APEX University

APEX University is a higher-education subtheme for universities, colleges, schools, departments, continuing-education programs, and academic networks using the APEX design system.

It combines an institutional serif-and-sans visual system with five Single Directory Components for programs, faculty, outcomes, admissions deadlines, and credentials.

Built for academic information architecture

The design distinguishes dense directories from generous program-detail reading. Its default tokens use deep navy, crimson, and an outcome-focused amber, while the inherited APEX controls allow a site team to align the theme with the institution's approved identity.

EB Garamond, Inter, and fallback font families are declared but no webfont files are bundled. Institutions must supply approved font assets or accept the available fallbacks after reviewing licensing, privacy, and performance.

Five University components

• Program card: degree or program summary in featured, grid, and compact sizes, with degree level, department, credits, duration, outcomes preview, and an application destination.
• Faculty card: a directory or feature presentation with portrait, name, title, department, research areas, pronouns, and optional contact details.
• Outcome strip: a band for three to five outcome metrics with labels, context, and an optional source citation.
• Deadline banner: an admissions or registration deadline with a days-remaining countdown, an apply action, and low, medium, and high visual urgency states.
• Credit badge: a microcredential or certificate in pill or card form, with issuer, credit count, image, earned date, and verification destination.

These components display supplied values. They do not calculate outcomes, validate accreditation, issue credentials, verify faculty identities, manage admissions, or enforce deadlines. Integrating code and institutional governance must provide those functions.

Current installation scope

The package declares the parent's 28 regions and adds University-specific classes without forking the APEX page composition. Eight optional block configurations cover branding, navigation, messages, page title, breadcrumbs, content, footer menu, and copyright.

The source does not currently contain the planned program-detail, faculty-profile, or research-center landing templates, a program finder, or demo content. The five SDCs are not automatically placed. Map the institution's content entities, taxonomies, Views, and access rules to their props through site-owned integration.

Academic implementation guidance

1. Model programs, departments, credentials, people, deadlines, locations, and outcomes with authoritative owners.
2. Define source dates, update schedules, and approval workflows for facts that influence enrollment decisions.
3. Use explicit labels for degree level, delivery mode, duration, cost, admissions status, and credential verification.
4. Link each outcome metric to a clear source and methodology.
5. Protect personal contact information and map faculty data to the institution's privacy policy.
6. Configure aliases, redirects, metadata, structured data, sitemaps, and cross-department navigation separately.

Requirements and installation

• Drupal 11.3 or later within Drupal 11
• PHP 8.3 or later
• APEX Theme and its declared module stack

composer require 'drupal/apex_university:^1.0'
drush theme:enable apex_university
drush config:set system.theme default apex_university -y
drush cr

Accessibility, trust, and search visibility

Theme styles include reduced-motion, contrast, forced-colors, and print accommodations. Test the complete site for keyboard access, focus, headings, tables, form instructions and errors, image alternatives, contrast, zoom, reflow, transcripts, captions, and understandable language.

Higher-education SEO depends on accurate program information, stable human-readable URLs, descriptive titles, canonicalization, original department content, clear internal pathways, metadata, and suitable structured data. Do not publish unsupported employment rates, rankings, accreditation claims, costs, dates, or credential status.

Support and maintainer

File reproducible issues on Drupal.org with the component, props, content type, active APEX versions, Drupal/PHP versions, browser, breakpoint, and exact steps.

APEX University is created and maintained by Alaa Haddad, Drupal developer and architect at Flash Web Center, LLC.

Developed and maintained by Alaa Haddad of Flash Web Center, LLC.

AI disclosure: AI tools assisted with drafting and reviewing this project description. The maintainer verified the final content against the project source.