Smooth migration of complex website for online magazine
projektmagazin is the largest German-language educational online portal for professional development in the project management field. It has been functioning since 2000 and boasts around 25k subscribers and over 100k website visits per month.
Migrating a complex website with over 13000 nodes and 13 content types
CHALLENGEAt the time we worked on this project, the projectmagazin’s website was operating on Drupal 6. The 6th version of the content management system reached its end of life on February 24, 2016, and stopped receiving security updates accordingly. Thus, the website was at risk of security breaches and had to be migrated immediately.
Website migration is always challenging. Even more so when you are dealing with a site that has over 13,000 nodes and 13 content types. Our biggest challenge was to transfer all the content to the new environment in such a way as to keep it intact and ensure it works properly in the new environment.
Transferring the site to Thunder CMS while ensuring the compatibility of its content
SOLUTIONWe decided to migrate the site to Thunder CMS (Drupal-based content management system) as this solution is highly used in Europe and provides content editors with a user-friendly and intuitive working environment.
To migrate the content and ensure its compatibility with the new system, we utilized the Migration API. We split out the migration into small pieces, migrating each part of the content separately. For some parts of it, Process Plugins and Mapping Files were created in order to convert data to the right format that was supported by the new CMS.
The projectmagazin’s website content was indexed by Elasticsearch and kept in separate indexes for faster reindexing. We moved Elasticsearch to its own server to ensure higher performance both on the site and within the search tool. We also used Reactivesearch components to enable website visitors to quickly receive results for their queries, even when searching through thousands of nodes. This also allowed them to apply various filters including distance and date range.
As a result of our work, projektmagazin now experiences handy content management
with Thunder CMS and fast Elasticsearch. They also can scale their platform as their audience grows. Our team still continues to maintain and support the company’s website, ensuring its high uptime and top-notch security.
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Functionality
Apart from migrating the projectmagazin’s site to a newer CMS, we also implemented several important features.
Search: A fast and reliable search tool was added to the site to help users find content that matches their needs. The engine also suggests content based on visitors’ interests.
Centralized subscription tool: Most of the content of the site is accessible via subscription. To ensure a smooth subscription process, we developed a centralized subscription tool.
Newsletter campaigns: We developed newsletter campaign features to ensure that editors are able to create new newsletter campaigns easily and add any content types to them.
Third-party integrations: We integrated the website with multiple third-party services, such as Mailchimp, Billwerk, Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager.
What we accomplished
ACHIEVEMENTSAnyforSoft’s vast expertise in Drupal development resulted in a positive outcome for the customer.
18%
increasein website traffic
31%
growthof website speed
10%
moresubscribers
What client says
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