Migrate a Drupal Forum to LMS

Transformed an end-of-life website into a new and vibrant education platform.

Client:

A center at a major private university.

Industry:

Higher Education

Services:

Moodle Learning Management System (LMS), website migration and development, hosting, LMS administration, WordPress forum development, Drupal 7 deprecation

The Need:

Our clients reached out to us when their Drupal 7-based forum was nearing end of life. They had been successfully using the Drupal forum for many years to deliver content to students in their program. However, Drupal 7 and the forum were nearing end of life, and there was no way to update the forum to be compatible with an updated Drupal site. In addition to being unable to teach courses, they risked losing years of course history and most of their participant records.

After gathering requirements from the center’s leadership, we proposed to extract and migrate the Drupal forum participant data and course content history, develop a new WordPress-based forum as an archive of previous courses, and develop a new Moodle LMS site for course facilitation. We recommended these options because the WordPress-based forum would be easier to maintain and have improved longevity over their previous site. Additionally, a fully featured Moodle LMS would provide a superior user experience for their participants and has a long track record of reliability and ongoing support.

We planned out a timeline to accomplish this work that would not interfere with their academic calendar.

The Work:

The first task was to extract course content and student profiles from the Drupal 7 database. We customized a Drupal extraction tool to query the database for the required information. In the end, we were able to extract all information from the database except for profile pictures and student passwords – a huge success!

We then developed a WordPress site and installed a bbPress forum plugin, and migrated the data. It worked like a charm, and we were able to show our clients all of their course content in the WordPress site. This is a much more user-friendly solution than their previous site.

We then developed a Moodle LMS site and customized it to their specifications. We coached them on best practices for adding students to the site and developed a tutorial that they could refer to when creating classes and adding content.

We provide coaching, hosting, and maintenance for both the Moodle LMS and WordPress sites, ensuring that they continue to function securely and efficiently. The sites are fine-tuned to handle program traffic.

The Results:

Our solutions have greatly improved the digital learning experience, providing a fresh, modern feel and new features for teachers and students in a stable environment.

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