Making a deep research website easy to find your way through
The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis is a spinal cord and brain injury research center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Its website serves researchers, people living with paralysis, clinical trial participants, donors and event-goers, and it has a lot of content to do it with.
The situation
Research programs, a faculty directory, clinical trials, resources for the spinal cord injury community, events, news, publications and fundraising, all on one site. Each audience needs its own path through a lot of material.
Because The Miami Project lives inside a university medical school, anything the site sends by email goes out under university-owned domains, with university rules attached.
What I built
A custom WordPress theme built for depth. Sections can carry their own navigation through a page-level menu override system, so someone deep in the research or clinical trials material stays oriented without the main menu growing out of control.
Behind the scenes I've also handled the hosting side, including server migrations and staging environments.
Email that reaches the inbox
The site sends from a med.miami.edu address, so the domain belongs to university IT. I worked with UM's systems administrators to set up Mailgun with SPF, DKIM and DMARC, so the site's mail is properly authenticated and lands where it should.
Highlights
- Custom WordPress theme built for a deep, multi-audience site
- Section-level navigation through a page menu override system
- Mailgun, SPF, DKIM and DMARC set up with University of Miami IT
