Interface design and ColdFusion back-end for Algonquin College’s continuing education catalogue — a searchable database of 35,000 course descriptions, built directly for the college.
Algonquin College’s continuing education division ran “The Source” — a semesterly-updated public catalogue covering every program and course across eight subject areas (Business, Health, Media and Design, Language, Transportation, Career, Hospitality, and Advanced). The college needed the full catalogue online and searchable, built on their existing ColdFusion/IIS infrastructure. No agency intermediary — direct engagement.
What I built
- Interface design: I designed the full public-facing catalogue UI — navigation, course listing templates, search results layout, and the semester-update visual system.
- Search engine back-end: I built the search system on ColdFusion to handle 35,000 course descriptions with keyword queries in both simple and explicit modes, filtered by Programs, Courses, or both, with configurable results per page. The search form action (
results.cfm) is confirmed in a 2002 Wayback Machine capture. - Course catalogue architecture: I structured the legacy program descriptions into a browsable, semester-indexed web catalogue with a PDF download version alongside the HTML experience.
Stack and context
ColdFusion, IIS (client’s existing stack). The site ran publicly under cecat.algonquincollege.com from at least 2001, with 20+ confirmed Wayback captures through 2005. The search path (/search/) is continuously confirmed live across those years.
