TUM Website Relaunch: A New Milestone in a Trusted, Long-Term Partnership

The Technical University of Munich (TUM) is one of Germany’s premier higher education institutions. With over 50,000 students, several thousand faculty and staff members, and renowned departments in life sciences, engineering, natural sciences, and medicine, the university consistently ranks among the top institutions in Europe. Since 2006, TUM has been recognized as a University of Excellence. 

With campuses in Munich, Garching, and Weihenstephan, TUM fosters an international academic environment, supported by numerous partnerships with educational institutions worldwide, helping the university build a reputation as a hub for cutting-edge research and innovation.

In 2021, the university set out to relaunch its website to enhance user experience, combining a more accessible frontend for visitors with a scalable, future-proof backend architecture for its large editorial team. The TUM team turned to its long-standing partner in2code to perform a TYPO3 upgrade and set the foundation for the university’s new web presence. 

With an extensive content archive and a large collection of pages already running, one of the key goals of the project was to automate the migration of thousands of pages and datasets. This was performed while ensuring that the content management process would be streamlined in the upgraded TYPO3 instance. 

As with any project of this magnitude, maintaining seamless editorial workflows for internal teams, including improved navigation and a scalable architecture, was essential.

In order to have a clear understanding of the task at hand, and the specific project requirements, the in2code team began an extensive consultation process and analysis phase to align the project with TUM’s strategic objectives. 

Furthermore, due to the need for the frontend outputs to be synchronized with the new backend, the in2code team maintained constant communication with the design agency Triplesense Reply, who were responsible for the website’s visual design. 

As a committed partner and longtime collaborator with TUM, in2code has overseen the conception, design evolution, and functionality improvements of the university’s website. This experience, delivering custom solutions tailored to TUM’s needs and reflecting shifts in visitor demands, enables the university’s website to consistently perform at the highest standard, alongside its domestic and international counterparts.

In order to significantly improve the TUM website’s performance and stability, the CMS used for the instance was upgraded to TYPO3 Version 11. Other noteworthy changes include an automated migration system using a custom TYPO3 migration boilerplate, enabling the seamless transfer of all existing content. 

The website’s frontend underwent improvements, including the development of a fully responsive interface using Vanilla JavaScript, CSS Logical Properties, and Native CSS Variables. This allowed the team to provide visitors with a more complete and engaging experience while navigating through the university’s site.

These improvements were essential to the project, as it was crucial for the backend infrastructure to be sufficiently scalable to meet the university’s evolving needs and future growth. As a CMS that’s built with scalability at its core, TYPO3 was uniquely positioned to support such a task.

Furthermore, a Solr-based search function was implemented on the site, categorizing and paginating results to improve overall navigation.

To streamline the course search process for prospective students, in2studyfinder was enabled. This extension, which was created by in2code to serve clients in the higher education sector, delivers advanced filtering capabilities, leading to faster and more efficient searches for different academic programs. Such a tool is imperative for a higher education institution of TUM’s scale, as the university offers over 150 courses.

Improving the day-to-day operations of TUM’s large team of editors was crucial to the success of the project. As such, the in2code team automated the migration of thousands of pages and datasets stored within the TUM backend. This greatly improved workflows and streamlined operations. Content management across the TUM instance became much simpler, enabling the editorial team to focus on other core tasks. 

From a frontend perspective, the accessibility improvements made to the website, most notably making the website compliant with BITV standards, allow for a wider and more diverse range of visitors to access the website. This was achieved through contrast optimization, keyboard navigation improvements, and the integration of ARIA attributes.

The project’s success is represented by the clear impact it has had in several areas. To begin with, the website’s overall performance has significantly improved, as has its stability. Additionally, the improved accessibility features ensure the site complies with current accessibility standards, providing a more user-friendly framework for a diverse workforce. 

From a workflow perspective, the reduced editorial workload has resulted in more streamlined workflows and an improved editor experience.

Regarding the frontend and user experience, the website’s modern, user-centric design, Solr Search, and in2studyfinder extension, have all played an important role in making the site easier than ever for visitors to navigate. 

Finally, a future roadmap has also been established, which includes updates and optimization of the TYPO3 system, delivering a long-term plan for future improvements. The future roadmap represents the next chapters in what has been a long and successful partnership with one of Germany’s leading educational institutions.

TYPO3 excels in delivering scalable websites for universities that seamlessly manage large asset archives, and offer unmatched scalability potential. 

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