WordPress for higher education
Every department publishes on one platform. AI reads every program.
Schools, programs and offices each run their own pages, while brand, accessibility and permissions stay set in one place. For universities with many schools and one standard to keep.
What web and communications teams tell us
What we hear from university web teams
A university runs its web the way it is organized: one site per school, program or office. These are the five problems web and communications leads bring to us.
What 40Q builds
Each unit publishes on its own, within one standard
Your central team sets the design, the rules and the permissions once, and every school, office and program works inside them.
-
“Nobody knows how many sites we have.”
Each school and office built its own, on its own CMS, and every separate site needs its own updates. Sprawl costs more in upkeep than in hosting. We build: one WordPress multisite, where each school or campus gets its own site on a single codebase and a shared design system.
-
“Every update goes through the central web team.”
A program change or a new event waits in the same queue as everything else. The central team should set the rules, not type every change. We build: permissions by unit: department editors publish their own pages from shared blocks, central communications reviews what needs review, and no one edits another unit’s pages.
-
“Each school’s site looks different, and nobody can say which pages are accessible.”
Every school picked its own templates, so the brand drifts, and hundreds of editors publish every week. We build: the university’s brand as one library of blocks with accessibility built in to WCAG 2.1 AA: heading order, color contrast, alt text and keyboard access. Every school publishes with the same blocks, every staging build is scanned, and the main journeys, such as applying or finding a course, are checked by hand with a screen reader and with a keyboard alone. More on accessibility.
-
“Students can’t find the right page.”
The same program or course is described on several sites, and the versions disagree. We build: structured content: programs, courses, faculty and events each have their own fields, so one update shows everywhere they appear, and search engines and AI assistants read one version.
-
“We need a separate login for every site.”
Editors keep one account per school’s site, and campus systems sit apart from the web. We build: sign-in through your university’s single sign-on on every site. Single sign-on and CRM connections are standard on enterprise WordPress. We list every system you need in the diagnosis and confirm how each one connects before any build is priced.
Northeastern University case study
Northeastern Law runs its own design framework on WordPress
40Q turned Northeastern’s own UI framework into a WordPress theme and worked as an extension of the internal team across the School of Law’s sites.
With 40Q, I was able to find a talented partner to help me deal with complex coding challenges while proactively proposing new solutions to make my agency project delightful.
Tim Albert, Director of Digital Strategy, Northeastern University School of Law
FAQ
What universities ask us
The questions IT, procurement and communications raise before a project starts.
Next step
Let every unit publish and keep one standard
In 30 minutes, a WordPress engineer looks at how your sites are spread today, where accessibility is at risk, and which phase to start with. No deck and no sales pitch.