Having the opportunity to redesign a college website is something you don’t see every day; however, having experience in website design was something I didn’t have. Nevertheless, I dived in and accepted the challenge. My first step was to delve into what the backend looked like. I found that UIC had created a very compelling system to manage their websites using WordPress, however most of the documentation was outdated or with little to no explanation. But that wasn’t going to stop me, I decided to create my own website with all the possible components available for me to use. This way, instead of trying to guess if there was a component available to do something I wanted, I already had a list of what could actually be implemented and what could not.

A month after documenting and going through tutorials on WordPress, I requested a “testing website” that would replace the previous website when finished.

Little by little, I got the hang of it, and the website was taking shape. I updated many areas, but what I focused on the most was PhD and research-related pages since these are the ones people visit the most. The research tab, as well as the landing page, showcase each research opportunity at UIC while also displaying which professors are currently in that specific area. This is really helpful since students will have the option to go directly to the professor’s profiles and have a look at what their research focus about.

Another section that I love is the graduate studies page. I came up with the idea of adding testimonials here because it adds a personal component to the website while also inspiring and giving people the confidence they need to apply for a master's or PhD program.

There were many things that I learned through this project, but the most important was not to settle for what's in front of you. I figured out many workarounds to make this website look modern and updated. For example, something as simple as placing an image couldn’t be done without using a text block; I used invisible ASCII characters to be able to use images anywhere I wanted. This is just one example of some “tricks” that I implemented while creating this website.