Introducing: The all-new University of Gloucestershire website

The all-new University of Gloucestershire website is full of innovation at every turn. Users are able to personalise their experience, and menus adapt to the ‘type’ of user browsing the site. We worked on the new University of Gloucestershire website in parallel with teams across the university on content and a sector-leading innovation: the GlosAPI. The GlosAPI is a single-source-of-truth for all manner of university information. The website is the first application to leverage this data. Courses are drawn in from sector-specific software (SITS), and sent to the website via the API. Courses are managed using SMILE’s OnCourse plugin, and content workflows and governance are provided by Content Flow.

“SMILE brought huge enthusiasm, creativity and innovation to our project, listening and reacting to our feedback every step of the journey. The University of Gloucestershire now has a cutting edge automated website which is continually synchronised with the very latest information on courses and university life. Those who arrive on the website will find what they need without realising the clever technology that is helping to customise their experience. Success has led the university to plan more solutions with the ’future-thinking’ team at SMILE

– Rob Blagden, Director of Libraries, Technology and Information

The project was intended to be a technical overhaul and re-CMS exercise. But our design team have been responsible for creating a new iteration of the digital design language for the University of Gloucestershire website. The creation of a component library was lynchpin in our ability to utilise the revolutionary Gutenberg editor. Gutenberg gives content designers huge flexibility in page design without compromising on the university brand. Even images have been meticulously managed: they are created specifically with our “Responsive Media Grid” in mind and are delivered via a Content Delivery Network (CDN).

Editing and collaboration are streamlined and frictionless thanks to the multi-site architecture — a familiar path paved by our previous projects for Morley College and Bradford College. The project saw the University of Gloucestershire re-platform from Microsoft Sharepoint to WordPress. The University now joins 40% of the entire internet in its choice of content management system — now hosted on SMILE’s HappyPress infrastructure.

There is so much to say about this project so we’ll be providing further detailed case studies soon. We are very proud of our hand in the brand new www.glos.ac.uk.