German Council on Foreign Relations: Multidomain relaunch
The German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) uses Drupal's flexibility to compile its content for political professionals and laypersons according to a wide range of interests.
The layout sections can have different background colors. Section headings are automatically played in a jump anchor menu at the top of the page.
The customer was familiar with the principle of continuous deployment, so that the migrated content could be made available for enrichment at an early stage while further development was still in full swing.
Project Goal and Results
In addition to the “mobilization” of the sophisticated widescreen design supplied and the complex migration, the following technical requirements were met:
* Multilingual multi-domain installation (bilingual: dgap.org, German only: internationalepolitik.de, English only: ip-quarterly.com - the latter will be launched on 1.10.2020)
* Migration of around 30,000 articles and around 3,500 users
* Controllable sharing of content and display of untranslated content in the original language
* Closed member area with watch lists and invitations/registration options for events via an integrated interface to Navision and a switch to an external newsletter provider
* IP-based auto-login for trusted networks
* Various maintenance forms and “full” view modes for several content types, depending on the domain
* Exclusive access for subscribers to paid content and installation of a rudimentary “paywall”
* Controllable public display of user profiles
* VG-Word integration
* Responsive slider layout
* Entry of members and subscribers via dedicated roles without user administration rights
* Improved usability for editors and visitors
Challenges
The splitting and merging of content types and taxonomies required highly complex migration planning, which also took into account the necessary URL redirects.
The three websites were launched at different times. On the one hand, it had to be organized that the content of the magazine _Internationale Politik_ was still available via the Drupal 7 multisite setup, on the other hand, the content could already be prepared for going live.
The connection to the external service providers for newsletter distribution and event management (Navision) had to be seamless without producing overlaps. The reporting of retrievals to the collecting society VG Wort could not be interrupted.
