Migration of old code base with dependencies on deprecated technology. The client provides a online service providing professional development courses for licensed real estate and mortgage agents. The service is provided to tens-of-thousands of students through a wide network of real estate schools requiring custom branding of the front end sites.
The existing technology base for the system included a 15 year old PHP code base which was patched and added to over the years. This was paired with an old web framework, WebDNA, which was limiting growth. The project included three major scopes for migration:
- Back-end data store and management system - This was the role which WebDNA handled and the key for managing the overall business. Drupal was selected as to replace this as it provided the framework for the master administration system, a strong and flexible data handing structure, and built in tools for secure API development. The Drupal site is hosted on Pantheon cloud services to provide a stable, well maintained platform.
- A front end system to provide independent registration though a public catalog, reseller/school tools to manage their students in the system, and student sites for linking to the online classes and monitoring their progress. VueJS working with the Drupal APIs was chosen to provide the flexible front end sites.
- Data migration - The historic data managed through the WebDNA used text files formatted similarly to TSV. Processes were developed to convert these files to MySQL tables and imported into the Drupal system.
Tools Used:
- Drupal 7 hosted on Pantheon cloud services
- Jira to manage development issues and track the project
- Confluence as the principal repository of documentation
- PHP for custom Drupal modules and class lesson API
- VueJS for headless front end pages
- PHPStorm IDE
- CSS including Bootstrap for Drupal Admin site and Vuetify for front end
- Slack for team communications