MATE: a Liferay-based central website and faculty sites for a merged university
Webtown built a Liferay-based central website and faculty sites for MATE, providing a unified, accessible digital presence following the university's 2021 merger.
The Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences (MATE), successor to the former Szent István University, faced a fundamental digital challenge following its organizational merger in 2021: the newly formed institution needed an entirely new central website along with independent faculty sites. Webtown's team became the agile partner for this implementation.
The project's biggest challenge was designing the right structure. A central site had to be created that provides a unified framework for all of the university's organizational units, while still allowing individual faculties, institutes, and departments to maintain their own subsites. It was equally important that content used daily by students and faculty - timetables, announcements, academic information - remained easy and seamless to access, without getting lost in an overly complex menu system.
Throughout development, we paid particular attention to accessibility considerations, since the website of a higher education institution serving tens of thousands of students and faculty must be equally accessible to everyone, regardless of the device or assistive technology a visitor uses.
The result is a well-structured, Liferay-based network of websites that provides a unified university identity while preserving the independence of each organizational unit.
A unified university identity, independent faculty sites - MATE's website serves both at once, accessibly.
