Sector(s)

Team Members

fago, oliver_berndt, mostepaniukvm, mbm80

Project Team

Client: k-digital Medien GmbH & Co KG

Visit the site

Visit the site

Organizations Involved

Community contributions

drunomics and k-digital actively contribute to the Drupal community. As part of the profil.at relaunch, the team introduced several bug fixes, improvements, and new developments, including:

  • Drupal Core Bugfix: Fixing caching issues
  • Layout Builder Enhancements: New additions
  • Layout Builder Modal Improvements: Updates
  • Gin Admin Theme Fixes: Bugfixes

profil.at, the investigative news portal of Austria’s leading magazine profil, underwent a comprehensive relaunch in 2022 as part of the k-digital Drupal Multisite project. At the time the project started, profil.at’s decoupled back-end was a Drupal 9 installation, built from the Thunder distribution and Kurier’s in-house Hermes profile. The new platform improves investigative journalism by optimizing the digital experience for research, reports, debates, interviews, and fact-checks. The project used a decoupled architecture, where the frontend was developed in-house by k-digital, while drunomics provided extensive support for the Drupal backend.
Overall, the relaunch improved the site's editorial workflows, increased its speed and performance, and made navigation simpler—reinforcing profil.at's reputation as a top digital news source in Austria.

Describe the project (goals, requirements and outcome)

Goals

  • Implement a fully responsive and high-performance digital news portal.
  • Migrate the previous system to a modern Drupal 9-based infrastructure.
  • Improve editorial workflows with the Layout Builder and custom backend tools.
  • Optimize site speed, performance, and user engagement through advanced caching and SEO techniques.
  • Ensure seamless API integrations with external platforms.

Requirements

  • Adopt a decoupled frontend approach, allowing flexibility in future development.
  • Implement a Symfony-based frontend instead of a JavaScript-heavy framework to improve performance.
  • Integrate advanced SEO and analytics tools, including Google Analytics 4 and structured metadata.
  • Maintain the stability of the multisite setup while enabling continuous improvements.

Outcome

  • Enhanced design and usability with improved content discoverability.
  • Optimized performance, reducing JavaScript load and improving page speed.
  • Seamless migration from legacy architecture to a state-of-the-art CMS.
  • Better editorial tools, enabling streamlined publishing and workflow management.
  • Higher engagement metrics due to improved cross-referencing and navigation.

Why Drupal was chosen

profil.at needed a CMS that could:

  • Support a high-traffic media platform with dynamic content.
  • Provide a flexible backend that enables smooth editorial workflows.
  • Ensure a decoupled architecture to integrate seamlessly with modern frontend technologies.
  • Offer powerful content structuring and SEO capabilities.

Drupal, particularly with the Thunder distribution, provides the ideal foundation for a scalable, high-performance media site that aligns with profil.at’s editorial and business objectives.

Technical Specifications

Drupal version:

Key modules/theme/distribution used:

Why these modules/theme/distribution were chosen
  • Thunder provided a ready-made media-focused CMS tailored for journalistic content.
  • Layout Builder streamlined editorial workflows, allowing greater design flexibility.
  • Symfony-based frontend improved performance and independence from the backend.