The nonprofit needed to break away from their existing CMS and create a system that could support its robust network of sites. Molly Duggan Associates quickly ushered in a Drupal 8 upgrade that delivered.
With a major national branding launch approaching, the Bay Area arm of Easterseals in California realized its plan was not working. The nonprofit, which supports families coping with autism and other disabilities, had a proprietary content management system (CMS) that wasn’t playing well with other technology.
“We had struggled over several months to stand up a website on Amazon Web Services using a non-standard CMS platform,” says Easterseals Bay Area executive Paul Meijer. “When we realized that we were not going to be successful and make our deadline, we turned to Molly Duggan Associates.”
The goal was to build a faster, more agile, and more efficient content management system that could quickly be deployed to support websites including eastersealsbayarea.org and its 70 global Easterseals affiliates, partners, and customers. The system needed to offer a core set of features and brand consistency while staying flexible on design and functionality.
After evaluating the options with Molly Duggan Associates, Easterseals deployed a Drupal 8 custom distribution — a distribution is a unique expression of the Drupal 8 platform with its own code base, modules for functionality, configurations stored in a database, templated views and blocks, and other advantages.
Molly Duggan Associates quickly grasped what we needed, how we wanted the company brand/image/message to be presented and developed the right toolset for us. They are a joy to work with. — Paul Meijer, Senior Vice President, Customer Enablement and Technology Services
The Drupal 8 distribution was hosted by Pantheon’s upstream connection, a long-term solution that could unify the organization’s entire network of more than 3,600 practitioners, 600 employees, and over 3,500 clients. The distribution used Pattern Lab, which helps teams build thoughtful, pattern-driven user interfaces.
In a matter of weeks, Easterseals Bay Area had a new Drupal 8 site that could be deployed to other branches.
“The week after the distribution went live, we were asked to demo a new site for stakeholders in Hawaii,” says Erik Cochran, CTO for Molly Duggan. “In just a few days, we spun up a new website from the distribution with migrated content from the Hawaii website, along with the new design. Everyone was impressed.”
For Easterseals Bay Area, a long and arduous process of building a new, scalable website suddenly became speedy and successful.
“Molly and her team provide amazing design capabilities, a savvy tech skillset, and high speed of execution,” Meijer says. “Their involvement took only a few weeks, and we have a scalable platform that supports our needs moving forward.”
Need help upgrading your website to Drupal 8? Molly Duggan Associates can give you the expertise and resources you need. Learn more about upgrading to Drupal 8.
