Migration Featuring Accessibility and Select Feature Enhancements

At the onset of the project, we began with a discovery phase, collaborating with Duke Cancer InstituteI to audit their existing Drupal 7 site experience in order to plan the migration. Along the way, we were able to identify critical areas of improvement during the Drupal 8 upgrade. Targeted improvements focused on improving search functionality, optimizing the content-editor experience, and enhancing accessibility throughout the site.

Effective search means better usability and happier site visitors. While migrating dukecancerinstitute.org from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 we were able to implement a new search function that quickly loads more content that is specifically relevant to a user’s query.

It’s critical for search functionality to be fast and smart as well as optimized for all screen sizes and devices. Better keyword search and more organized content allows site visitors to quickly and efficiently find exactly what they’re looking for. We introduced an enhancement to populate results from most relevant to least relevant while increasing performance through ensuring the search index is updated once per hour.

The Duke Cancer Institute exists to discover and develop the world’s best cancer care through first-class patient care, top-tier talent and game-changing research. This means that their site needed to be as collaborative, innovative, and flexible as they are in order to keep up with the fast-paced nature of their organization. We implemented a custom content editor leveraging four States (Draft, In Review, Published, and Archived) to streamline workflow for DCI’s content team . We designed this functionality so that content can be transitioned from "Draft" to "In Review," "In Review" to "Published," "Published" to "Archive," as well as in the other direction. User Roles allow users to have specific permissions to add and edit content within the workflow in order to optimize content management.