How to build a university website

Start with the audiences you need to serve: prospective students, current students, staff, parents, alumni and visitors. Use clear top-level sections such as Admissions, Academics, Research, Student life, News and events and About. Higher-education information architecture commonly groups content around familiar areas such as admissions and academics, rather than around internal departments alone.

Write down the pages before you design the homepage. Include programme or course pages, faculty or department pages, tuition and funding information, application instructions, campus information, contact details and a search option. This prevents the common mistake of building a polished homepage while important information remains buried.

Use WordPress Pages for stable information such as About, Admissions and Contact. WordPress pages are intended for non-chronological content and can be organised into parent and child pages.

For a small site, you can also publish courses, faculty profiles and events as ordinary pages. The drawback is that every listing, filter and archive must be maintained manually. If the university has many programmes, staff members or recurring events, use a theme or plugin that provides structured listings instead of forcing everything into long pages.

Create the main pages from the WordPress dashboard, then add content with the block editor. Keep each page focused: explain the subject, show the next action and link to the relevant detail page. For example, an Admissions page should link to entry requirements, deadlines, fees, scholarships and the application form.

If you use a block theme, you can create and edit pages from Appearance > Editor > Pages. You can edit the page content separately from its template, which helps you reuse the same header and footer across the site.

Build the homepage in this order: a short value statement, primary actions such as Apply now and Find a course, important announcements, featured programmes, upcoming events, student or alumni information, and a clear contact or visit section. Use sections with consistent spacing rather than adding every available widget.

Create reusable block patterns for repeated sections such as course cards, event cards, calls to action and faculty profile cards. Keep programme names, dates and calls to action as real text, not text embedded in images. Check the design at phone, tablet and desktop widths before publishing.

Create a primary navigation with no more than the most important sections, then place lower-priority links in a secondary menu or footer. With a block theme, go to Appearance > Editor > Navigation to reorder items, create submenus and assign a menu to a Navigation block. Creating a menu does not automatically display it; the Navigation block must be placed in the header or another template part and linked to that menu.

Use descriptive link text, visible headings, keyboard-friendly controls, meaningful alternative text and sufficient colour contrast. Treat WCAG 2.2 as the accessibility target, and test menus, forms, search and application links without a mouse.

For a university that needs course listings, event calendars and faculty pages quickly, choose an education-focused theme rather than a generic business theme. Estudiar is designed around those requirements and includes configurable homepage layouts, course management, an event calendar, responsive layouts, custom widgets and compatibility with tools such as WooCommerce and LearnDash.

Install and activate Estudiar, import or select a suitable homepage layout, then replace the demo content with your university branding and approved information. Set up the main navigation, add programme and faculty content, check event dates, and review every page on a phone before launch. This route saves design time, but you still need to plan the content structure and check accessibility yourself.