Project Website Launched
After several months of preparation, the NeDiPal-project website was launched. This article will explain how it was made and what it will be used for in the coming years.
The projects' website serves three main functions:
- It will be used as a platform for general information about the project, aimed at the general public, but also at specialists from the field as well as past or prospective participants of the study.
- The website is also a way of documenting and keeping track of progress made during the research. This news section also contains a blog category, which will be used to give frequent updates about the project. The blog format was deliberately chosen because it encapsulates a wide variety of different formats, be it more long form text but also very short messages or maybe even just a photo.
- An important part of receiving funding for EU projects is the dissemination of results. The project website is a centerpiece for this. The goal is also to keep it online as long as possible, so that it can serve as an archive.
On a technical level, the website was realised using Kirby CMS, because its easily maintainable and has proven to work over long periods of time, especially for relatively simple and small sites like this one. Additionally, Kirby is a European product. Its backend is relatively easy and straightforward to keep the site updated. It also allows me to add features later on, as I expect the site to further develop over the course of the project. The current early 2026 version is more like a first draft.
A challenge was to make the website trilingual. As the website serves many different audiences, the language needed to be adapted accordingly. Research is generally international, so it definitely needed to be available in English. As most participants will likely be from the Belgian region of Wallonia, it needed also be available in French. With the project being hosted by a Flemish university, it also needed to be available in Dutch. It will certainly be challenging to maintain a website in three different languages.
The blog entry here is currently only available in english as its not yet sure whether all blog entries will be translated in all three languages. The biggest challenge here is that the researchers' Dutch is quite rudimentary and Dutch currently seems to be the least important of the three languages. Some parts of the website are also not in Dutch or the Dutch version is a little bit shorter than the other versions.