Caltrans · Drupal Modernization
Caltrans Drupal Modernization
- Client
- Caltrans
- Engagement
- Drupal Modernization
- Industry
- Government
The challenge
The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) maintained a large and highly distributed intranet ecosystem composed of more than 120 departmental websites serving internal teams across the organization. The existing platform was built on Drupal 7, which was approaching end-of-life and presented growing challenges related to long-term maintainability, deployment consistency, technical debt, and modernization planning.
The environment also required support for multiple development and testing workflows across numerous sites with shared functionality, while balancing operational stability, security requirements, and maintainability within a large government organization.
In addition to the technical migration itself, the project required establishing more modern deployment and operational practices to support long-term sustainability of the platform.
The environment also required support for multiple development and testing workflows across numerous sites with shared functionality, while balancing operational stability, security requirements, and maintainability within a large government organization.
In addition to the technical migration itself, the project required establishing more modern deployment and operational practices to support long-term sustainability of the platform.
The solution
Served as a senior Drupal consultant and technical project lead as part of the modernization effort to migrate the Caltrans intranet platform from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10/11.
Worked closely with technical teams to define migration approaches, multisite architecture strategies, deployment workflows, and configuration management practices suitable for a large-scale government environment.
Designed and implemented modern CI/CD deployment processes using Git, Jenkins, and Ansible to improve deployment consistency and reduce operational overhead. Assisted in establishing standardized development, testing, and deployment workflows across environments.
Contributed to the architecture and implementation of a Drupal multisite ecosystem designed to support shared functionality while allowing site-level flexibility where required. Helped define configuration management strategies using tools such as Config Split to support variations across departmental sites.
Participated in migration planning and implementation activities including content migration strategy, Drupal architecture modernization, environment standardization, deployment automation, troubleshooting, and operational support.
Worked across development, testing, and deployment phases to support modernization efforts while minimizing disruption to internal stakeholders and users.
Worked closely with technical teams to define migration approaches, multisite architecture strategies, deployment workflows, and configuration management practices suitable for a large-scale government environment.
Designed and implemented modern CI/CD deployment processes using Git, Jenkins, and Ansible to improve deployment consistency and reduce operational overhead. Assisted in establishing standardized development, testing, and deployment workflows across environments.
Contributed to the architecture and implementation of a Drupal multisite ecosystem designed to support shared functionality while allowing site-level flexibility where required. Helped define configuration management strategies using tools such as Config Split to support variations across departmental sites.
Participated in migration planning and implementation activities including content migration strategy, Drupal architecture modernization, environment standardization, deployment automation, troubleshooting, and operational support.
Worked across development, testing, and deployment phases to support modernization efforts while minimizing disruption to internal stakeholders and users.
The outcomes
Helped modernize a large-scale government intranet platform onto a supported and maintainable Drupal 10/11 foundation, reducing long-term platform risk associated with Drupal 7 end-of-life.
Improved deployment consistency and operational reliability through the introduction of automated CI/CD workflows and standardized deployment practices.
Contributed to establishing a scalable multisite architecture capable of supporting numerous departmental sites with shared functionality while maintaining flexibility for site-specific requirements.
Assisted in creating a more maintainable and sustainable platform architecture to support future growth, ongoing modernization, and long-term operational support within the organization.
Improved deployment consistency and operational reliability through the introduction of automated CI/CD workflows and standardized deployment practices.
Contributed to establishing a scalable multisite architecture capable of supporting numerous departmental sites with shared functionality while maintaining flexibility for site-specific requirements.
Assisted in creating a more maintainable and sustainable platform architecture to support future growth, ongoing modernization, and long-term operational support within the organization.
Technical highlights
Enterprise Drupal Migration Program
Contributed to the planning and execution of a large-scale modernization initiative to migrate more than 120 departmental websites from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10/11. Activities included migration planning, architecture design, deployment strategy, content modeling, and modernization of development workflows.
Migration Framework Development
Developed reusable migration tooling, custom process plugins, and migration workflows to support the transition of content, media, menus, blocks, and configuration from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10/11 across more than 120 departmental websites.
Multisite Platform Design
Helped design and implement a Drupal multisite architecture that balanced shared functionality with site-specific flexibility, enabling consistent governance while supporting the unique requirements of individual departments.
Configuration Management Strategy
Researched, documented, and implemented a Config Split strategy that allowed common configuration to be shared across sites while supporting environment-specific and site-specific customization.
Automated Deployment Pipeline
Designed deployment workflows utilizing Git, Jenkins, and Ansible to improve release consistency, reduce manual deployment effort, and support repeatable deployments across development, testing, and production environments.
DevOps Workflow Design
Collaborated with infrastructure and server teams to establish modern development, testing, deployment, and operational practices suitable for a government enterprise environment.
Custom Migration Process Plugins
Developed reusable Drupal migration process plugins to automate file validation, MIME type detection, media assignment, and metadata generation, improving migration accuracy and maintainability.
Media Modernization Initiative
Designed migration strategies to transition legacy file assets into Drupal Media entities, improving content governance, authoring workflows, and long-term maintainability.
Custom Search Enhancements
Developed custom Drupal modules and Search API integrations to improve site-specific search behavior and support enterprise Solr implementations within a shared multisite environment.
Custom Drupal Module Development
Developed custom Drupal modules to support migration, search, deployment, and operational requirements that were not addressed through existing contributed solutions.
Infrastructure Architecture Support
Collaborated with infrastructure teams on architecture decisions involving NGINX, MariaDB, Solr, Redis, and Varnish to establish a scalable and maintainable foundation for the modernized platform.
Migration Documentation & Training
Created migration guides, architecture documentation, implementation procedures, and technical training materials to support knowledge transfer and long-term operational sustainability.
// let's talk
Have a project like this?
Let's talk about where your platform is and where it needs to go.
Get in touch