cwd-toolkit
What is the Critical Web Design Toolkit?
The Critical Web Design Toolkit(CWDT) is a project that aims to provide users with both an easy-to-use static website template for Digital Scholarship projects and an instructional guide that not only gives step-by-step instructions for using the template, but also provides resources for learning more about web accessibility, sustainability, and the digital divide.
We developed the CWDT to provide people who are interested in creating websites for Digital Scholarship projects with a more sustainable alternative to popular dynamic website builders, which can be easier to learn to use than static website builders but consume more energy. The CWDT aims to make it easier for users to build their own static sites, so they do not have to rely on dynamic site builders, and it is designed for users of all experience levels.
The concerns that lay at the core of the CWDT include the environmental consequences of energy consumption by the internet, web accessibility for people with disabilities, the digital divide, and other social and moral implications of web development tools. Our hope is that the CWDT will not only help users to build static websites for their Digital Scholarship projects, but also to think critically about and participate in sustainable web design.
Getting Started
Download
To get started, go to the top of this page and click the green button in the upper right that says "Use this template." Then, please consult the CWDT website for a step-by-step guide to using our template.
What skills will be developed in using this toolkit?
- Web design
- Front end development
- HTML, CSS, and some JavaScript
- Building static sites with Jekyll
- Using Git and GitHub
Who is it for?
Everyone! Our toolkit is designed in such a way that people with no prior knowledge will be able to use our template or take inspiration from our template and create their own static website. If you are a student who needs a template to display your humanities project(s) or research work, you are in the right place!
Why use a Static Site?
Website performance is crucial when developing websites for ease-of-access across the digital divide. Quicker load times are critical when accessing the internet from low-bandwidth areas. Large files and dynamic rendering can significantly reduce a website's performance, so we aim to avoid them whenever possible.
Static websites help us do just that. They load faster than dynamic sites because they only need to be rendered once, then, each time the site is loaded, it serves the same pre-rendered HTML without any dynamic rendering. Static sites also tend to be more secure as there is no database to breach and no server-side platform with unpatched vulnerabilities. Moreover, static sites are inexpensive to host and can even be hosted for free, depending on an individual’s preferences. Static sites can also be very flexible to work with as there is virtually no limitation to what you can build with them. Furthermore, it is easy to work collaboratively on a static site and keep track of changes using version control systems like Git and GitHub.
Who are the creators?
The Critical Web Design Toolkit was designed and developed by the 2022 Digital Scholarship Summer Fellows at Bryn Mawr College, Arlowe Willingham, Rafiun Haque, Cameron Boucher, and Adrianna Morsey, with oversight from Alice McGrath, Karina Gonzalez, Chris Boyland, and Stella Fritzell. You can learn more about our program on the Digital Scholarship @ BMC website. The project was developed by students who often engage with Digital Scholarship through their studies and who understand the importance of web accessibility and sustainability to the field of Digital Scholarship.
Our template is based on the Minimal Mistakes Jekyll theme, and it is inspired in part by The Reactor Room, a digital scholarship project.
Further resources:
Here is a list of helpful resources to reference while working with this template: