Python to Drupal migration for Mind Over Media website with multilingual feature

Industry
Education
Type Of Work
Migration
Client
Mind Over Media

Mind Over Media

Mind Over Media is the companion website of Renee Hobbs’ book “Mind Over Media: Propaganda Education for a Digital Age”. The Mind Over Media platform enables users to share examples of contemporary propaganda for educational purposes using crowdsourcing.

The website lets users share what they link are potential propaganda from various sources such as YouTube, Vimeo, News, blogs, online articles, memes, screenshots, etc which they can upload to the website, and other users can rate the propaganda and discuss it in the comments.

The website audience is divided into teachers and students. The website has a classroom feature where a teacher can create an account and add selected propaganda artifacts to their classroom and use that link to teach their students.

01

Project Overview

  • The website was built in a Python based custom CMS and wanted to be migrated to Drupal 8.
  • The design of the website needed to be improved for better readability and better user experience.
  • The website was not mobile friendly. It was required to make it responsive to various mobile devices.
  • The backend of the website needed the majority of the improvements as the Python based custom CMS was very difficult and tedious to manage the content on the website.
  • There was no feature to bulk approve, reject or bulk delete the comments on the backend.
  • The website also needed to be made in 8 languages.
Project overview mind over media
02

Our Approach

  • The content was migrated from Python based custom CMS to Drupal 8’s database by writing custom MYSQL scripts to migrate content into the respective tables with the right architecture to support Drupal CMS.
  • The content types were created in Drupal 8 to accommodate the content from the database.
  • The rating feature was rebuilt in Drupal using a custom module and custom JS.
  • User registration forms and login forms were designed in Drupal.
  • The password encryption system of Drupal was different from that of the Python based CMS. When the users from the Python based CMS were migrated over to Drupal’s database, a reset password link was sent to the users automatically to create a new password on the new website.
  • Two user roles were created in Drupal 8 - one for students and another for teachers with necessary permissions.
  • The comments section will enable users to post comments and reply to comments. The comments posted will not be published directly on the site but the admin will be alerted that there is a new comment and once the admin approves the comment, it will be published on the website.
  • The multilingual feature was achieved using the core Multilingual module. The website was set up to have 8 languages natively.

Technologies Used

Project Highlights

  • Python to Drupal 8 migration
  • Multilingual
  • Content moderation made easy
  • Content management made easy
  • Mobile responsiveness
View Website

Responsive Design For All Devices

Responsive design mind over media