University of Minnesota Medical School Website Migration From Drupal 7 to Drupal 9

Design expertise and updated website from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9

Founded in 1888, the University of Minnesota Medical School is a diverse and hard-working institution dedicated to providing the community with medical care. The Medical School has two campuses located in the Twin Cities and Duluth that have graduated thousands of alumni. Since it was founded, the medical school has made significant contributions to education, healthcare, research, and medical advancement. These include scientific pursuits such as cancer research and breakthrough treatments in cardiology. Most recently, the institution has been engaged in COVID-19 research and COVID-19 treatment development as well.

Website: https://med.umn.edu/

Given how much the world relies on websites for branding and research, it is crucial for every website to be up-to-date, clear, and organized. The UMN Medical School has an expansive website with numerous custom modules that required updating, organization, and a switch from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9. This was particularly applicable to the Works/Bios sections of the website. The goal was for the website to become easier to navigate and more consistent with the University’s branding.

SEO, brand awareness, design and theme development, content creation, page layout creation, content and data migration.

UMN Medical School chose to work with O8 because O8 has a long track record of expert Drupal execution on University of Minnesota website projects. UMN Medical School reached out to O8 before the pandemic for assistance with Drupal 7 work, which was successfully completed. The relationship between O8 and the UMN Medical School continued with the Medical School reaching out to us again and our assistance with migrating UMN Medical School’s website from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9.

O8 responded to UMN Medical School’s request for assistance by thoroughly walking through the Medical School’s website. There, we worked to adapt the website by evaluating the quality of its design and 5 content, removing outdated content from the website, and migrating the data from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9. Using Drupal 9’s page layout creation system, which is easier to use for content generation, we developed and improved the design themes and structure. It was a lot of data due to the size of the website itself, so it was important to make sure that it was more organized, updated where necessary, and more adequately supported through Drupal 9.

As a result of the data migration from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9, the website has stronger support. The Medical School has been set up to benefit from Drupal 9’s better caching system. The custom modules and the Works/ Bios page are modernized and use best practices. Holistically, the website is more organized, attractive, and navigable. Furthermore, just as intended, the website is more consistent with the UMN Medical School’s branding. With a new and improved website structure, updated information, and a better resource for content generation in Drupal 9, the University of Minnesota Medical School is set up for further future success.