20-Apr-2005

Can you modify your Web content?

By Chris Dunmire

Q: Our charter school has a color theory/web class that I think the [external resource in CP's How-to Design section] would be excellent material for the students. However, there is an image in the [external resource] that would be somewhat inappropriate for our students to view [due to its controversial nature].

I am writing to you just to see if there is any way for your webmaster to substitute another image in its place. Just let us know if this is possible — due to the excellent content of the site, we think this would be a great resource for students at our school. — Mike

A. Thank you for your feedback, Mike. We appreciate knowing that the external resources we choose to promote to our readers in our how-to directories are helpful.

The [external site] is one such resource the Creativity Portal links to in our "how to" design section. We agree that the site has a lot of excellent content, and are glad you found it of value too. However, because the site is not under our domain, we have no creative control over the content of that site or any other external site we link to.

Still, you may wish to contact the owners of the site to voice your praise and concerns. They will be thrilled to know how effective their content is to an educator like yourself and will appreciate your feedback.

Additional Thoughts

Now, if the content was part of our Web site and we had exclusive control over it, we'd give you a different answer. For the most part, anything published under the Creativity-Portal.com domain will not be changed to accommodate such a request. As it is, we strive to make our site appealing to creative people of all ages and backgrounds. But we know someone somewhere will be offended by something on our site. Such is life.

This doesn't make us completely inflexible, however. There was an occasion where we did modify a piece of our collage art featured in a how-to lesson. It was changed because it unintentionally made 'unholy' use of some religious symbols that had the potential of greatly offending a large population of people in the world.

Still, much of what is published online is intentional, and a publisher walks a fine line trying to balance purposeful expression with purposeful offension. •

Please respect the creator's copyright by not duplicating this material on your Web site, blog, or print publication without the author's permission.

About the Author | More by Chris Dunmire
Chris Dunmire is an artist, humorist, creativity coach, and the driving force behind the popular Creativity-Portal.com Web site. Chris inspires people of all ages with creativity articles, printable playbooks, and fun projects like her world-famous Dollar Bill Origami Money Plant.