Vessera – Program & Course Catalog for Colleges

Vessera turns WordPress into an academic catalog for community and technical colleges. Programs, credentials and courses are entered once as structured information, and every page that shows them stays in sync: change a course’s credits and every program map that includes it updates.

Programs and credentials

• Each program can offer several credentials (for example an AAS and a Technical Certificate), each with its own length, credit total, description and program map.
• Semester-by-semester program maps, edited in a full-screen editor with per-term and program credit totals.
• Choice slots for electives and general education: “choose one of” single courses or groups taken together, such as a lecture and its lab.
• Pathways for credentials with routes students choose between (for example Coding and Networking). Visitors switch between pathways on the program page, and totals update to match.
• Map templates: build your general education requirements once and apply them to any program’s map, then adjust each program as needed. Templates can be removed again later.
• Scheduling checks while you edit: prerequisites in the wrong term, maps that don’t add up to the credential’s credits, and courses that aren’t published yet.
• Optional program information: outcomes, careers, industry certifications, start dates, an enrollment notice, and CIP code. Anything left empty, heading included, isn’t shown.

Courses

• Course code, credit hours, optional lecture, lab and contact hours, description, and prerequisites linked to their courses.
• Departments can claim course prefixes (for example CPD and CIS), so new courses are filed automatically.
• The Courses list in the admin can be filtered by department, by program, or to show courses that aren’t in any program.

Spreadsheet import

• Import courses from a CSV or Excel (.xlsx) file. The file is read in your browser and nothing is saved until you confirm.
• Choose the header row (for spreadsheets with a title above the headers) and match columns to course fields; your choices are remembered for next time.
• Preview every row before importing, choose which row to use when a course code appears more than once, and set departments by course prefix.
• Re-importing an updated spreadsheet updates existing courses instead of duplicating them. Prerequisites listed as course codes are linked automatically.

Blocks

• Program Details, Program Map (with credential tabs, pathway switching, and a choice of how many semesters appear per row), Program List (outcomes, careers or certifications)
• Course Info and Course Description
• Program Finder and Course Finder: searchable, filterable lists whose filters are kept in the address bar, so a filtered view can be bookmarked or linked.

All blocks are rendered on the server from your saved information, work with block and classic themes, take their colors and fonts from your theme, and are built to be accessible: keyboard-operable tabs and switches, table captions and headers, and screen-reader announcements in the finders.