School Nova

SchoolNova.org is a comprehensive nonprofit platform that enables seamless collaboration between teachers, students, and parents. It serves as an essential tool for educational management, facilitating communication and coordination across the school community. The platform also includes a storytelling-driven marketing website designed specifically to support new student intake and outreach efforts. At its core, SchoolNova.org relies on a robust Drupal backend that efficiently manages diverse content types, user roles, and complex workflows. This technical foundation ensures the platform can handle the evolving needs of the educational community while providing a scalable and secure environment for ongoing development and feature enhancements.

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Legacy Limitations and Upgrade Necessity

The platform was originally built on Drupal 7, which posed challenges in terms of security, performance, and maintainability as Drupal 7 reached end-of-life. Legacy code, outdated APIs, and custom modules required significant reworking to comply with Drupal 10 standards. Additionally, evolving user experience needs demanded updated admin and front-end logic as well as a modernized UI aligned with Drupal’s latest theming system. 

Implementation Strategy

We executed a carefully planned and phased migration to upgrade SchoolNova from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10, ensuring minimal disruption to users and operations. Our team conducted a thorough assessment of the existing backend and developed a comprehensive migration strategy that successfully transferred all content, user data, roles, permissions, and media assets with full data integrity. We refactored all custom modules to comply with Drupal 10’s updated APIs and best practices, accompanied by extensive testing to ensure seamless functionality. Additionally, we adapted the administrative and front-end logic to maintain usability and feature parity between versions. To complete the upgrade, a custom theme was developed and integrated, preserving the original design while optimizing workflows to fully leverage Drupal 10’s enhanced capabilities. Throughout the process, rigorous testing and iterative refinements were conducted to guarantee a smooth and stable transition.

Project Outcome

The upgrade delivered a fully modernized Drupal 10 platform with enhanced security, improved performance, and increased maintainability. Custom business logic and workflows were preserved and optimized, enabling SchoolNova to continue facilitating effective collaboration among teachers, students, and parents. The refreshed UI and backend workflows have improved user experience for both administrators and end-users.

Anchor Point's Thoughts

The phased Drupal 10 upgrade has future-proofed SchoolNova.org, enabling it to better serve its nonprofit educational mission. Through meticulous planning, execution, and ongoing collaboration, the platform now benefits from a modern codebase and improved user experience that will support its growth and impact for years to come.

Ongoing Collaboration

Our partnership with SchoolNova includes continuous support for platform maintenance, security updates, and feature enhancements. We remain engaged in monitoring system health, addressing emerging needs, and evolving workflows to meet educational community requirements.