Chapter Three is excited to announce the successful relaunch of the National Association of Realtors (NAR) website, www.nar.realtor. This isn't just a simple facelift but a strategic move to future-proof the digital infrastructure of the real estate industry's leading association.
With Drupal 7's end-of-life date looming, NAR strategically upgraded and revolutionized its web platform. The result? A seamless transition from Drupal 7 to Next-Drupal.org, an advanced technology solution that sets the standard for modern web experiences.
Originally built on a robust, self-hosted Drupal 7 instance, the NAR website is seen as the cornerstone for real estate news, training, and activities. The Drupal 7 site's complexity resulted from years of evolution and supported a complex editorial strategy. Thousands of pages of content and assets were knitted together.
Staying ahead in the rapidly changing digital world is critical. That is why Chapter Three reimagined and rebuilt the National Association of Realtors website using next-drupal.
Project Challenges & Solutions
- Large-Scale Migration: One of the most significant challenges was migrating a vast amount of content. Our team implemented a robust migration plan, ensuring no data was lost or mismanaged during the transition.
- Role-Based Authentication: We implemented a sophisticated system compatible with all Single Sign-On (SSO) systems, including role-based permissions passed to the next.js front end and users.
- Advanced Workflow: The complex workflow was made manageable with role-based access control and clear, customizable layouts.
- 3rd Party data Integration: Integration with multiple third-party media providers allowed the site to handle enterprise-class user management without compromising speed or security.
- Advertising & User Tracking: Fully integrated advertising tools, including Tealium, Adobe, and Google, ensure the site is equipped for modern marketing and user engagement tracking.
- Comprehensive Training: We provided extensive training to the editorial team to ensure they could manage the site’s advanced features and tools.
This project had three main parts: migrating ten years of Drupal 7 content into Drupal 11, refactoring all third-party integrations, and rebuilding the front end in next.js.
Project Improvements:
- Transitioned to leverage Vercel and next.js for improved performance, security and modern development workflows
- No organizational changes or in-depth editorial staff training was required
- Transitioned from self-hosting to Chapter Three’s managed hosting solution
- Optimized content architecture on Drupal 11
- Reduced platform complexity
- Improved development lifecycle and streamlined code deployments
- Excellent Return on Investment (ROI) for NAR
- Improved performance for better customer experience
- Seamless 3rd party integrations
Editorial Key Features & Highlights:
- Structured Content Management: A workflow for ease of use, scheduling, and explicit roles/permissions.
- Native Asset Management: Powerful asset management tools to organize media and files.
- Flexible Page Creation: Multiple authors can collaborate with live previews, revisions, and taxonomy structuring.
- Customizable Forms & Search: Custom forms and AI-powered search for enhanced user interaction.
- Security & Performance: The front end is completely decoupled from Drupal, ensuring top-tier security and performance.
- Advertising Integrations: Full integration with Tealium, Adobe, and Google for advertising needs.
- Elastic Search: A powerful search engine using Elastic Search to ensure fast and accurate results for users, improving content discoverability and site engagement.
The integration with Next-Drupal is seamless and efficient. This modern platform stack significantly reduces the complexity of NAR's previous internal infrastructure and provides unparalleled scalability.
Key Technology Improvements:
- Removed complex, internally managed Drupal hosting hardware and management configurations.
- Eliminated third-party CDN
- Transitioned to an API-driven “My Account”
- Updated Auth0 Access control with 3rd party member database integration
- Access controlled content with roles and permissions
- Robust API access for Mobile App
- Seamless Tealium Integration
- Streamlined Adserver Integration
- Advanced Elastic Search Integration
- Editorial interface upgrade
- Thorough content consolidation and cleanup during migration
- Elegant design Component templates for the front-end
The success of this project was possible through the team's collaborative efforts. NAR’s front-end performance on Vercel is incredible, with its capacity to seamlessly accommodate thousands of logged-in users and editors pushing content to the site all day. Next.js provides amazing security for the site, eliminating any vulnerabilities.
The Vercel platform has been fantastic to work with, and the team at Vercel had Chapter Three’s back to ensure a successful launch. The Drupal platform is hosted on Amazee.io, an excellent technology partner who played a key role in the project’s success. Tuning a decoupled Drupal instance is something new, and the Amazee team went above and beyond to ensure its success. The team at NAR was fully committed to and instrumental in driving the project forward.
If you are running a large, complex Drupal 7 site and want to know what options exist to modernize your Drupal platform, Chapter Three and next-drupal.org are excellent starting points.
