The new Drupal CMS adds a fresh twist to the Drupal vs. WordPress debate, bringing a user-friendly experience for marketers, without compromising on Drupal’s enterprise-grade capabilities. 

DamFailures.org approached Specbee for a WordPress to Drupal migration to address security and maintenance issues they were facing in the WordPress environment. With their more marketer and content editor-friendly needs, we proposed migrating them to the newly launched Drupal CMS, which offered just the type of tools they needed.

• Fast and secure migration of content from WordPress 
• Intuitive drag-and-drop interface for non-developers
• Enabled AI-assisted content management.

DamFailures.org is an educational initiative by ASDSO (Association of State Dam Safety Officials), built for a critical audience like dam safety engineers, regulators, dam owners, emergency managers, researchers, and students.

It serves as a knowledge hub of dam failure case studies and lessons learned, designed to deepen understanding of why failures happen and how to prevent them. The website covers a wide range of dam types, failure modes, and safety topics, with rich supporting materials like videos, technical papers, photographs, and ASDSO-hosted webinars.

The Goal: The client needed a complete website redesign that would make it easier for users to find and engage with critical dam safety content. Alongside the redesign, they wanted to migrate their website from WordPress to a scalable and secure Drupal CMS.

Our work in a nutshell

• Redesigned the website to enhance user experience, improve content layout, and bring visual consistency across pages.
• Migrated from WordPress to Drupal CMS and ensured a smooth, structured transition while preserving legacy content.
• Built flexible, editor-friendly components using Layout Builder to empower non-tech users with drag-and-drop editing.
• Enabled powerful search and filtering by integrating advanced search features for quick access to case studies and lessons.
• Improved accessibility and performance. 

• The old WordPress setup had an improper media structure. 
• The existing site had multiple filtering options, but search results were limited to title matches, making it difficult for users to find relevant content across all fields (descriptions, tags, metadata, etc.).
• The goal included a 6-week timeline to complete the migration and launch.
• Migrating vast volumes of content, images, glossary terms, and case studies from an improperly formatted WordPress to Drupal posed some technical complexities that needed custom handling.

• The project began with a complete UX and visual redesign to improve clarity, accessibility, and overall usability. Our team focused on simplifying content layouts, enhancing navigation, and creating a consistent look and feel across the site.
• We then executed a structured migration from WordPress to Drupal CMS, ensuring structure, relationships, and metadata were preserved accurately.
• We leveraged Drupal's Layout builder to provide an enhanced, flexible, and user-friendly interface for managing content layouts and page designs.
• We enabled powerful search capabilities by integrating advanced search features for quick access to case studies and lessons.
• Alongside this, accessibility and performance enhancements were prioritized to ensure the platform was usable for all and ready for long-term growth.
• The site is hosted on AWS, giving it the scalability and reliability it needs to perform smoothly across the globe.
• We set up a fully automated CI/CD pipeline so updates go live faster, with less room for error.

The new Drupal site is way faster, with the performance score jumping from 52 to 98. Pages load quicker, everything runs smoother, and it’s a much better experience for users and editors alike.