Website FAQs

This happy, tiny slice of cyberspace is Niki W. Lanter's academic website and personal blog—a pet project, a hobby, a creative outlet. NikitasVeritas aims to capture a nontraditional student's unconventional journey through college.

NikitasVeritas is hosted and powered by OpenScholar at Harvard. Visit the Site Info page for a brief overview of the site, and read About the Author behind it. The full web address of this site is https://scholar.harvard.edu/nlanter.

Please read IMPORTANT NOTICE ABOUT NIKITASVERITAS below.

With the help of some pretty cool and user-friendly apps in OpenScholar, I was able to put together most of what you see here myself. This started out as a plain and simple web page, which slowly blossomed into the site you now so kindly visit. My background in web design and development makes tinkering with this site effortless and really quite enjoyable.

NikitasVeritas continues to grow and evolve. I expect this place will go through a number of metamorphoses before I grow tired of it, and move on to the next hobby.

I started tinkering with web design and development back in the late 1990s, and did it professionally for several years. Although I had a background in CIS, I found coding in HTML and CSS much more rewarding than computer programming. I enjoyed it so much that there were nights when I dreamt in code. It's sort of like those times when one dreams of pivot tables and nested, conditional formulas in Excel... You know, like you do.

After experimenting with the various theme choices on OpenScholar, I settled on the "Bold" theme [similar to what the Harvard Initiative for Learning & Teaching (HILT) used prior to its site makeover], but with some slight modifications to CSS to suit my personal preferences. This includes a different selection of fonts, and some minor adjustments to layout.

Images and photographs in the Galleries area, as well as the banner photo you see on each main section of the website, came mostly from my camera, phone, or scanner. Some pictures (especially those with me in them) were snapped by family, friends, or colleagues. In some cases, content submitted for cross-promotion will already include photos from the source. The stock photos I use on Events, Musings or News are purchased from www.123rf.com.

Probably. I'll be happy to help give your project or event some exposure and social media boost, if appropriate. For review and consideration, you are welcome to send me a message about your upcoming event or project via Harvard email.

If time permits (semester breaks are a good time to check with me), I welcome the opportunity to do some light edits, or initial design and layout setup on other personal or project OpenScholar sites. I have tinkered enough with mine that I am open to a refreshing change. Please reach out via Harvard email.

"Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis" is a Latin maxim which means "All things change, and we change with them." It is one of the guiding principles in my life, which serves as a reminder that in order to move forward and grow, I must be flexible and willing to change.

That handsome dude is Murphy the Mutt, a.k.a. Cuddle Monster. He is a mix between a Labrador Retriever (maybe the Dudley Labrador kind) and something else—possibly an American Staffordshire Terrier. If you ask my husband "What kind of dog is Murphy?", he will simply say "Yellow."

While NikitasVeritas is hosted through the University systems, content on this website is created and/or curated, edited, managed, maintained, and posted by a student (hi, it's me). www.NikitasVeritas.com and related domain names utilized to direct here are registered through GoDaddy, and are owned by same said student (yep, still me).

Although you may see some of my work on student government sites—most of which are likely cross-promoted across multiple sites and social media channels to increase web exposure and expand student community outreach—NikitasVeritas is not affiliated with the Harvard Graduate Council (HGC) or the Harvard Extension Student Association (HESA) in any official capacity.

Please also note that personal opinions and thoughts expressed on this website are my own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer, professors, puppies, or the University. Thanks for reading.