Northeastern University

The challenge

Northeastern is a major research university and one of the top 40 in the United States. It wanted a digital commons where students, faculty, researchers, and outside partners could share secure, collaborative spaces for research and discussion across disciplines, and it had to be easy for all of them to adopt.

Getting there meant solving some real technical problems. The open-source HCommons framework gave us a foundation, but it had so little documentation that much of it had to be reverse-engineered. Sign-in had to tie into the university's Active Directory while also allowing social logins on one network. The platform had to scale across multiple WordPress networks and hundreds of subsites, each with its own needs, while staying centrally manageable. And search had to work across all of those networks and recommend people and content, far beyond what default WordPress search can do.

What we built

We worked closely with NEU's Associate Dean for Digital Strategies and Services to build a customized BuddyPress digital commons on the HCommons framework. We forked and customized the key components while keeping them compatible with future updates.

We integrated Shibboleth single sign-on with NEU's Active Directory, with custom routing that sends each signed-in user straight to their own site in the network, plus social logins where needed. We set up a dedicated Elasticsearch server for fast search across networks. It also powers recommendation widgets that use members' academic and personal interests to suggest connections and resources. Administrators use Beaver Builder to create responsive, consistent landing pages for each subnetwork.

Several academic societies within the university adopted the platform quickly, and administrators and users alike gave positive feedback. We then handed it over to NEU, which now has a scalable digital commons that its own team can manage and grow.

• Public & private groups — discussion boards, events, announcements, file sharing, member management.
• Member profiles with academic + personal interest fields, powering Elasticsearch recommendations.
• Multi-network WordPress with independent administration across hundreds of subsites.
• Single sign-on via NEU Active Directory (Shibboleth) + Google and Twitter logins, with custom routing.
• Beaver Builder for responsive, on-brand landing pages.