Back

International Drupal Multi-Site Installation for Entertainment Websites

Project

Drupal Multi-site Installation

Year

Ongoing

The Challenge

Our client needed a stellar Drupal development team to help maintain and be the tier 1 developer for their 80+ popular International television channel websites. Our team started with hundreds of known bugs on the legacy platform to be fixed, important new features to prioritize and process that needed to be put in place to ensure these sites ran like clockwork. A new and improved version of the platform was created, and Smashing was tasked with building a rock star team to continue improvements and support on both the new and old platforms.

The Process

Starting with a core team, Smashing dove headfirst into the history of the platform and current process in close collaboration and partnership with our client. We started laying the foundation for what would be a better process with a new bug tracking system, prioritization of necessary features, and determining very quickly that we would need to grow the team in order to meet our goals. Weekly code rolls including important updates were also implemented along with daily scrums using the agile methodology. Our goal was to ensure we were fulfilling the client’s needs to improve the platforms in all areas- creative recommendations, innovative new features, bug fixes, regional support, site operations tasks, backend improvements and seamless launches of new sites & features. We set development standards to be followed by our team as well as other contributing vendors and were arbiters for all new code for the platform. While doing this, we worked closely with stakeholders worldwide on a daily basis, including training them on new features and jumping on anything they needed technical assistance with. As the project and team grew, it became apparent that we should set standards for design for the platforms as well and took on the design retainer to help ensure creative strategy and online brand integrity. Our trusted partnership grew as we continued to evolve the retainer.

The Results

The retainer was renewed after our initial contract, and we are heading into another year of supporting our client. Our process continues to evolve and grow dependent on the needs of the projects and we are excited for the years ahead. We will keep improving upon current platforms and providing the excellent level of service they are accustomed to, as well as working on innovative and exciting projects that will expand the client’s global footprint. Overall, core accomplishments from the team include: