Plymouth City Council’s old website was built using the Content Management System (CMS) Drupal 7 back in 2016 and the site had run its course. As Drupal 7 was originally slated to be ending its life in November 2022, Plymouth wanted to replace their Drupal 7 site before this deadline arrived. This would ensure their site remained secure.
We had been hosting the existing Plymouth Drupal 7 site since 2017, and - having completed a near identical project for North Herts Council - we were able to offer a low risk, tried and tested route to rebuilding Plymouth’s website using Council Platform.
The starting point was spinning up a “zero cost” implementation of Council Platform, which combines the default GOV.UK look and feel of our demo site with the brand colours and typography of Plymouth City Council. This was completed in 1 working day and the site was then immediately ready for content population.
Plymouth opted for an automated content migration, with around 6000 content items spread across 38 content types. We were able to identify 23 content types that could either be dropped entirely. The remaining 15 content types to be migrated mapped across to just 6 content types in Council Platform. This reduction in content types was possible due to the flexibility of Council Platform’s WYSIWYG editor, as it supports varied page templates without resorting to the creation of new content types.
Use of Council Platform avoided lengthy site build and testing phases, and meant that Plymouth could concentrate on the content of their new site. This is a monumental task in itself, so not having to worry about bugs or delinquent development timelines is something that shouldn’t be taken for granted.