Philosophy in Practice – building a website with a blog

Philosophy in Practice is a journal and a popular-science blog published by the Interdisciplinary Center for Ethics at Jagiellonian University. We built a content-driven website for the journal with a blog profile characterized by high readability and intuitive content navigation.

Collaboration Goals

The old site, on which the previous blog was based, had become outdated, difficult to manage, and struggled with significant technical debt. Consequently, the Editor-in-Chief of the journal approached our company to build a new website with a blog that would meet the needs of modern users and allow for the further development of the journal and the online service.

The project’s goal was to create a modern, intuitive, and efficient blog service on the WordPress platform that would:

Increase trust in the service through a modern look and a more developed layout,
Improve navigation and usability through better typography, creating a search engine, categorization, and highlighting authors,
Enable easy content management by administrators,
Be responsive and adaptable to various devices,
Allow easy navigation and fast page loading,
Reduce technical debt and provide a solid technical foundation for future development, with a long-term perspective for running a content service.

Project process

We completed the project through a standardized project process consisting of several key phases: Discovery, Design, Development, and Quality Assurance.

Discovery

Project workshops

We began the process with project workshops involving the editors of filozofiawpraktyce.pl. The goal of the workshops was to understand the business needs, aesthetic preferences, and challenges faced by the old site. We also discussed functional requirements and the goals the new site should achieve.

During the workshops, we also defined the main audience groups (proto-personas):

Readers
Potential collaborators
Professionals (e.g., journalists who want to verify or confirm information for their material)
Reviewers who evaluate the service for grant awarding purposes
External authors who publish their articles as guests

Analysis of the Old Website

We analyzed the old website in terms of performance, usability, and technical issues. Significant problems were detected, such as slow page loading speeds, difficulty in navigation, and limited ability to adapt the site to user needs. The Desk Research conducted at this stage significantly helped us better understand the site’s characteristics, perform a competitive analysis, understand market specifics, current trends, and identify opportunities and threats.

Design

UX/UI Design

Based on the information gathered from the workshops and the analysis of the old site, we proceeded to the UX Design and UI Design phase. A complete design of the new site was created in Figma, which incorporated modern web design trends as well as the specificity of philosophical content. The design was intended to be minimalist yet elegant and visually appealing.

Prototyping and Usability Testing

We created an interactive prototype in Figma, which was then tested with a group of target users. The tests allowed us to identify areas that required improvement before moving on to the development phase.

Development

Building the Website on WordPress

After the graphic design was approved by the client, we started programming the site. WordPress was chosen as the platform due to its flexibility and ease of content management. The development team created a custom theme based on the Figma designs, ensuring that each page was responsive and optimized for SEO.

Content migration to WordPress

One of the key stages was transferring all existing content from the old site to the new one and ensuring the correct operation of 301 redirects. We ensured a smooth migration, and the content was properly displayed on the new platform. During the migration, we also optimized images and other multimedia resources to minimize page loading time.

Quality Assurance

A manual tester thoroughly checked the new site for compliance with the graphic design in Figma, the correct functioning of features, and responsiveness on various devices (mobile/tablet/desktop). We also conducted performance tests to ensure the site runs smoothly even under heavy loads.

Publication

After completing the Quality Assurance phase and optimizing the site, we published the new site at filozofiawpraktyce.pl. Additionally, we trained the editorial team in managing the new site to give them full control over content publication and editing.

On the agreed date, we proceeded to deploy the new site to the production server and officially published the site.

Development and Maintenance

After the successful implementation and publication of the project, we entered into a Continuous Improvements process with the client, ensuring ongoing enhancements of the site and addressing current issues and necessary fixes. We continuously monitor the technical condition of the site, providing regular and cyclical system updates and performing backups.

Summary of Collaboration

The project of building a new blog website for filozofiawpraktyce.pl is a prime example of a successful website redesign, where an outdated platform was transformed into a modern, efficient, and attractive service. Through close collaboration with the client and the application of proven project and development methodologies, we succeeded in creating a product that meets the expectations of both users and site owners. The modern design, ease of use, and improved performance have encouraged users to return to the site more frequently, while administrators can easily manage the content.