Learning together: A university department website

In my experience, university websites are notorious for being hard to read and navigate. That's why I welcomed the challenge of creating a web for my university department.

The challenge

I was asked to update the website of the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology. Milan, a university researcher and lecturer who took care of the web had designed the previous version of the web using Elementor and several other plugins. However, the site seemed to be lacking in design and readability. There were also requests for additional content types and an multilingual translations.

Design first

I first supplied a Figma design for several pages to give a good idea of where I was headings. I was basing my design loosely on the previous version as there were some good elements in it. However, I redesigned and simplified the content structure - mainly the navigation links and the content of some pages.

Milan and other members of the staff loved the design, so I moved on to the implementation. I decided for a custom built theme, as it would give me full control over the content types and design templates. It also allows to combine the existing Gutenberg blocks to create new pages efficiently.

Planning the structure

I implemented an information board which shows the newest articles and short announcements about the day-to-day matters in the department. I also provided instructions to all staff on how to edit the content making them more comfortable with using the site.

Performance and maintainability

By replacing the plugin components with custom ones, I removed the overhead of the plugin which may make the website load slower. The custom code also allows for better maintainability as the content structure of the website is managed from a single place - the Gutenberg editor - instead of being broken up into multiple plugins.

Always think about the user

Thanks to the custom theme, I gained a fine-grain control over each part of the page so I could more easily make UX improvements such as making the staff images link to the individual profiles. On lecturer's profile pages, I used a card with tabs to more easily display various types of information.

Final thoughts

The response to the new design was great. The theme is ready to be translated into English and I continue to make updates and implement new features in collaboration with Milan and the rest of the department.

Have a look at the live web on KSKA.upce.cz