
Client’s Objectives
- Upgrade the website from Drupal 9 to Drupal 11 for long-term platform support
- Improve performance and Core Web Vitals for better user experience
- Streamline page building with paragraph-based components
- Preserve SEO equity and existing URL structures during the transition
- Strengthen security posture and governance standards

Client’s Challenge:
RWU’s site was running on Drupal 9 and required a timely upgrade to stay secure and performant. The university needed to modernize its content authoring experience without disrupting its SEO performance or design consistency. Key pain points included:
- Looming Drupal 9 end-of-life, creating potential security and compatibility risks
- Rigid page-building workflows slowing down content updates
- Inconsistent performance metrics impacting site speed and search visibility
- Manual checks and redirects creating room for human error
- Lack of standardized governance patterns to ensure consistent branding across pages

The Solution We Implemented:
To address these challenges, we delivered a comprehensive upgrade from Drupal 9 to Drupal 11, ensuring a seamless transition with minimal downtime. The implementation was structured for speed, resilience, and flexibility.
Technology Stack:
- CMS: Drupal 11
- Deployment: Blue/Green with automated rollback
- Caching: CDN + image pipeline + lazy loading
Key Implementation Highlights:
- Conducted deprecation scans, module readiness checks, and Composer updates
- Executed a blue/green deployment strategy with rollback rehearsals for risk mitigation
- Introduced paragraph-based components and a governed component library for flexible layouts
- Optimized performance through CDN caching, lazy-loading, and an improved image pipeline
- Implemented a redirect matrix and automated link checks to safeguard SEO equity
- Hardened governance, CI/CD monitoring, and SLAs for operational resilience

Impact on Client’s Business:
The upgrade delivered clear performance and operational gains for RWU:
- Site speed improved by 48%, LCP reduced from 4.1s to 2.2s
- Core Web Vitals “Good” score rose to 92% from 63%
- Editors assemble pages 35% faster with reusable components
- Future upgrades simplified, reducing effort by 40%
- Downtime risk minimized, achieving 99.98% uptime with monitoring and rollback
Closing thoughts
By upgrading to Drupal 11, RWU unlocked a faster, more secure, and future-ready platform—without sacrificing stability or SEO performance. With flexible content components and automated deployment strategies, their digital team can now deliver content with greater speed, consistency, and confidence.
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