Context & Problem
For this year the University of Greenwich, specifically the School of Design and Creative Industries, decided to create an online portfolio that promotes and showcase the students’ work. The program I was studying at this university, MA Web Design and Content Planning, is part of this school, and our lecturers were responsible for leading this project and gave some of the students the opportunity to collaborate on it.
My role
The teachers assigned us the task of organising and uploading content to WordPress, optimising the images provided by students and teachers, and ensuring compliance with the expected accessibility standards (Equality Act 2010 & The Public Sector Bodies).
Challenges & Development
This experience allowed me to understand and apply the concepts covered in class about accessibility, as one of my main tasks was to ensure that all users, regardless of their abilities, could access information equally. Since it was a site with a large number of images and videos, it was essential to ensure that each one had descriptive alternative text and a clear content structure.
In addition to this, I was able to learn how the ACF plugin can completely transform a WordPress site. I saw how creating custom fields can create an organized and professional structure for content, overcoming the limitations of the standard editor.
On the other hand, managing the visual elements of WordPress can quickly become chaotic, which is why I used the FileBird plugin. This plugin became an indispensable tool for maintaining order. This plugin allowed me to create a folder structure similar to that of an operating system. The benefits were remarkable: file search time was drastically reduced, collaboration with other team members improved significantly, and it allowed me to maintain clear visual control of all the project's multimedia resources.
Results
This project taught me that professional web development requires both attention to accessibility standards and the intelligent use of specialised tools. WordPress, with plugins such as ACF and FileBird, proved to be a robust platform capable of handling complex institutional projects. The key is to select the right tools that truly solve specific problems and improve the team's workflow.