Monash LSS approached me with 3 objectives:
- Drupal 6 to 7 migration
- Responsive site to display better on smaller devices
- Sleeker, more professional-looking theme
Migration. I opted to start from a fresh install of Drupal 7 and proceed with data migration from the Drupal 6 site, rather than upgrading Drupal core on the old site. With any migration whether from another version of Drupal, Wordpress, etc, I first survey of all the functionality of the old site, creating a spreadsheet of all modules, the availability and maintenance status of Drupal 7 versions or equivalents, and the ones that are unessential and can be trimmed to streamline the site. Because some data and essential functionality of LSS' old site relied on modules not supported in Drupal 7 (namely 'flexifield' and the 'profile' module built into Drupal 6 core), I wrote custom migration scripts to move and restructure data to play nice with 'field collections' and 'profile2' in Drupal 7.
Responsive site. I created a custom responsive theme for LSS' new Drupal 7 site using Twitter Bootstrap 2 as the base theme. Now in a fluid grid system, the site neatly adjusts to viewports at 5 major breakpoints: 1200px, 992px, 768px, 480px, and 370px.
Professional theme. The color scheme and interface of the old LSS site lacked a professional feel of a law society. We decided to tone down the old colorful layout, simplify the interface, and use a subtly patterned background to give it a look more fitting of one of Australia's top law societies.