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UCLL

A fresh and multifaceted website for UCLL

With more than 15,000 students, 1,750 employees and 8 campuses, UCLL is one of the largest institutions of higher education in Flanders. You will find a campus in every corner of Flemish Brabant and Limburg: Diepenbeek, Diest, Genk, Hasselt, Heverlee and Leuven.

UCLL

A new beginning with Drupal 9

With Drupal 7's impending expiration date approaching, it was time to convert the website to Drupal 9. A preliminary process with a design firm and a functional analysis determined the designs. With these we then systematically built the website.

The practical hurdles we encountered during the build were reviewed with UCLL on a weekly basis. For example, some things in the original design turned out to be technically difficult to implement. During that weekly meeting, we looked for an appropriate solution together. Read on to find out what solutions we offered....

A functional extension for editors and users

During a preliminary process, a design firm examined the areas for improvement of the old website. Based on those results, they worked out the design based on the corporate identity.

At the start of the project, we sat down with all parties to draw up a plan of approach. Once we were all on the same page, we immediately started building the website. After that, we scheduled a virtual meeting every two weeks to discuss the status of the project. In addition to a thorough migration to Drupal 9, we also provided a new page structure, a link to OpenID and a search function.

Dynamic construction of pages

With paragraphs, a webmaster or editor can build dynamic pages in a user-friendly way.

All these paragraphs contain fields such as titles, text, image and call to actions. Background color, image position and text alignment can be adjusted in the settings. On one page you can place an infinite number of paragraphs below each other, so you can alternate between text, media and dynamic content. Per paragraph you can adjust the design of the new website by creating beautiful and clear pages.

UCLL

Linking with OpenID

Using OpenID, we linked to UCLL's user platform. Through the authentication method, editors can access website content, documents, taxonomy and forms. All kinds of standard Drupal settings that editors can work with independently.

Search

Dynamic search function

Users can now use a dynamic search function on the website based on the SOLR search engine. Facet filters allow everyone to quickly find the information they want.

Based on fields (e.g. title and tags), certain words are given a higher "score," which places these pages higher in search results.

Results

In the end, UCLL enjoys a decent website. Futureproof thanks to Drupal 9, and user-friendly for editors with a wider range of paragraphs, and more beautiful thanks to the updated design.