Sector(s)
Project Team
Other organisations involved:
Team members:
- Amit Singh - Engagement Manager
- Kristen Pol - Technical Lead
- Govind Maloo - Backend Developer
- Paul Morriss - Relationship Manager
- Sumit Kumar - Backend and Frontend Developer
- Arpita Jain - QA
- Danielle Sheffler - Accessibility Consultant
- John Cloys - Accessibility Consultant
Salsa Digital upgraded core, modules and themes for six Victorian Department of Health (DH) websites running on GovCMS PaaS from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9. Multiple sites were upgraded in parallel to finish before the 2021 holiday season, and then the sites were smoothly transitioned to the Salsa support team for future maintenance.
About the project
DH’s challenge
With Drupal 8’s end-of-life approaching, regular support for GovCMS Drupal 8 PaaS ended in November 2021 (although GovCMS did provide special extended support to February 2022). Victoria’s Department of Health needed to transition to GovCMS Drupal 9 before the February deadline.
Back to topDH’s transformation
Salsa Digital recommended Victoria’s Department of Health upgrade six GovCMS Drupal 8 sites to Drupal 9 as part of one project. This approach provided economies of scale as the same team worked on all sites. We upgraded all the DH sites to Drupal 9 and to the latest GovCMS composer scaffolding on an accelerated schedule.
Updating GovCMS scaffolding
Victoria’s Department of Health Drupal 8 sites were using very outdated composer configuration that didn’t leverage recent GovCMS improvements. This limited some GovCMS continuous integration options typically used during deployments, such as running automated tests. The older composer scaffolding also did not include some popular Drupal modules such as Address, Migrate Tools, and Twig Tweak.
Upgrading the composer structure was not officially part of the project budget, but Salsa Digital sponsored the effort to ensure the best transition from the upgrade team to the support team. When upgrading your Drupal sites on GovCMS PaaS, we recommend you update to the most recent compatible composer scaffolding at the same time.
Updating the composer scaffolding has delivered tangible benefits, including:
- GovCMS composer best practices
- Improved continuous integration options
- Additional popular Drupal modules available automatically
- Reduced costs for support and maintenance
The outcomes
- Smooth upgrade of six sites in eight weeks to GovCMS Drupal 9
- Transition all sites to use latest GovCMS composer scaffolding
- Project finished ahead of schedule and within budget
- Seamless transition to Salsa Digital support team
Why Drupal was chosen
Drupal was chosen as the preferred CMS for Australia’s Federal Government through the creation of the GovCMS platform, which was launched in 2015. GovCMS is designed to make it easier for agencies to create modern, affordable, responsive websites. Importantly, GovCMS provides a whole-of-government platform to help consolidation across government departments. The fact that Drupal is open source means there are no expensive lock-in contracts, and GovCMS can build a Drupal/GovCMS community.
Technical Specifications
Drupal version:
Key modules/theme/distribution used:
GovCMS: The sites were already on GovCMS, a mature, Drupal-based platform
