The Hochschule für Telekommunikation Leipzig (HfTL) offers modern, practice-oriented trainings and courses in communication and information technology. It looks back on a long history: In 1953, what was then Deutsche Post's engineering college was opened in Leipzig. It has belonged to the Bundespost Telekom since 1990 and became the sponsorship of Deutsche Telekom in 1995 when the Deutsche Bundespost was privatized.
In Netresearch we have found a reliable partner for our content management system TYPO3. During the entire project, Netresearch was at our side and we were able to generate valuable impulses for the future development of the website. We look forward to a fruitful and cooperative partnership.
Torsten Büttner
Public Relations Officer
Hochschule für Telekommunikation Leipzig
The plan
The Hochschule für Telekommunikation Leipzig operates its own website to provide students and prospective students with extensive information on the courses on offer and further training opportunities.
Like many other universities, the HfTL relies on the TYPO3 content management system. Since the support for the 4.5 LTS version of TYPO3 is running out and this can lead to considerable security gaps, we were commissioned to carry out a version upgrade to version 6.2 LTS.
In addition, a responsive design was desired to better reach the young target group of the HfTL.
Implementation
We started to look through the current system and check whether it can be updated. The HfTL had a total of 60 TYPO3 extensions in use. The number of extensions has grown over the years and resulted from the changed requirements for the website over time. After a detailed analysis, we were able to remove more than 20 of them and thus significantly improved the update capability of the system.
The remaining extensions were checked again for compatibility with the new TYPO3 version. Some had to be replaced or upgraded to a new version. For example, we have replaced the Digital Asset Management (DAM) with the TYPO3 standard implementation File Abstraction Layers (FAL).
All files were taken over from the old system. The previously used picture gallery (and_shadowbox) is no longer being maintained by the provider, which can also lead to security gaps. We have therefore replaced the extension with the TYPO3 standard element “Pictures” and migrated the existing data. This means that this area is also future-proof again.
The Powermail extension for the easy and user-friendly construction of forms has also been raised from version 1 to version 2 and the forms and mails have been migrated.
Impressions
Key features
| Bootstrap framework | ||
| Improved performance | ||
| Deployment with Kite |
| Responsive Design | ||
| Composer | ||
| Versionsupdate |
The result
After all requirements for a TYPO3 version upgrade were met, we finally raised the system to the 6.2 LTS version.
The second part of the project consisted of introducing a responsive design. To do this, we adapted and optimized the existing design to the Telekom style guidelines. Three break points have been added for an optimal display of the content on different devices. The responsive design was implemented using the CSS framework Bootstrap.
Future plans
As always, we strive for long-term cooperation with our customers. For the HfTL, we will take care of maintenance, support, and implementation of security updates in the future. In addition, our developers created a list of optimization suggestions with regard to usability during the programming, which are now being implemented at the customer's request.
Thomas Wilhelm
Consultant web platforms,
CMS, TYPO3
+49 341 47842241
Want to know more?
Get detailed information about a project via email or in a personal talk. I'd be happy to advise you.
consulting(at)netresearch(dot)de
+49 341 - 478420