The brief
Greater Anglia is a train operating company in the UK, responsible for providing rail services to the eastern region of the country. Their website is an essential tool for their business, allowing customers to purchase tickets, plan journeys, and access a range of information from timetables to service updates. The website was built using Drupal 7, which is needed to be replaced as it was coming to End of Life. Greater Anglia needed the website migrated to Drupal 9, which offers better performance, improved security, and new features.
As those who have been through this process know, there was no simple migration path, especially for complex enterprise scale sites with multiple bespoke modules like Greater Anglia's. It essentially meant a complete rebuild in the new Symfony based Drupal 9 platform.
What we did
We began the project by conducting a thorough analysis of the existing website to identify scope, potential issues and to determine the best approach to the migration. We created a comprehensive plan that covered all the migration steps, including updating the core and contributed modules, testing the site's functionality and performance, and ensuring that the site's design was preserved. We also identified areas where the website could be improved and enhanced, taking advantage of the new features available in Drupal 9. Our team worked closely with Greater Anglia throughout the migration process to ensure that their requirements were met as we were developing against a moving target; Greater Anglia could not stay still for the time it would take to redevelop in Drupal 9. We also conducted thorough testing to ensure that the website was fully functional and that there were no issues during or after the migration.
The result
The migration to Drupal 9 was a success and the transition involved minimal 'under maintenance' down time. The new website offered significant improvements over the previous version. The website's performance was optimised, resulting in faster page load times. It looked and functioned the same as before the migration, ensuring a smooth transition for users. The migration to Drupal 9 also improved the security of the website, which is important for Greater Anglia, given the sensitive nature of some of the information that is shared on the site. Overall, the new website is more efficient and secure, providing Greater Anglia with a valuable tool to serve their customers.
