Eastern University is a private Christian liberal arts university located in St. Davids, Pennsylvania, offering undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral programs across multiple academic disciplines. The project involved developing a custom Drupal website for the university, completed while consulting with Eastern Standard, a digital agency with a concentration in higher education Drupal builds.
University informational sites require architecture that can accommodate a wide range of content managed by multiple departments — academic program listings, admissions information, faculty profiles, news and events, student resources, and institutional content. Drupal's content type, view, and taxonomy system provides the structure for managing this variety of content in a centralized platform while allowing different site sections to present content in formats appropriate to their audience.
Custom Drupal theming established the visual presentation layer for the site, translating Eastern University's brand identity into a web interface that serves prospective students exploring the institution as well as current students and faculty navigating to academic and administrative resources. Typography, color, and layout conventions all needed to reflect the character of a private liberal arts institution within a framework that was technically maintainable by the university's staff.
The consulting engagement with Eastern Standard placed front-end development work within the agency's established Drupal project process, requiring close coordination with the design and development leads to ensure theming output integrated correctly with the site's content architecture.
