Universal Nightlife: Find Mesmerizing Places for an Adventurous Nightlife

Thanks to its content-heavy nature, they needed to upgrade their website from Drupal 6 to Drupal 9, and they needed to hire Drupal developers who could:

• Prepare the site for the migration process to Drupal 9
• Successfully carry out the migration process
• Setup Docker containers with D6-compatible PHP versions
• Set up Memcache as per the site's technical specifications
• Efficiently implement the AWS dev server for the site

About Universal Nightlife: Universal Nightlife is what its name says—a universe where users can find anything they need to make their nightlife exciting, thrilling, and adventurous. With the help of Universal Nightlife, users can search for top-notch and hand-picked nightlife spots, such as restaurants, hotels, beaches, clubs, theaters, and much more anywhere in the world. They can search the highly curated platform for the information they need and proceed with the same.

After discussing the project's goal with the client, we decided to evaluate and audit the current website to understand the scope of the migration. As the client also wanted to add a few features to make the site even more seamless to manage, we assessed the scope of the features. As the website was already live and had a huge content repository, we knew that migration to the latest version of Drupal would be a challenge that we needed to tackle first. We also interacted with the client to understand their concerns with the site to plan the migration process without leaving anything unattended.

To ensure a smooth and trouble-free migration process, we also planned everything from the tools and the talent we need to carry out the migration setting up the compatible docker version with PHP on Drupal 6, Memcache, and AWS dev server, etc. Having already worked on numerous Drupal 9 migration projects, we created the blueprint to work on the project quickly.

Once the background details and expectations were set, we created a project management plan. We decided to go with the Agile methodology to complete the project quickly and meet the client's expectations. Along with the same, we also constituted a strong team of Drupal developers, strategists, and migration experts.

After establishing the client's requirements, we began the planning process for the upgrade. We started the upgrade process by assessing the current website and its functionalities, such as modules, themes, customization, and the data that needs to be migrated to the latest Drupal version. We also checked with the client's hosting plan to confirm that it is compatible with the Drupal 9 version we are migrating to. Once that was done, we backed up the client's existing site. We also chose the tool to migrate the site and checked to verify other technical requirements.

Once the preliminary processes were carried out, we started the migration to Drupal 9 with the help of our Drupal development team and strategists. We considered the content type, importing content, theme creation, blocks, and search engine optimization to keep the website user and search engine friendly after the migration.

After the migration, we also handled the client's requirement to create thumbnails when uploading images or videos onto the website. Before finalizing the project, we also analyzed the website for quality issues and performance. As the website performed exceptionally well and met all the client's requirements, it was time to wrap the project up.

At the end of the project, our Drupal development team was able to:

• Migrate the website entirely to Drupal 9 from Drupal 6
• Added the thumbnail feature for video and image uploads
• Upload files to the S3 bucket from Drupal
• Make the website easy to manage
• Improve the performance of the website with Drupal 9

After making the site live, the client observed considerable improvement on their site. One of the biggest differences was that they observed the time to manage the site went down heavily. They also found that the users spend more time on the site thanks to a better user experience. What surprised them the most was the increment in people accessing the site on mobile devices.