The University of Applied Sciences Hamburg recently received an extensive technical upgrade of its existing TYPO3 installation. In addition to the upgrade project, a support and maintenance project with a large proportion of technical and content development was also placed with web-vision.

The project involved upgrading and optimizing the existing installation, minimizing dependencies on third-party systems, creating individual interfaces to internal systems and developing new features for the general improvement of the website. In the following sections, we present the specific points we implemented.

The project is a support and maintenance project with an additional, large proportion of further developments. The existing website is therefore not only continuously maintained, but also regularly expanded with new functionalities.

The task packages for support and maintenance of the installation are organized according to Kanban principles with a fixed support team, while the further development of new features is carried out as a Scrum project with topic-based sprints. This enables us to promptly rectify errors and imperfections during operation and to add new features to the installation in regular cycles.

The TYPO3 instance of the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences is home to around 300 editors in 66 user groups with a wide variety of dedicated access and usage rights. As part of the project, the first task was to upgrade the TYPO3 installation based on TYPO3 version 8.7 to version 11.5 LTS - not only to use an up-to-date and officially supported version, but also to benefit from features and improvements in the new version. As part of TYPO3 development, we worked particularly close to the core to make the installation as upgrade and user-friendly as possible.

A special feature of the project for HAW Hamburg was the development of individual interfaces to the existing user management systems in the infrastructure. The first task was to create an interface between TYPO3 and HiS-in-One - HAW Hamburg's employee database - in order to enable front-end login to the employee portal, among other things.

Furthermore, an interface between TYPO3 and LDAP was developed to enable employees, lecturers and internal and external staff to access the systems. Front-end and back-end users are also synchronized via LDAP.

As already described at the beginning, the main focus of the project was to upgrade the existing TYPO3 installation to a current, stable and future-proof version. Therefore, an upgrade was carried out over 3 major versions from TYPO3 8.7 to TYPO3 11.5 LTS. The editors of HAW Hamburg now benefit from all the features and improvements of the new version and can look forward to improved usability, a faster backend and optimized file and document management.

With the upgrade, HAW Hamburg's installation is now officially secured until October 31, 2024 - with Extended Long Term Support even until October 31, 2027 - and benefits from regular security and maintenance updates.

A penetration test carried out in 2024 successfully confirmed the hardening measures for HAW Hamburg's TYPO3 instance.

HAW Hamburg previously used the TYPO3 extension Grid-Elements to structure and design the website in the front and back end. As there was no version of this extension compatible with TYPO3 version 11 at the time of the project, we decided to migrate to Container. This has all the relevant functions, was developed close to the core and has already proven to be a good alternative to Grid-Elements in other projects. The migration of all grid elements to container elements was carried out successfully and without any downtimes during ongoing website operation.

Another focus of the project was on reducing the use of dependencies on third-party extensions. A number of functionalities that had to be integrated via extensions in older versions have been moved directly into the TYPO3 core in the new versions. The use of many of these extensions is therefore obsolete and slows down the installation unnecessarily.

By removing TYPO3 extensions that are no longer used or required, we were not only able to streamline and speed up the installation, but also significantly reduce future maintenance costs.

The fewer extensions are used, the easier it is to maintain and further develop the TYPO3 instance. Future TYPO3 upgrades will also be simpler and more cost-effective and the proportion of legacy code in the project will be reduced immensely.

For the annual university information days, a way was to be found to simply and individually provide prospective students with information about the events taking place there. As the previous implementation was linked to data records, the individual presentation was severely limited.

A simple event database was developed in TYPO3 on the basis of a separate event page type. Instead of data records, HAW Hamburg now has the option of creating and managing individual events in the TYPO3 page tree. Basic information for the respective event is maintained via the page properties of the event page, supplemented by core information such as event start and end date, event location and, in the case of online events, the event link.

As the development is based on pages and content elements, the presentation of the event information can be supplemented and designed completely individually on the respective pages using any content elements. The development was carried out particularly close to the TYPO3 core and is therefore not only very upgrade-friendly, but also user-friendly.

HAW Hamburg now relies on the TYPO3 extension Academic Studies to efficiently manage its course information. This solution enables the central collection and management of study program data in the TYPO3 page tree and significantly improves the presentation for prospective and current students. Thanks to a modular and flexible presentation, the courses can be presented in a clear and individually appealing way, while content such as entry requirements and career prospects are highlighted in a targeted manner. In addition, data updates are uncomplicated and reduce the maintenance effort for the TYPO3 editorial team.

Filtering of study courses is carried out with the help of typified system categories. Website visitors have the option of filtering by degree, type of study, faculty / department, start date, subject, costs and teaching language on the course overview page. The special feature here is that users always receive a positive filter result based on the results of previous filters. Nonsensical filter combinations are now a thing of the past.

The previous search of the HAW Hamburg website became increasingly slower over the years and showed inadequate results, especially for files.

The new integration of a Solr search server in TYPO3 has accelerated the search and error-tolerant suggestions appear as soon as they are entered. To make files easier to find, documents were indexed using their metadata and content was extracted. Website users can now filter on the search results page according to document types and content types such as news, research projects, employees, partner universities and study programs.

In addition, the search has been integrated with Matomo to gain valuable insights into user behavior, allowing the university to further tailor the website to the needs of its users.