Fortra

Description

This project involved migrating a WordPress site to a Drupal multisite platform. During the migration, it became evident that many poor practices had been used. The code was written in a site-specific manner rather than globally, which caused significant issues. Instead of pushing the same code to different servers, the team had started to manage projects almost separately, undermining the multisite concept. They were unaware of how to circumvent these obstacles and write code that was global to the platform. That was where I stepped in.

Challenges

Migration Without Impacting Other Sites: The primary challenge was how to perform the migration and create the new site, push it to the servers without affecting the other sites, and ensuring nothing else broke in the process.

Code Version Inconsistencies: Another major issue was that the composer.lock file was not committed, leading to different versions of Drupal Core and contributed modules across sites.

Solutions

Defining Features and Functionalities: Given the difficulties in determining the exact behavior of certain features due to varying functionalities across sites, a series of meetings with clients were held to define most features and functionalities.

Planning Synchronization: Once these were defined, a detailed plan was created outlining the order and method for synchronizing features, functionalities, and other elements.

Problem Solving from Simple to Complex: The problems were addressed from simpler issues (less code, simpler configurations) to more complex ones (more code, complex configurations, complicated config splits).

Results

Stabilized Drupal Multisite: After resolving all issues, the project evolved into a true Drupal multisite where code could be simultaneously pushed to all servers. This resulted in much easier site deployment and maintenance, faster development, and significantly improved platform stability.

The following phase

Consulting and Coaching: In the next phase, consulting services were provided to the client, involving reviewing their plans, making corrections, and coaching the client's team on thinking site-wide rather than site-specific.