ICM UW

Project delivered as part of my professional role at ICM UW.

Ongoing development of the main website of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling at the University of Warsaw. The work covers WordPress development, multilingual content, accessibility, performance and tools supporting a large publishing workflow.

Context

The ICM UW website contains many different types of content – from news and announcements to projects, publications, teams, research and information about the Centre.

Because of the scale of the website, development involves much more than creating new pages. Content structure, search, multilingual support, accessibility and efficient editorial workflows are equally important.

Challenge

As the website evolved, new requirements appeared around content presentation, search, Polish and English versions and accessibility.

Many improvements had to be introduced within the existing WordPress architecture without disrupting the editorial workflow or rebuilding the website from scratch.

My role

I am responsible for the technical development of the WordPress website and the implementation of new features and improvements.

The work includes:

• template and component development,
• Polish and English versions,
• project and publication functionality,
• search and filtering,
• WCAG accessibility improvements,
• performance optimisation,
• interface improvements,
• privacy and security related changes,
• ongoing technical maintenance.

WordPress and multilingual content

The website uses WordPress with Polylang for multilingual content.

Development requires maintaining consistency between the Polish and English versions across content, components, navigation, search and dynamic elements.

Projects, publications and search

An important part of the work has been improving the presentation and organisation of projects and publications.

The implemented mechanisms allow editors to manage structured content in WordPress while helping visitors find information through dedicated listings, filters and search functionality.

Accessibility

The website is developed with WCAG requirements in mind.

Improvements include heading structure, keyboard navigation, focus states, colour contrast, semantic HTML, forms and interactive components.

Performance

The work also includes analysing and improving WordPress performance across both the front end and back end.

This includes optimisation of assets, caching, queries and elements affecting rendering performance and overall usability.

Result

The website can continue to evolve alongside the needs of ICM UW without requiring a complete architectural rebuild.

New functionality can be introduced within the existing WordPress environment while maintaining multilingual consistency, accessibility and maintainability.