Case Study 03
Consolidating Dozens of University Websites Into One Governed Drupal Platform
A major U.S. research university had a web presence spread across inconsistent, ungoverned departmental sites. We brought them together — one platform, one design system, one set of standards.
Industry
Higher Education
Engagement
Web Administration & Drupal SME
Duration
19 Months
Location
Minnesota, USA
1
Central Drupal platform replacing dozens of siloed sites
SME
Served as Tier-3 Drupal escalation point for the university
t3
Tier-3 support protocols established for ongoing governance
∞
Reusable theme system for unlimited department expansion
The Challenge
Dozens of Departments Zero Shared Infrastructure
The university’s web presence had grown organically over many years — each department making its own technology choices, with no central oversight or shared tooling. The result was a fragmented digital estate that was becoming increasingly difficult to govern, secure, and maintain.
No consistent branding or design standards. Each departmental site looked and behaved differently. Visitors navigating from one department to another encountered entirely different visual languages, navigation patterns, and content structures — undermining the university’s identity as a cohesive institution.
Security risk from unmaintained codebases. Sites built years earlier on aging platforms, with no active maintenance, represented an ongoing security liability. Without central oversight, there was no reliable way to track which sites were up-to-date and which were vulnerable.
No escalation model for complex technical issues. When departments ran into problems that exceeded their local technical capacity, there was no defined escalation path. Issues went unresolved or were handled inconsistently by different teams.
No reusable infrastructure for new sites. Every time a department needed a new web property, it was essentially built from scratch — consuming significant development time with no leverage from previous work.
Our Approach
Platform First Migration Second. Governance Always.
We began by establishing the shared platform — the design system, content architecture, and governance model — before migrating any departmental sites. This ensured that every site brought onto the platform would inherit the same quality baseline from day one.
Custom Zen Base Theme
Built a custom sub-theme on the Zen framework, tailored precisely to the university’s brand guidelines — providing a consistent, accessible, responsive design system that all departmental sites could inherit.
Content Architecture
Designed custom Drupal content types mapped to real departmental needs — news, events, research profiles, course listings — with reusable Views and contextual filters for flexible, consistent content display.
Complex Views
Built sophisticated Views configurations using relational content types and contextual filters — enabling departments to surface the right content in the right context without custom development each time.
eCommerce Integration
Implemented Drupal Commerce for select university units — enabling event ticketing, course enrollment, and department-level product sales within the same unified platform.
Documentation
Produced comprehensive procedural documentation covering platform architecture, content workflows, and support procedures — and mentored junior staff to maintain and extend the platform independently over time.
Tier-3 Escalation
Served as the university’s Drupal Subject Matter Expert — the defined escalation point for complex system issues beyond the capacity of departmental web teams, ensuring no problem went unresolved.
The Result
One Platfrom Consistent Quality
By the end of the engagement, the university had what it had set out to build — a governed, scalable Drupal platform that made adding new departmental sites fast, consistent, and secure by default
- Delivered a unified CMS platform serving multiple university departments from a single Drupal instance — replacing a fragmented landscape of independently maintained sites.
- Reduced time-to-launch for new departmental sites — the shared theme and content architecture meant new properties could be stood up in a fraction of the time previously required.
- Established Tier-3 escalation protocols that reduced the number of unresolved technical incidents across the institution.
- Produced comprehensive developer documentation that was formally adopted as the university's internal Drupal standard — and remains in use beyond the engagement period.
- eCommerce functionality enabled department-level revenue collection for events and services — without requiring separate platforms or custom builds per unit.
- Junior staff mentored and equipped to maintain and extend the platform independently — reducing ongoing dependency on external development support.
Technology Stack
Tools & Technologies Used
This engagement required deep Drupal expertise combined with a strong understanding of information architecture, content governance, and higher education web requirements.
Zen Base
Drupal 7
PHP
JavaScript
jQuery
GitHub
Superfish
Managing a Complex Web Estate?
Whether you are a university, a multi-department organization, or an enterprise with dozens of sites to consolidate — we have built this before and know how to do it right.