Monday, September 23, 2024, 8:30 AM - 9:15 AM MDT
Large-scale website migrations in higher-ed are never something we look forward to. However, they can be the impetus to implement long-needed improvements to content, information architecture, usability, programing and design. With Drupal 7 end-of-life fast approaching, the Financial and Administrative Services unit within the University of Texas at Austin needed to migrate 41 websites running Drupal 7 to Drupal 9/10. The D7 sites were built over 7+ years by multiple developers with varying levels of skills, oversight and maintenance. We estimated 75 percent of the sites had Drupal customizations and contained a considerable amount of vital campus information, including Human Resources, Parking and Transportation, UT Police, Environmental Health and Safety, Facilities Services, Procurement and more. Learn from our team of three as we describe our 20-month journey through reluctant editors, frustratingly bad Drupal functionality, flexible developers, Google shenanigans, departmental reorganizations and a handful of folks who really understood what we were trying to do.
