Content focus (formerly called "Template") controls which sections lead your homepage — for example, Research Focused leads with publications and grants, while Teaching Scholar leads with courses and philosophy. It's separate from your theme (visual chrome) and your color scheme (palette), and you can mix any combination freely.
Switching content focus is non-destructive: your data carries over. Only the homepage ordering and a few content-focus-specific defaults reset.
The four content focuses (faculty profiles)
- Modern Academic — research, publications, news, team, press, and teaching. The complete academic profile.
- Research Focused — publications, grants, citation metrics, and research areas lead.
- Minimal Portfolio — bio, selected publications, and awards. Stripped down.
- Teaching Scholar — current courses, teaching philosophy, publications, and research.
For lab sites, there's a single dedicated Lab Group content focus that centers the team page.
Switching content focus
- From Dashboard → Website builder, open the Content focus card.
- Pick one of the four options. The preview pane updates live to show how your data lands in that layout.
- The change applies to your draft immediately. Your live site doesn't update until you republish.
You can audition a new content focus against your live audience by previewing first, switching second, then publishing only when you're satisfied.
What carries over and what doesn't
Carries over: all profile fields, publications, lab members, awards, grants, news, press mentions, custom pages, color scheme, theme, custom domain.
May reset: homepage section order (each content focus has its own default order), which sections are enabled by default on the homepage (the new focus may turn on a section you'd disabled).
Picking by site type
Faculty profile sites get the four content focuses above. Lab groupsites get the dedicated Lab Group content focus, which makes the team prominent and treats the lab name as the primary heading rather than the PI's name. Change site type under Site → Site type.
On iOS
The iOS onboarding flow doesn't prompt for content focus — it auto-picks the right default for your site type (Modern Academic for faculty, Lab Group for lab). To change content focus later, use the website builder on facultydex.org. iOS Site Settings handles theme and color picking; content focus is web-only for now.
Want a different content layout?
Need a section ordering or set of pages that none of the current focuses achieves? Email us at dan@facultydex.org with a sketch or a link to a site you like.