May 27, 2026

Greetings site managers,

A round of congratulations are in order for all of our graduates! But, also, y'all are deserving of a round congratulations yourselves. The work you do to support our departments and programs is essential -- that's true throughout the year, but it feels especially true during the crunch of commencement season. So, congratulations on another semester completed!

As the dust settles on all the celebrations, it's a good time to review the "Website Annual Checklist" and prepare for summer website maintenance. To that end, I've included some resources below.

With appreciation,

KJ Schaeffner

Web Content Specialist

Arts & Sciences | Marketing & Communications

As you are well aware, a lot goes into website management, strategy, and maintenance. To help manage this process throughout the year, you should review the full website checklist. It features recommendations for weekly, monthly, and semesterly tasks, and even includes a "Summer Updates" section that you'll likely find helpful right now as you start to coordinate your department's summer priorities.

While I encourage you to review the full checklist, I've emphasized a few items from it that are relevant to most A&S websites. 

If your website's homepage is set up to automatically display upcoming events, check if you have any on your calendar over the next few months. With many departments/programs, it's a strong possibility that your calendar will be empty for the summer - which, in turn, creates an empty spot in a highly-visible area of your website.  Here are a few options:

As I've previously mentioned in these newsletters, faculty pages make up a significant portion of our web traffic. So, it's important to make sure that these pages stay up-to-date! Summer is a great time to work with your department/program to determine:

While you're working on this, you might keep the guidelines for drafting profile pages on hand!

In the process of updating people pages, you may discover the need for new headshots for faculty/staff profiles. This will likely be the case for new hires, but you may also find there are staff members whose profiles are outdated and who also need new headshots.

Below, you can find a guide to optimizing your headshot photographs, alongside a form for requesting headshots to be taken by A&S MarComm's Senior Multimedia Designer, Sean Garcia.

Also: new faculty hires should be on the lookout for the opportunity to get their headshots taken at the new faculty orientation session that's held at the start of the Fall semester!

Web content question? Content sharing question? Reach out to me, KJ Schaeffner, at schaeffner@wustl.edu.

Technical issue with your website? Reach out to the A&S Web Team at artsci-webteam@wustl.edu.

Inside ArtSci question? Logo question? Reach out to Simone Becque at sbecque@wustl.edu.

Social media question? Reach out to Gennie Avellino at avellino@wustl.edu.