Drupal Multisite migration for the Polish Fund Group

We have designed and built a complex multisite ecosystem

We had the pleasure of collaborating with the Polish Development Fund (PFR Group) to create a customized ecosystem of websites tailored to its corporate needs. 

The project involved setting up a multisite configuration, where separate corporate websites, each hosted on different domains, were managed through a single Drupal instance. This unified the whole system and allowed seamless data communication between domains offering features like cross-site content republishing and much more.

This wasn't our first collaboration. A year earlier, we worked together on PFR’s Knowledge Zone, an LMS platform offering educational content (you can find more details about that project here), and Smart City Technology Exchange - a platform that connects cities with IT solution providers, helping municipalities find and compare digital products to enhance urban management (more information about the project).
 

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Client

Based in Warsaw, The Polish Development Fund is a state-owned financial group dedicated to supporting entrepreneurs, local governments, and individuals whose aim is the sustainable social and economic progress of the country. With a budget counted in billions of Polish Złoty’s PFR is a visible investor in the Polish private and public economic sphere.

The client’s expectation was to build a new portal for the group as well as new websites for individual companies and to create a unified system for distributing content across these sites.

Challenge

The old solution was a group of sites hosted on different CMS platforms: Magnolia DX Core, Django, and WordPress. 
As a corporate entity managing multiple companies, PFR Group needed a cohesive and user-friendly web ecosystem. The main requirements for the system were:

• New appealing design and design system that will meet the standard for the years to come.
• Easy content creation and management, using predefined layouts and components.
• Effortless management and organization of multimedia files and documents. 
• Ability to re-publish of the content between sites with the status flow of content published on a different domain.  
• Integration with multiple external and internal systems and services of the client. 
• Multi-level user and role management. 
• Coordination and migration of content from the old ecosystem - automated and manual processes.
• Advanced search system for the site visitors. 

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Solution

Discovery

The team members conducted the comprehensive discovery process from the necessary fields - UX, design, business logic, ending od technology and security.

• Multiple meetings were held with all business owners responsible for individual sites. 
• Low and high-fidelity mockups were prepared
• The web design system was the final step of the design process
• All arrangements were collected in the 300 pages+ documentation. It served as the foundation for planning the work of this extensive project  

Technology

With a system like Drupal CMS behind our back, we were able to meet these expectations. Given that the original websites operated on three different CMS platforms, we had to consider differences in content formats and structures across the legacy systems. Automated tools were used where possible to expedite the migration of large data sets, but lots of content required manual migration to ensure proper display and functionality in the new Drupal environment and to maintain consistency across multiple websites.

We decided to implement a multisite solution in the Drupal CMS ver. 10, meaning multiple websites are managed from a single codebase. In a multisite setup, each site has its own configuration settings, content, files, and domain or URL, while the rest of the configuration is shared. This solution offers numerous advantages, particularly for large projects. 
 

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To make the editorial experience easy and yet powerful we've designed a system of reusable paragraphs - that is, ready-to-use blocks (with great customizability) available for editors.

We used two types of paragraphs: static and dynamic.

Static ones, are regular blocks that have fixed content, such as text, images or video. When added to a page, they always look and function the same. Regardless of desktop or mobile screen - both have individual settings and look. Dynamic paragraphs are flexible elements that can change their content based on various factors, such as the user or context.

We implemented 32 static and 11 dynamic paragraphs, which gives editors great flexibility to add any content they need. 

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Outcome

We take pride in the successful implementation of the new PFR Group ecosystem! It was a demanding time-consuming project, so we are very pleased with the positive reception from both, viewers and the client.

Of course, after delivering the platform - we continue to support and improve the system, promptly responding to any needs and ideas.

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Our checklist

• Discovery process 
• System design that includes: 
  - Interface design for mobile and desktop devices 
  - User flow design for various user groups (based on research, competition analysis, and user journey analysis) 
  - 30+ individual paragraphs 
• Technical documentation 
• Drupal 10 multisite implementation
• Automatic and manual migration of 10K+ pages 
• Ongoing maintenance and development of the system, incorporating new functionalities.

Client: The Polish Development Fund (PFR)

Websites: 

https://grupapfr.pl/ 
https://pfr.pl/ 
https://startup.pfr.pl/ 
https://pfrventures.pl/ 
https://pfrnieruchomosci.pl/ 
https://www.pfrtfi.pl/ 
https://fundacjapfr.pl/ 
https://cdt.pl/