Kozminski University
Challenge
Kozminski University is the key European business school that has been educating Polish and international students since 1993. 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. Thus, the website should be transparent, readable, and above all, easy to use for its users. The previous University's website had an obsolete graphic design. Moreover, it was highly untransparent, and its user interface was unintuitive. As a result, the simple and readable university's offer presentation was challenging. With the view to users' convenience, the new website creation with reorganized structure, intuitive navigation, and modern graphic design was not a whim but a necessity.
Solution
Websites for higher ed institutions have to be prepared for seasonality – sharp growth of interest which causes increased traffic, e.g., during recruitment period is bread and butter. Thus, such websites have to be highly efficient. Additionally, the key issue is security – universities restore thousands of sensitive data about students or payments. That is why they require a system that offers top-class security. Last but not least, the technology needs to have easy to use content management system. Higher ed websites usually are extended, possessing hundreds of subpages with different content types. Thus, the simple mechanism for content edition is a must-have. There are not many systems that meet these criteria. One of them is CMS Drupal, and it was the main technology for Kozminski University’s website development. Moreover, many key features are based on Vue and Elasticsearch. Such a combination provides dynamics, speed, and smooth performance of numerous solutions. Solution in details The website consists of paragraphs. Such a solution enables the creation of unique subpages based on available paragraphs which can be freely joint with each other. On the Kozminski University website, our experts implemented around 35 different paragraphs within one content type. That guarantees splendid flexibility, convenience, and freedom in subpages creation and edition. 2. Products’ listing One of the key features is the Educational Offer section made in the product listing form thanks to Vue and Elasticsearch combination. That is the place where all the educational products and services of Kozminski University are displayed, e.g., undergraduate, graduate, postgraduate, executive programs, courses, and training, etc. Users can easily filter the available products by the area, level, language, duration, mode, and co-financing options. It isn’t the only listing joint with the search engine option on the website. Using Vue and Elasticsearch, the global search engine that crawls the entire website was made, so as the principles, job offers, or press publications listings. 3. Integration with academic achievements Thanks to the created API, there is a possibility to gather information such as the scientific works, contact details, or photographs of people connected to Kozminski University. The data are automatically completed. The fields synchronization can be turned on/off manually for each profile from the CMS level. The website is compliant with WCAG guidelines, which state the standards for website accessibility for users, e.g., with disabilities. There is the possibility to choose between the default or contrast version and to change the font size for a smaller or bigger one. 5. Customized admin panel The changes which facilitate website management concern not only the users but also the admins. To ease and fasten the website management, our experts prepared a dedicated, transparent admin panel. Other solutions implemented on the website: Realisation in numbers We spent more than 2100 hours on the project’s development. We wrote more than 200 000 lines of code. Six well-skilled specialists were working on the project’s success. We deployed around 120 views for desktop and mobile versions. We launched two language versions. We conducted 41 automatic unit tests for Vue-based features. We carried out 36 automatic functional tests for custom modules.
Results
Benefits for Kozminski University Unlimited development possibilities (e.g., modules installations, dedicated features deployment). Complexity – the website provides all information about the University, its offer, job posts available, principles, press releases, etc. Easy and fast updates. Security. Responsiveness. Fast content searching and filtering mechanism. Easy management. Comprehensive documentation that facilitates the project’s management and further growth. WCAG standards compliance. Advanced roles and permissions authorization system. Fast and efficient website. Integration with the academic achievements (thanks to API). Outstanding multilingualism option.
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