The University of Manchester
Applications website
Licensing of software is big business for higher education institutions and software companies. Virtual Construction designed and developed this professional, easy-to-manage website to provide accurate general information, instruction manuals, downloads and securely deliver license codes worth millions of pounds to tens of thousands of staff and students.
We created this website from the ground up, migrating from IIS/ASP/MSSQL to Apache2/PHP5/MySQL4 in order to provide cost savings, and migrate onto a more supported technology stack. The CMS was developed by Virtual Construction using an Model-View-Controller Object-Oriented-Programming design pattern in PHP. It integrates with the existing staff and student directory to protect sensitive content and license codes via LDAP.
Visit the University Applications Group Website
Staff and student intranets
Solely responsible for the technical implementation and development of The University of Manchester's Intranet including restructuring the site in a task based way, reprogramming dynamic elements and rewriting much of the content, integrated with Terminal Four SiteManager CMS.
The system pulls in information from a range of other web enabled systems across the University, making them available in a usability conscious, familiar environment. This includes the News Management System, Human Resources Vacancy System, Document Management System and more.
The University of Manchester Intranet saves approximately £120,000 worth of man hours per week through its commitment to save 15 minutes of each staff members time every day.
Visit The University of Manchester Intranet
The Children's University of Manchester: World Languages Map
This interactive map of the world was produced for primary
school students, using the latest Flash video technologies to demonstrate each
of the 21 languages to the child through 6 or 7 phrases, with fun facts about
each country and language.
The map was produced in conjunction with a range of leading Modern Foreign Language, and Linguistic academics, University students and off course with advice and testing from some of the kids themselves!
At it's time, this was one of the most advanced implementations of the new Flash Video technology on the internet.