Dynamic Grid System

Many of the websites built on NU Start relied on content-driven experiences such as news archives, event listings, academic programs, faculty profiles, campus information, and landing pages. While these experiences served different audiences and appeared in different layouts, they often relied on the same underlying capabilities: querying, filtering, organizing, and presenting content.

What began as a Gutenberg interface for WordPress’s content querying capabilities evolved into a reusable framework for building content-driven experiences across the platform. Editors could build rich content experiences without custom development, while developers could continue extending the system as new requirements emerged.

Behind the scenes, a shared query engine handled content selection, filtering, pagination, and aggregation. Presentation templates controlled how results were displayed, allowing the same underlying content to power many different experiences.

As adoption grew, the framework expanded to support numerous content types including news, events, programs, people, campuses, colleges, and institutional content. Individual sites could override presentation templates within their own child themes, allowing local customization while continuing to benefit from improvements made to the shared platform.

The Dynamic Content Grid became one of the foundational systems within NU Start. More than a single feature, it demonstrated a broader principle that guided the platform: build flexible systems that can grow alongside the people using them.