Custom WordPress development for an EU funded climate resilience project
Client: CLIMRES Consortium
Sector: Research, architecture and construction
Services: Custom WordPress development, custom post types, custom fields, real time filtering, lead capture, data strategy
Live site: inventoryhubclimres.com
The brief
The Inventory Hub is a decision support digital tool developed within the CLIMRES project. Its job is to help two very different audiences, technical experts and non specialist users, identify, compare and select effective solutions to improve the climate resilience of buildings.
With climate related risks increasing across European cities, the platform works as a centralised digital catalogue of architectural solutions, construction materials, technologies and systems, applicable both to new buildings and to the retrofitting of existing ones.
The objective: bridge the gap between research, practice and decision making by offering structured, accessible and comparable information on climate resilient building strategies.
The challenge
A catalogue is only useful if you can find things in it.
The content came from past and ongoing architectural projects, research on sustainable and adaptive design, and pilot cases tested under real world conditions within CLIMRES. Dense, technical, highly detailed material, the kind that a standard WordPress page turns into an unreadable wall of text.
We needed a structure that could hold hundreds of technical sheets, let a policy maker and a structural engineer each find what they need in seconds, and keep growing as new pilot results arrive. Plus one more requirement: the consortium needed to know who was using the catalogue and what for.
What we built
The whole site was developed as a custom WordPress build, no off the shelf catalogue plugin, no generic template forced to do a job it was not designed for. Like a good toolbox, every element has its place and everything is within reach.
Custom post types for material sheets
Each solution, material or technology has its own fact sheet, built on a dedicated content type designed specifically for the project, not a blog post wearing a costume. Categories and tags were modelled from scratch to match the consortium’s own classification logic.
Tailored custom fields
Each sheet holds the technical parameters the consortium defined: performance data, applicability, climate context, implementation notes. Structured data instead of free text, which is exactly what makes comparison possible.
Real time search and filtering system
Users filter by category, by tags and by any of the custom fields created for the project. Results update on time, as the selection changes, with no page reloads and no waiting. Combine three criteria and the catalogue narrows down instantly, so the visualisation always reflects what the user is actually looking for.
PDF downloads with lead capture
Every sheet is downloadable as a PDF after a simple email capture. Two results in one move: a growing contact base for the consortium, and statistical data on which solutions actually generate interest, from which type of user and from which country.
Scalable architecture
The catalogue is designed to grow. Feedback from pilot implementations and stakeholders feeds the continuous evolution of the content, ensuring relevance, replicability and scalability across diverse European contexts.
Target audiences
- Buildings and construction value chain stakeholders
- Local communities
- Policy enablers
- Technology and digital tools providers
- Scientific community
The outcome
A living catalogue instead of a static repository. The consortium publishes and updates technical content without touching a line of code, users find what they need without technical training, and every download leaves behind data that helps the project understand its own impact.
Project details
Programme: Horizon Innovation Actions
Grant agreement: 101147777
Start date: 01.06.2024
End date: 31.05.2027
Duration: 36 months
Acknowledgement
CLIMRES is a Horizon Innovation Actions project supported by the European Commission under grant agreement No 101147777. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
©2024-2027 CLIMRES Consortium Partners. All rights reserved.
