Module 4 · Build it

Make it real: your photo, your credentials, your states

Your site exists. Now it has to be true. Three things on it can only come from you: your photograph, your license line, and where you can see clients. By the end of this lesson all three are in place, and you’ve read every page out loud.

Your photo: the one image that has to be you

People arriving from a directory or a referral are checking that you’re a real person they could imagine talking to. A real photograph of you does that job; nothing else can. A stock photo of a smiling stranger never stands in for you, and neither does an AI-generated portrait. Both present someone who isn’t you as you, which is a misrepresentation, not a style choice.

Module 2 covered how to take or book the photo, and what to do if you won’t show your face. Before you add the photo you have, run through this list:

• Recent: it looks like the person who will open the door or appear on the video call.
• The same photo as your directory profiles, so someone arriving from Psychology Today recognizes you.
• Camera at eye level, soft light from a window, and you looking into the lens.
• Lightly edited at most: brightness and color only. No skin smoothing, no filters, no beauty mode.
• Nothing identifying in the background: check every photo of your office at full size for a name on a schedule, a screen, mail or a whiteboard.

Getting your photos onto the site

Make a folder called images inside your project folder and put your photos in it. Claude does the rest: resizing them so the pages load quickly, placing them where site-map.md says, and writing their alt text.

Alt text is a short written description attached to an image, read aloud by screen readers for people who can’t see it. The rule for your headshot surprises people. When your name is printed right beside the photo, as it usually is, the right alt text is empty, alt="", because a screen reader would otherwise say your name twice. WebAIM, Utah State University’s accessibility institute, uses exactly that example. When the photo appears with no name beside it, it gets a real description.

Your license line

One line in the footer of every page, and again on your About page, says exactly what you are licensed as and where. The kit uses this pattern, one line per license:

• Spell the letters out. Letters like LPC or LMFT mean little to someone who has never looked for a therapist before.
• Keep the license separate from everything else. A certificate from a training body is not a license, and a compact authorization (permission to see clients in another state through an interstate agreement) is not a license either. Each goes on its own line, named for what it is.
• Link your license lookup on the About page, so anyone can check you in a few seconds. It’s free credibility.
• If you’re pre-licensed (an associate, intern or similar), use your title exactly as your board writes it, and add your supervisor’s name where your state expects it. Your practice-profile.md already holds both.
• In a group practice, every clinician’s bio carries their own license line and their own states.

Where you can see clients, in the “located” form, dated

For online sessions, the question that matters is where the client is physically sitting during the session, not where they live; Module 6 explains why. So your site names the states, uses the word “located”, and says when it was last checked. The short version goes in your first screen and footer; the full version goes on /where-i-practice.

Paste this into Claude

Put your photos in the images folder first. Then fill in the square brackets and paste.

I've put my photos in the images folder inside my project.

1. Use [filename] as my headshot on the About page and beside my name on the
   homepage. My name is printed right beside it in both places, so use alt="" for it.
   Give any other photo a short, plain description as its alt text. Resize the photos
   so the pages still load quickly on a phone.
2. Add my license line to the footer of every page and to the About page, one line per
   license, using the exact details in practice-profile.md. Keep any compact
   authorization on its own line, named for what it is. Never make up a license
   number: if one is missing, leave it in [brackets].
3. Add the where-I-practice statement to the first screen and the footer, in this
   form: "In person in [city]. Online for clients located in [states]. Last updated
   [Month Year]." Use only the states in practice-profile.md.
4. Replace every other [bracket] you can fill from practice-profile.md, brand-strategy.md
   or site-map.md. Don't guess at anything else.

Then list every [bracket] and TODO-COMPLIANCE marker still on the site, page by page,
and save a snapshot.

What to check: compare the license line on the site, character by character, with your license as your board lists it: the name, the letters, the title, the state, the number. Check that the states listed are exactly yours, with nothing added, and that the line has a month and year. Look at your photo at phone width: not stretched, not cropped through your face. Then read Claude’s list of what’s still open. The only things that should remain are details you haven’t decided yet and the TODO-COMPLIANCE notices that Modules 5 and 6 fill.

Read every page out loud

Do this once, start to finish, before you move on. Reading aloud catches what reading silently skips: the sentence that sounds like a brochure, the promise that crept in, the credential you don’t actually hold, the paragraph you wouldn’t say to a nervous person on the phone. Fix each one as you find it, in plain English, in the same conversation.

• Your photo is real, recent and the same as your directory profiles
• The license line matches your board's listing exactly, on every page
• The where-I-practice line names your states, uses "located" and carries a date
• Your openings line carries a date
• No sentence promises what a reader will feel or achieve
• Nothing about you appears that you didn't supply: no training, years, numbers or states
• No photo of a person who isn't you, and no testimonial, review or client story anywhere