# GSOC 2026 Introduction: Rehan | Website Modernization & UI/UX

**URL:** <https://precice.discourse.group/t/gsoc-2026-introduction-rehan-website-modernization-ui-ux/2779>\
**Category:** Google Summer of Code\
**Tags:** gsoc-website, gsoc-period-reachout\
**Created:** [February 27, 2026, 11:18am UTC](https://precice.discourse.group/t/gsoc-2026-introduction-rehan-website-modernization-ui-ux/2779 "2026-02-27T11:18:42Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![AmazingDude](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/precice.discourse.group/amazingdude/32/3314_2.png) [@AmazingDude](https://precice.discourse.group/u/AmazingDude)\
**Post date:** [February 27, 2026, 11:18am UTC](https://precice.discourse.group/t/gsoc-2026-introduction-rehan-website-modernization-ui-ux/2779/1 "2026-02-27T11:18:42Z")

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Hello preCICE community

I’m Rehan, a Software Engineering student at NUST, Islamabad. I’ve been exploring the preCICE ecosystem over the last week and am specifically interested in the **Website Modernization (Jekyll to Hugo)** project

Coming from a React/Tailwind background, I’m particularly excited about the move to Hugo and Bootstrap 5. I think there’s a massive opportunity to improve the developer experience by modernizing the UI while keeping the documentation first focus that preCICE is known for

**My progress so far:**

- I’ve set up the local environment (WSL2/Ubuntu) and spent time digging through the existing Jekyll architecture

- I noticed the maintainers’ interest in better showcasing the community, so I’ve submitted **PR #820** (Add a modular community spotlight to the landing page) as my entry test

- I focused on making it **data driven** (pulling from developer.yaml) and **isolated** (scoped CSS) to ensure it doesn’t add maintenance overhead to the legacy stack while we prepare for the Hugo port

**Technical Interests:**

- **Framework Porting:** Interested in replacing the current “hacky” Jekyll plugins with native Hugo data fetching to solve the local build rate limiting issues (like the Google Scholar 429 errors)

- **Design Systems:** Eager to implement a clean, responsive CSS architecture that supports the much requested dark mode natively

I know the team is currently experiencing a spike in activity, so I’ll keep my head down and focus on refining my technical proposal for the Hugo migration plan in the coming weeks

Looking forward to collaborating