University of Leuven, Belgium

In 2007 the central IT service of the university started a project to replace the many small Dreamweaver websites and custom CMS implementations with one centrally supported WCMS.

After a round of requirements analysis and product comparisons, Plone was chosen based on its extensive out-of-the-box feature set, mainly concerning authentication/authorisation, rights delegation and multi-site management features.

University of Leuven

Currently most central and departmental websites have moved to the Plone WCMS. They all use the same visual styling, as was requested by the marketing department. Each part of the website can be modified by hundreds of content providers, while still enforcing a consistent page structure throughout the website.

Some examples:

Project sites that need a custom style are hosted in a separate Plone installation, with the ability to change the layout through the web.

Some examples:

The Plone team has customised the setup to fit the needs of the university, with the help of a group of local consultants.

These customisations include:

  • integrating Plone with the central Identity and Access Management  infrastructure (IAM). Information from that user and group repository can be used to restrict access 
  • customising the layout based on the guidelines for electronic communications. This includes customized landing pages and the ability to enter organisation specific content items in the editor
  • include information from external datasources (e.g. persons repository, publications repository), filtered by the editors 

Information about the service: