Sector(s)
The Institute of Mathematics at the University of Wroclaw teaches and researches mathematics and computer science across undergraduate, master's, and doctoral programs. The institute needed a public website as an institutional showcase, information hub, and contact channel. The project migrated the existing site from a legacy custom CMS to Drupal while applying a new visual design supplied by the client.
About the project
The Institute of Mathematics at the University of Wroclaw conducts teaching and research in mathematics and computer science. Its public website presents degree programs, research activity, seminars, and news while giving students and faculty a place to find contacts, events, and institutional updates. The client supplied a new graphic design and asked for a full migration from a legacy custom CMS to Drupal without losing essential content.
The client
The Institute runs degree programs, research projects, and public outreach as part of the University of Wroclaw. The website is its primary digital presence: it publishes news, lists faculty profiles, documents seminars and events, and shares grant activity and achievements.
Challenge
The platform needed to:
- Migrate essential data and selected content from a legacy custom CMS to Drupal.
- Apply the client's new graphic design while keeping editorial control inside the CMS.
- Replace vertical navigation with a multi-level mega menu and clearer information architecture.
- Standardize repetitive subpage layouts through structured content types.
- Give editors reusable components to build landing pages without developer tickets.
- Preserve faculty directories, seminar listings, events, grants, and site search from the previous site.
Solutions
Migration from legacy CMS to Drupal
The implementation imported structured data and selected content into Drupal content types and fields. Migration scripts mapped legacy records to entities for news, events, seminars, faculty profiles, grants, and static pages. The new theme applied the client's design across responsive templates.
Mega menu and information architecture
A multi-level drop-down mega menu replaced the previous vertical navigation. Categories group degree programs, research areas, faculty resources, and institute news so visitors reach deep content in fewer clicks.
Structured content types and paragraph components
Fixed-layout content types cover recurring page patterns. Pre-built Paragraph components let editors assemble subpages and landing pages from reusable blocks while keeping spacing consistent with the design system.
Faculty directories and lecturer profiles
Views-driven listings display lecturers with degree, name, office, and contact details, with filters by academic title. Profile pages aggregate course schedules, teaching files, publications, conference activity, and research notes for each person.
Seminars, events, and news
Sections list current and archived events, from student competitions to dissertation defenses. The seminars area ties each subject to participating staff, topics, and meeting dates. News posts use taxonomy categories such as Career, Students, and Successes.
Search, grants, and achievements
Site search returns matching pages and can scope results to user profiles. A grants listing shows title, contractor, and implementation dates. A successes timeline publishes student and faculty awards in chronological order.
Result
The Institute of Mathematics website runs on Drupal with the client's new design and the core capabilities of the previous platform intact. Students and faculty browse categorized news, explore seminars and events, filter faculty lists, and locate people through combined content and user search. Editors publish landing pages from paragraph components without rebuilding page markup for each update.
Examples of implemented features:
- Migration from a legacy custom CMS with preserved essential data.
- Multi-level mega menu with categorized navigation.
- Reusable Paragraph components for editor-built landing pages.
- Filterable faculty directory and individual lecturer profile pages.
- Seminars and events with linked people, topics, and dates.
- Taxonomy-driven news categories for Career, Students, and Successes.
- Combined content and user search.
- Grants listing and chronological successes timeline.
Why Drupal was chosen
Higher education websites combine long-lived structured data with frequently updated news and events. Drupal's content model supports distinct content types, taxonomies, and entity relationships without forcing every section into a single page template.
For the Institute of Mathematics, Drupal offered a migration path from a closed custom CMS while preserving essential data. Paragraph components let staff assemble landing pages from pre-built blocks, and Views power filterable faculty directories. Built-in user integration supports people search alongside content search, a common requirement when visitors look up educators by name or title.
Technical Specifications
Drupal version:
