POLIN
The Museum of the History of Polish JewsThe institution named The European Museum of the Year in 2016 granted with Effie Awards and Europa Nostra Award.
The issue
Even before establishing cooperation with Smartbees, POLIN - Museum of the History of Polish Jews, already has been using Drupal - the museum’s website was built on that technology. As a public-private institution, POLIN has to take due care of the high-quality data storage security, and the Drupal system upgraded to the highest version, provides it.
That is the main reason why the museum needed the migration to the newest Drupal 8 version. Although Drupal 7 will be officially supported up to 2021, only regular update of CMS provides the highest security of any website.
Upgrading Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 demands numerous changes in website code - it is more like building the website form the ground rather than conducting small updates. That is why only experienced developers can do this without obstacles. Besides substantial safety increase, migration to Drupal 8 provides access to extended content editor CKEditor. It is giant facilitation for websites with a significant amount of published content like POLIN.
Our solution
What our client wanted the most was the migration of Drupal 7 based website 1:1 to the newest system version. It means nearly no changes in the website’s layout, just a few visual improvements. That is why we came up with a solution that enables the migration of the site without substantial layout changes. The developments related to the system upgrade are visible mostly from the perspective of administrators and editors of the website. As a result, POLIN gained, among others, useful and straightforward text editor and more user - friendly admin panel. One of the facilitation made concerning POLIN users was the improvement of site accessibility on mobile devices.
Solution in details
1. Customized migration modules
To conduct the Drupal 7 migration efficiently, the creation of modules that facilitate the whole process is necessary. That is why we designed and implemented:
- content migration module,
- image cropping migration module,
- menu migration module,
- content search module with a multilingual keyboard.
Such a solution enabled us to migrate content and images without changing the layout of POLIN’s website.
2. Mobile version extension
POLIN website build on Drupal 7 had problems with responsiveness - the majority of texts and images were not displaying correctly. That is why we decided to adjust the website to mobile devices. Thanks to that, the mobile version of the website possesses the vast majority of desktop version functionalities.
Realisation in numbers
Customized modules that enable Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 migration
The team consisted of 3 specialists: Project Manager, Drupal Developer and Tester
We spent 600 hours on migration
Migration of website’s 2 language versions
The results
- Transparent administration panel
- Highest security
- Transparent and straightforward text editor
- Increase in website’s efficiency
- Comprehensive possibilities for website development in the future
- The newest version of the Drupal system