National University of Science and Technology MISiS website

• OverviewProcess

Task:

to gradually update the website of a research and education center.

Release date: 09.09.2016

National University of Science and Technology MISiS was founded in 1918 as the Moscow Mining Academy. Today, the university specializes primarily in research and ranks 9th among Russian universities in the Times Higher Education rating. MISiS houses international laboratories where employees and students create medical biomaterials, improve methods of diagnosis and treatment of diseases, develop ultralight materials and search for their new applications. Every aspect of the research center’s life is structured and presented on the pages of the website.

Block layout

To make sure the appearance of pages can be adjusted quickly when needed, each page is assembled from standard blocks. The content for these blocks is usually copied into the administration system from documents of various formats created by many people. It does not matter how many people are responsible for a section: all incoming data is collected, automatically normalized and published in the form of neatly typeset fragments. All the website administrator has to do is combine and arrange the blocks by importance.

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The construction system is easily accessible to anyone starting to work with it. It can be used to prepare pages for any purpose and does not require specific skills to operate. The system includes an error prevention mechanism that guarantees the website will always remain functional. The interface is very easy to use but extremely hard to break.

Links page Article page Media page

Graphic language

Graphic elements created for the website take into account requirements of the university’s guidelines. The graphic coding system allows the users to independently select information based on its importance and easily separate news from links and official data from student life portrayals. Pictograms and Emoji symbols are used as supplementary graphic elements.

Pages addressed to current and prospective students have an informal design including smiley faces, bright photographic inserts and materials from social networks. Information for scientists is presented in a more reserved way.

Style of blocks with information about the university is more strict due to a lower number of decorative elements. Some of the pages have pleasant graphics that can turn a common gray block into a sheet of paper or illustrate a story with a metaphoric background.

Technological solutions

Graphs and diagrams are not created by hand but generated live with the help of scripts. Adding a new element simply requires filling out a table in the website administration system.

In a similar way, Canvas technology is used to display time intervals for events. The administrator enters event start and end times and the system creates a graphic element automatically. If the event includes a deadline, it will be colored red.