A new website for one of the best University in Poland
Project type
New website
Industry
Education
Technologies
Drupal
Elasticsearch
Vue.jsScope of work
Web development
Key Project Aspects
- New Drupal-based website
- Listing of the university’s educational offer based on Vue.js and Elasticsearch
- Adapting the website to the WCAG guidelines
About the Client
Kozmiński University is one of the key European business universities, educating Polish and international students since 1993. The university focuses mainly on practical and soft skills. It hires business practitioners and prominent scientists as lecturers and promotes international student exchange.
The Challenge
The website constitutes the main communication channel between the university and its potential candidates. It is also a base for the comprehensive educational offer presentation. The previous University's website had an obsolete and unintuitive graphic design. As a result, it was challenging to go through the university’s offer presentation. That is why it was important for the website to be transparent, clear, and easy to use.
The Goal
With the view to users' convenience, the new website creation with a reorganized structure, intuitive navigation, and modern graphic design was not a whim but a necessity. We wanted to eliminate elements that deviated from the Academy’s vision of a “world-class business university”.
The Solution
Higher universities require a specific approach. 3 crucial aspects determine the work:
- Seasonality
- Security
- Content management
Higher university websites must be prepared for a sharp growth of interest which causes increased traffic, e.g., during the recruitment period. That is why they have to be highly efficient.
Universities store thousands of sensitive data about students or payments. Thus, they require a system that offers top-class security.
Another key element is content management – university websites usually contain many subpages with various types of content, so a simple mechanism for creating, editing, and deleting content is crucial.
Not many systems meet these criteria. One of them is CMS Drupal – the main technology for Kozminski University’s website development. Moreover, many key features are based on Vue.js and Elasticsearch. Such a combination provides dynamics, speed, and smooth performance.
Solution Details
Paragraphs
The website consists of paragraphs. Such a solution enables the creation of unique subpages that can be freely mixed together. On the Kozmiński University website, our experts implemented around 35 different paragraphs within one content type. That guarantees splendid flexibility, convenience, and freedom in creating and editing new subpages.
Product Listing
One of the website’s key features is the “educational offer” section made in the product listing form thanks to Vue and Elasticsearch. That is the place where all the educational products and services of Kozmiński University are displayed, e.g., undergraduate, graduate, postgraduate, executive programs, courses, etc. Users can easily filter the available products by area, level, language, duration, mode, and co-financing options.
It is not the only listing joint with a search engine option on the website. Using Vue and Elasticsearch, we created a global search engine that crawls the entire website, for example:
- rules and regulations listing,
- job offer listing,
- press office listing.
Integration with Academic Achievements
Thanks to the created API, there is a possibility to gather information such as scientific works, contact details, or photographs of people connected to the University. The data is automatically completed. The field synchronization can be turned on/off manually for each profile from the CMS level.
WCAG
The website is compliant with WCAG guidelines, which state the standards for website accessibility for users with disabilities. There is an option to choose between the default or contrast version and to change the font size to a smaller or bigger one.
Custom Admin Panel
The changes that facilitate website management concern not only the users but also the admins. Our experts prepared a custom, transparent admin panel to make website management easier.
The Effects
Many hours of work resulted in a service perfectly catered to the client's needs
A new website means adding new content, meeting user needs, and process automation.
Unlimited development possibilities (e.g., module installations, custom features deployment).
Complexity – the website provides all information about the University, its offer, job posts, principles, press releases, etc.
Responsiveness – from the 320px resolution for various browsers, e.g. Safari and IE 11.
Simple and aesthetic product formats, e.g. departments, units, blog posts, events, or job offers.
Related products system, e.g. for blog posts or events.
Automatic content indexation (new or updated) to Elasticsearch.
Fast content searching and filtering mechanism.
Advanced roles and permissions authorization system.
Statistics
2100
6
120
25
200000
2
41
36
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