Wilhelm Foundation Migrating a Non-profit to Drupal 9

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Mikk Cederroth, CTO at Qimtek AB

“ They did a deep dive into the existing code and started identifying the low hanging fruits to get better performance. We made a plan together what to implement and in what order. Then load tests were performed after each implementation and until a good performance was accomplished ”

About The Project

Wilhelm Foundation

Wilhelm Foundation is a group of people who work towards diagnosis of the diseases which are undiagnosed by medical science, and their causes are unknown. AddWeb Solution has worked on 100+ Drupal migration projects and helped Wilhelm Foundation with migrating Drupal 8 to Drupal 9, including the hosting migration to DigitalOcean to enhance the site performance.

Country: Sweden

Industry: Non-Profit Organization

Problem Statement

The Drupal 8 website was not built appropriately by the earlier team as a result of which, Drupal 8 power was not harnessed, and the outcome was a slow website. Challenges were equally there from hosting, which was having limitations to support Drupal 9 integration.

What We Did

Migration From Drupal 8 To Drupal 9 And Feature Enhancements

In the DrupalCon Amsterdam Dries Note presentation, Dries stated that ‘Drupal 9 will be the easiest major update’.

With considering all challenges come across to implement the new release Drupal version, AddWeb Solution, made it an easy shift. By examining all the little details of each module used in Drupal 8, which are not compatible with Drupal 9 we found the solution which does not hamper any current features.

Managed Code With Git

Appropriate code versioning was missing. With implementing our handcrafted Jenkins pipeline, we automated the code deployment process. Integrated git to manage the source code and history of changes done to the code. We have created different feature branches to manage dependencies.

Shifted Hosting To DigitalOcean

On the whole, the former hosting provider was not supporting the dependencies required for Drupal 9, so there was a need of shifting to another provider. AddWeb Solution performed this crucial and caretaking task of switching the host and deployed the website successfully to DigitalOcean. This successful shift also enhanced the overall speed of the website.

How We Did It

To upgrade the website to Drupal 9 from Drupal 8 we have followed the manual process and adopted the strategic solution which includes the steps like:

Installed the mandatory module Upgrade Status to support the whole process of migration from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9
Upgrade the Drupal version from 8.7.4 to 8.9.2
Check the status report to verify, which module needs fixes for version upgrade
Made required fixes to modules and removed deprecated code
Once the website started running smoothly with Drupal 8.9.2 we migrated it to Drupal 9.0.1
Followed the steps of review and module fixes
As a final step, we migrated the Drupal version to the latest version 9.0.2

The reason behind the step by step migration is to make sure things move smoothly in the new version without breaking any existing functional flow.

A Few Stats About Project

134+

Man Hours

18+

Days

56+

Coffee Consumed

12+

Client Calls

Technology Stack

AddWeb Solution chooses latest tools, techniques and software platforms to develop Wilhelm Foundation website.

Drupal

Maria DB

GitHub

Nginx

JQuery

Bootstrap

Blend We Taken From

To deliver the successful transition to Drupal 9, AddWeb Solution did considerable research for feasible solutions to apply, including the required risk analysis as part of our process. As the former website was built in the core, a manual migration process needed to be followed.

In our fact-finding process, we got some thoughtful insights from drupal.org documentation like:

Upgrading Drupal from 8 to 9
Required Grounds for Drupal 8 Upgrade

Conclusion

As Drupal 9 is in its early release, we needed to summon all module compatibility and deprecated functions to consideration. With the exception of all questions, we are always ready to adopt new technologies with all learning in deliberations. By accepting this challenge, we provided the best experience to the client by delivering the optimised website with DigitalOcean hosting and Drupal 9.