I’m in charge of the website at the school where I teach, and every once in a while I go forth across the internet in search of a mythical page titled Best High School Websites or Good High School Website or even Good School Websites. I return each time without finding that page. But I do usually stumble upon a few good school websites.
So, because, (a) the internet abhors a vacuum and (b) I can’t be the only one searching for this, I’m going to start a listing of those good school websites. I’ll be listing sites that are highly functional, pretty and/or have ideas that I will be stealing in the future. The sites are listed in no particular order. I tend to look at other Lutheran high schools, so they tend to be over represented here. If you have a suggestion, feel free to contact me.
If you’re looking for good design ideas for a high school website, I don’t think you’re going to find many by looking at what other high schools are doing. You really want to look at what’s going on in higher education. The best site I’ve found for that is eduStyle.net. Start looking there.
Lloyd Sommerer
Sparsely annotated list of good high school websites
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Lutheran High School South: The design doesn’t jump out at you, but the layout is very useful, and they do content well. Lots of useful and current information. The navigation is also easy to use. |
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Lutheran High School of Orange County: Nice looking site. But it’s a fixed width site (I prefer a liquid sites) and the Flash animation is rather large. Loading the animation is a one time deal though, and since most of your visitors are going to be repeat visitors, that’s probably fine. Lots of information and clean navigation. I like what the photographers are doing with the galleries (selective color removal and selective blur). Their site is by elexio, and they do many nice sites. I’ll only be listing this one. |
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Forest Lake Christian School: I like the simple layout of this site. It’s very clean, and they make good use of the page footer. Navigation is easy, enough useful information and up to date content. [update: the site now seems to be powered by wordpress on the backend.] |
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Hawaii Preparatory Academy: This is a nice site (it breaks a bit in Opera). One of the best High School sites I’ve seen that uses Drupal as their CMS. They also use yourMembership for alumni and development. I don’t have any experience with that site, but I’m including it here to remind myself to check them out. |
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Baltimore Lutheran School: They recently redesigned their website, and it looks and works well. Unfortunately, the person who wrote the flash for the front page has never tried to read the text. Oh well, you can’t get everything right. |
Links to more high schools
Well, it turns out that I’m better at collecting sites than at posting them here. When I find a new site I first tag it at delicous.com. You can view the sites that have been tagged so far, and you can play along at home by adding the tag “goodhighschoolwebsites” on your own delicious.com account.
More Resources
- Zac Gordon recently started a site to collect well designed high school websites. You can check it out at: www.webgalleryhigh.com.
Hey-
We’re in the process of revamping our terrible school website (even the domain indicates problems). If there was a blog entry that was the opposite of yours, I’m sure we could be included. Thanks for trying to fill the void. I agree…there is no central resource for this topic. Thanks for the delicious links…you can bet I’ll be following your findings.
We have updated our website. Hope you like the redesign.
Take a look at our new website. It was built using CMS made simple. We’re very proud of our site and aim to be the best high school website in our state. Let us know what you think? Thanks. Please note: it just launched today so it’s a little light on content.
Why not look for best high school teachers’ websites?
Thank you so much for this posting; I’m helping with the redesign of a school’s website and, as you said, good examples are hard to find!
I would like to add that City High School, Tucson, has a fabulous website: http://cityhighschool.org/
I’ve stolen a few ideas from them. 🙂
I am a part of a student team that is in charge of building and maintaining all of the school’s official web content.
http://sandersonhs.org/
It under went a refresh a few years back and a new one in in the works. However, I would be interested in what anyone has to say. Keep in mind, we only have 90 minutes each day dedicated to working on the site.
Hi!
I a high school teacher in Mexico.
Schools in the country (from K1 to K12) do not use to have websites so we are trying to be an exception.
http://www.experimental-mixta.com
Would you be so kind to “pass by” and give us your feedback, please. We are in the process of translating the whole site to English, in the meantime there are many sections available.
Best regards
I’m absolutely fascinated by your exploration of high school websites! The way you analyze design, functionality, and content is truly inspiring. I can’t wait to see more recommendations from you. Have you considered looking into mobile responsiveness as well? It’s becoming increasingly important in website design. Keep up the fantastic work!