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Organizations Involved

MSF Middle East needed one Drupal site that could publish urgent updates in Arabic and English and accept donations without a separate, hard-to-update system. Vardot rebuilt the platform on Drupal 9, integrated donations into Drupal Commerce, implemented Solr search, and moved to a hosting setup designed to handle a public-facing donations website.

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The Results

After launch, the rebuild produced measurable lifts:

  • +61% increase in unique pageviews
  • +12.36% increase in time on page
  • +82.23% increase in page value

 


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Challenge and Solution

MSF Middle East needed one Drupal platform that could do two jobs at once:

  1. Donations: remove the friction of a separate donation system that was hard to update.
  2. Public information: publish structured, searchable content in Arabic and English without relying on developers for routine updates.

The constraints in the old setup:

  • Drupal 7 nearing end-of-life.
  • Performance degradation linked to hosting not optimized for Drupal.
  • Donations split from the CMS, so updates required specialized skills.
  • Editors depended on developers for content updates and page creation.
  • Need for responsive UX and stronger on-page SEO foundations.

Solution delivered: a Drupal 9 rebuild that unified content + donations, improved information architecture, enabled faster editorial publishing, and upgraded hosting foundations for a site processing donations.

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About the project

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How did we do it?

1. One platform for donations + information

We brought the donation experience into the CMS to remove the operational split between “content site” and “donation system.”

  • Integrated a native Drupal donation system with multi-currency support.
  • Built the donation platform on Drupal Commerce, enabling MSF to create donation pages and maintain an exportable donor database.

2. Editorial independence, built for speed

MSF needed a platform non-technical teams can run day to day.

  • Layout Builder for drag-and-drop page creation without developer support.
  • Governance controls called out in scope: revision control, taxonomy-driven organization, granular permissions, and controls for URLs and meta tags.
  • The Drupal.org listing also highlights Layout Builder translation functionality for the bilingual site.

To increase discoverability, content structure was reorganized to work across navigation and content surfaces.

  • IA improvements for clearer visitor paths and stronger indexing relevance.
  • Search implemented using Apache Solr and Zookeeper for full-text search and filtering.

4. Multilingual publishing that does not break templates

  • Bilingual publishing (Arabic and English) designed to keep layouts consistent across languages.
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Intuitive UX/UI

The rebuild focused on reducing friction in two places that matter:

  • Donors: fewer steps and fewer handoffs between systems.
  • Editors: repeatable page building blocks so multiple contributors can publish without breaking structure.

Drupal 9 UI/UX overview

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Custom Landing Pages

MSF needed the ability to create and update landing pages quickly for campaigns and priority topics.

  • Built on Layout Builder, enabling page creation and iteration without developer dependency.
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MSF content needed to be searchable and filterable at scale.

  • Implemented Apache Solr for enterprise-grade full-text search and filtering.
  • Drupal.org’s listing references ZooKeeper in the search setup.
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Integrated Donations Platform

The donation experience was previously separated from the CMS, which slowed updates.

  • Donations integrated inside Drupal with Drupal Commerce as the base.
  • MSF can create donation pages internally.
  • MSF can maintain and export donor data as needed.
  • Multi-currency support for international supporters.
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User-Centric Administration and Translations

  • Admin workflows designed for non-technical day-to-day publishing using Layout Builder.
  • Bilingual operations supported with translation capabilities that preserve layout integrity.

  • Drupal.org’s listing specifically calls out Layout Builder translation functionality.

     


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Hosting Upgrade and Better Performance

MSF’s modernization included moving away from non-Drupal-compatible hosting and upgrading to OVHcloud, positioned to support stronger performance and security compliance needs for a site handling donations.

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Technical Specs

  • Drupal 9.x
  • Varbase implementation
  • Drupal Commerce (donations)
  • Apache Solr (search)
  • ZooKeeper
  • Foundations and baselines included:
    • Security: SSL, IP login restriction, security checklist
    • Performance: Cloudflare, performance checklist
    • Accessibility target: WCAG 2.0 AA
    • SEO foundations: markup, headings, sitemap generation, on-site SEO checklist
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Why Drupal was chosen

Drupal supports the specific constraints MSF had:

  • Structured content and editorial governance for many contributors.
  • Multilingual publishing for Arabic and English.
  • Ability to unify content + donations in one platform using Drupal Commerce.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF): Drupal 9 rebuild with integrated donations

Technical Specifications

Drupal version: