives us the figure, its date and where it’s published.

Keep the pages distinct. Two program pages that repeat each other don’t help a family or a search engine, and the search side of that is on education SEO.

Who is the site for, a new family or an enrolled one?

We plan for both, because they want different things from the same screen. A family comparing schools reads program pages, looks for the admissions path and wants to see the place. A family already enrolled wants the calendar, a closure notice, a form or the link to the portal, and wants it quickly on a phone.

So the plan puts the admissions step in the main menu and gives every page a bar of quick links to the calendar, notices and portal. Neither visitor has to dig through the other’s pages. On a district site, the same idea repeats at the level of each campus.

How would student names and photos be handled?

Around the school’s own list. The rules on directory information are on the education marketing page; this is what we would build. Every image and name on the site gets a record: what it is, which pages show it, and who at the school approved it. The school’s opt-out list decides what appears, and we check the site against the list again whenever the school changes it.

A removal request reaches us, and we take the image off every page that shows it, using the record to find them. Image file names and captions carry no student’s name unless the school’s list allows it. Before a photo goes live, we strip the location and camera data from it. Whether a photo is directory information or needs consent is the school’s decision, made with its counsel.

What does building to WCAG 2.1 Level AA involve?

The Title II rule names WCAG 2.1 Level AA as its technical standard, with the dates and section numbers on the education marketing page, so Level AA is the level we build and check to. It is our design target. It isn’t a promise about what the rule requires of your school.

WCAG 2.1 is the W3C’s Recommendation of 5 June 2018, and its success criteria are specific. Three show up on a school site again and again:

• Contrast: criterion 1.4.3 asks for text with a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1. We test a school’s colors against that ratio before any text uses them.
• Captions: criterion 1.2.2 asks for captions on prerecorded audio in synchronized media, and 1.2.4 asks for captions on live audio. A livestreamed board meeting or ceremony depends on the video vendor.
• Text alternatives: criterion 1.1.1 asks that non-text content have a text alternative that serves the equivalent purpose. Every image gets one, and the photo workflow decides whether it can name a student.

The checks reach past the pages we write. For each tool the site links to, whether a calendar, a portal, an application system or a payment page, we write down who runs it and what we found.

Can families book a tour or send an inquiry from the site?

Yes. Families book a tour from the open times the school sets, so the calendar offers only slots the office has opened. An inquiry form sends each message to the office that answers it: admissions, records or the front desk. Every form is spam-protected and sends its message by email or into your CRM’s own forms.

For a K-12 school, the form asks for a parent or guardian’s details. For a college, the applicant fills it in. On any page aimed at children under 13, we would put no form, sign-in or uploaded photo, and the reasons are on the education marketing page.

What goes into the build that visitors never see?

The site is built in our own system on Astro. Each page carries structured data in the vocabulary of schema.org, which has a type for this field: School, defined as “A school.”, and CollegeOrUniversity, “A college, university, or other third-level educational institution.” Both sit under EducationalOrganization, “An educational organization.” We would use the one that fits your institution.

Beyond that come a sitemap, IndexNow and robots rules that let search and AI crawlers read the site. Launch checks hold back any page with a fact still unconfirmed, so a draft line about a fee or a date can’t slip onto the live site.

What happens to our current website, domain and email?

If you have a site now, moving it is a site migration. The inventory marks every document on the old site: rebuild it as a page, replace it or retire it. Documents that families use to apply or take part come first. Each old address, documents included, maps to its new page with a permanent redirect, so old links and bookmarks still land.

Your domain stays registered in your name, wherever it’s registered now. Before launch we save a copy of your DNS records, then change only the records that point the domain at the new site. The registrar, the nameservers and your email settings stay as they are.

Will a new school website rank on Google?

A site can be built so search engines read it easily. Where it ranks depends on more than the build. Google’s own advice on hiring an SEO says it plainly: “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.” We do not guarantee search rankings, traffic, or uninterrupted uptime.

What we do control is the site itself: a page for each search worth winning, clear headings, structured data and pages that load quickly. The month-to-month search work after launch is on education SEO.

Can we see a website you’ve built?

Yes, one from another field: the Alvy Logistics website. It runs about 70 pages on Astro, in the build system we would use for a school, and we look after it with Alvy. Alvy is owned by our co-founder Noah Alvarez, and DSI is an Alvy company. It’s a freight site, so it shows how we plan and build at that size and says nothing about schools. No school is among the sites we’ve built.

Who keeps the site current after launch?

Running the site is a monthly plan, and your proposal sets its scope. A school site has its own calendar of changes: a new school year, staff who join or leave, closures and notices, a new vendor tool, an update to the photo list. The record behind each image changes with the list.

From the day the site goes live, Google Analytics 4, Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools are connected, so you can see which searches bring families in and what they do once they arrive. Pages for young children are the exception: we set up analytics there only after counsel has decided how.

How does a school website project start?

With a 15-minute call. You talk with Nicolas Perez or Noah Alvarez, our co-founders. Bring your current site’s address, the list of tools it links to and whether the school is public, charter, private or a college. A written proposal follows, then the inventory, research and page plan, words and design, a private preview you check, and the launch.

School website design is one of the services we run from our office in Valencia, for businesses across the US. Midnite Systems was formed in 2023. Book a 15-minute call, or read what a website costs first.