# A research project website has to outlive its grant

> A funded research project's website keeps answering long after the money stops. How we built TreatOA's around the parts of the programme that last.

Source: https://lastdoorsolutions.com/blog/research-project-website

**A research project website is planned while the grant runs and keeps answering long after it stops.** So it has to be built around the parts of the programme that last: its aims, its partners, its work and what came of it.

TreatOA's EU grant ended on 30 June 2013. Its new website went live that autumn. **The Web Archive holds the site, unchanged, in 13 captures from April 2014 to January 2019.** The last capture shows the programme's account still available more than five years after its funding ended.

## A programme with many readers

TreatOA was a European research programme on osteoarthritis. **From 2008 to 2013 it joined ten universities, institutes and companies to King's College London,** which coordinated it. The work came to us through TwinsUK, our client at King's since 2012.

![A timeline from 2008 to 2020. The grant ends in June 2013, followed by a website launch marker in autumn 2013. An archive range spans April 2014 to January 2019 and represents 13 captures.](/images/blog/grant-and-site.png)

*TreatOA's grant, website launch and archive observations. The archive bar spans the first and last capture dates.*

**A consortium answers to several readers at once:** the funder, the member institutions, other researchers and the public. Each comes for a different part. A funder checks what was delivered. A researcher looks for a result or a paper. A newcomer wants to know what osteoarthritis research the programme did, and who did it.

## Build on what does not date

News and events date fast. **The parts of a programme that last are its shape and its output:** the aims, the institutions, the work packages, the advisory board and the publications.

So the site gave each of those its own place. The consortium page listed every institution. **Each of the eleven work packages had its own page,** with its participants and objectives. Publications were listed by year. A reader arriving years later could still find who did what, and what came of it.

![The page for Work Package 1, genome-wide association studies to identify osteoarthritis risk genes, with its participants and objectives.](/images/treatoa/work-package.webp)

*One of eleven work packages, each with its own page.*

## Plan it before anyone draws it

**The brief arrived on 14 June 2013. Eleven days later, 17 wireframes set out every page type,** from the home page to publications, downloads, search and the members' login.

Planning the structure first fixed where each lasting part would live before any design work began. The design then had one job: to make that structure plain to read.

## Give the members their own room

Members had an area of their own behind a login, designed and built in August 2013. **It held the analysis software, the research results and the reports the programme owed its funder.**

Keeping the working material there let the public site stay about the research, not about the running of the consortium.

## Four questions before your grant ends

1. **Which parts last?** List the pages that will still matter in five years: aims, partners, outputs, publications.
2. **Who will own it?** Name the institution that keeps the domain, the hosting and the login once the funding stops.
3. **What dates the site?** Move news, events and deadlines away from the parts a reader will still look for.
4. **Where do members' files go** when the consortium closes, and who can still reach them?

[The TreatOA case study](/work/treatoa) shows the earlier site, the consortium and work package pages, and describes the members' area. Our [academic research](/industries/academic-research) page covers the other research work we do, and we build sites like it on [WordPress](/services/wordpress).

A grant pays for the research project website once. The years after the grant decide whether it was worth building.

## Planning the website for a funded research project?

Tell us who funds it and who will own it after the grant. We will say what the site should hold so it still answers in five years.

[Talk to us about your project](https://lastdoorsolutions.com/contact?service=wordpress)