National Kidney Foundation’s Drupal 7 to 10 migration | Redefining digital operations and experience

The challenges

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We partnered with the National Kidney Foundation to address key challenges impacting caregivers, team members, and users. Managing content revisions and user roles had become less efficient, highlighting the need for a better content authoring experience.

Handling media assets has also become a time-consuming task. For users, the experience needed modernization, with a more relatable and easier interface, especially in improving search functionality to help everyone find important medical information quickly and intuitively.

The approach

Our strategy centred around building a flexible solution that could be tailored to the specific needs of NKF. The goal was to stay responsive to evolving project requirements and user needs throughout the migration process.

Our approach prioritized efficiency, maintainability, and user experience to ensure the site supports the Foundation’s mission effectively.

The solution

User roles and media migration‍

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We transferred only the essential user roles to keep the system efficient and avoid unnecessary data transfer. For media files like images, videos, and documents, we developed a custom tool to ensure the links between these files and their respective sections stayed intact during the migration.

Search functionality

For better than before search, we implemented Pantheon’s Solr Search, providing faster and more accurate results. Features like faceted search, autocomplete, and spelling suggestions significantly improved search accuracy and user navigation.

The entityqueue module was used to manage various view blocks, such as "Most Popular Kidney Topics" and "Learn More About Kidney Health," helping key content stand out in search results, making vital information easily accessible across multiple pages.

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Theming and Design

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Key sections of the site, such as resources, news, and press pages, were prioritized, including themed components like kidney topics, news stories, and recipe listings.

Landing, about, and other essential pages were revamped to match the overall site design. Using a pattern lab, the design was organized efficiently by introducing new components where necessary and removing outdated ones to streamline navigation.

Salesforce integration with webforms helped improve lead capture and streamline campaign management, making the site and systems more intuitive and user-friendly.

Migration

The "migrate upgrade" module facilitated the transition from Drupal 7 to 10, while customized core and contributed modules ensured that all project requirements were met.

For content management, only the most relevant revisions were migrated after a thorough clean-up. Customized solutions were also implemented to manage and migrate specific vocabularies crucial to the site's content structure.

Key migration strategies‍

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Strategic feature upgrades and site structure

Critical features were successfully migrated and improved, with the site layout refined for more efficient backend operations and a better user experience.

Optimizing content workflows

Content workflows were simplified to make management quicker and easier, allowing the team to update the site efficiently.

Improving search and listing pages

Listing pages were rebuilt, and search functionality was refined to help users find relevant information more efficiently.

Modular theming approach

Using Webpack and Tailwind, a flexible, low-code theming system was implemented to support rapid updates and easy management, ensuring a cohesive, modern design.

The outcome

We worked closely with the National Kidney Foundation’s team, combining efforts in a hybrid setup to handle the migration from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10. Together, we focused on making the platform faster and more efficient.

The modern and user-friendly content management system now helps their team keep the site updated efficiently, saving time and extra effort.

The new search functionality allows patients, healthcare professionals, and other stakeholders to quickly and accurately find critical health information. Custom filters on key pages make it easier for users to navigate and access essential resources.

As the Foundation plans for the future, the platform’s multilingual features will enable it to reach a broader global audience, ensuring important information is accessible to more people. Migrating the NKF website from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10 has built a solid foundation for its continued growth and success.