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Bringing NZ history into the future with Drupal 10

Learn how Ministry for Culture & Heritage transformed the way they care for New Zealand’s history by upgrading their CMS, Drupal 7 before it reached end of life (EOL).

Background

The remount depot at Gibbons Street, Upper Hutt, during the First World War.

The remount depot at Gibbons Street, Upper Hutt, during the First World War.
Credit: Upper Hutt City Library and Digital New Zealand

 

Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture & Heritage (MCH) is a New Zealand Government department supporting the arts, heritage, broadcasting, and sports sectors. They maintain websites to help the people of Aotearoa New Zealand access history and stories, like the NZ History website launched in 1999 by the Minister of Internal Affairs, Hon. Jack Elder. 

Initially, the site was home to essays and a series of photographs and had been built using static HTML. Since then, NZ History has grown to encompass more NZ historical events, such as suffragists, Boer War soldiers, and the Treaty of Waitangi signatories in multiple formats, including stories, events, biographies, and places.

Over the years, the website became a complex patchwork of collections and code from a range of organisations, as the site stretched to fit what hadn’t been factored into the initial scope. For eight years, they’ve partnered with Catalyst to maintain this complex legacy system. In 2024, MCH realised the NZ History site had outgrown its initial design and needed modernising. 

Opportunity

The NZ history website was running on Drupal 7 which was nearing end-of-life (EOL) so would no longer receive important security updates or bug fixes.  Additionally, the servers the site was running on required time-consuming manual processes and also needed to be upgraded.

Catalyst recommended upgrading from Drupal 7 early to avoid the stress of upgrading at the last minute and also deliver themselves a modern platform. MCH agreed and decided it was a perfect opportunity to action other long-term goals of theirs to future-proof their site.

Objectives agreed to were:

  • Restructure their data: To streamline information - components sharing across their websites, including through API calls.
  • Upgrade from Drupal 7: Transition to a modern and supported version of the CMS.
  • Update infrastructure: The servers were also reaching their EOL, so their Ubuntu servers needed to be updated to a modern operating system.
  • Adopt best practices: MCH wanted to adopt best practices in delivery, information architecture, code management and deployment, and ongoing site maintenance.

Solution

Consistent and modern data structures

Due to the large collection size (~41,000 content nodes, ~35,000 images), work began with an analysis phase. The teams worked through the data structures to understand the media types, streamline and simplify their structure, and migrate the collection to Drupal 10. The analysis included reviewing content types, taxonomy terms, fields, and custom code set up in Drupal 7. The goal was to align the site components and data structures across MCH sites, to ensure a consistent user experience. Previously, many images were simply placed on the server and referenced from within HTML markup. 

The way the historic inventory and data structure had been bought together was unmanageable. Because of this, MCH couldn’t leverage the full functionality of Drupal. Once the set-up was understood, MCH had the opportunity to align their data with Drupal and looked to Catalyst for their expertise in setting up industry best practices.

The Topp Twins
Credit: Topp Twins, 1978. Private collection. 

Drupal 10
The upgrade from Drupal 7 to 10 was smooth and successful. During the upgrade such "unmanaged" files were brought into the Drupal media library making them searchable for editors, and providing provenance and traceability. Now, images, local and remote audio, zooming images, remote video, panoramas, interactives, slideshows, and maps are all managed via Drupal’s rich media functionality with a more consistent experience for editors. 

Updated infrastructure
The Ubuntu servers were updated to a modern operating system, configured, and managed for consistency and security. MCH is set up with full functionality and the servers work well within their systems. They’re also hosted on Catalyst Cloud which ensures the NZ history website and data it holds about the history of Aotearoa has data sovereignty.

Best practices

One of the ways of supporting best practices was introducing new methods to share knowledge. The teams collaborated using GitLab to streamline workflows and automate testing and deployment. David Turton, MCH technical lead, when asked about using GitLab as a collaborative tool, shared “It’s been great for the consistency.” He also noted that other sites are using the same process and it’s been great for reporting and record keeping.

Through GitLab, the teams set up Continuous integration (CI) pipelines for deployments, and incorporated best practices for recording and tracking work. As part of the upgrade, deployments were automated, and configuration management was actioned to ensure a strong history of changes and the reasons behind them.

Throughout the project, Catalyst helped MCH adopt best practices from delivery to development to empower MCH with a broader range of skills to implement future changes. David shared that "[working with Catalyst] Opened our eyes to what is possible and how things can be done better.” MCH is now taking the learnings from NZ History to consider how they can improve the structure and display of their data across their sites.

Results

Child's Play.
Credit: Home of Compassion Archives.

  • Sustainable setup: Custom code was reduced to reduce the effort to maintain and upgrade the site.
  • Enhanced performance: NZ History is on the latest version of Drupal and new servers ensuring faster page load times, an improved user experience, and a secure CMS
  • Improved workflows: By using GitLab for communication, record keeping, reports, and consistency, MCH shares that everything is now "much smoother and easier."
  • Shared knowledge: The knowledge gained from the NZ History upgrade has equipped the MCH developers with ideas and experience to improve how data is structured across their websites.
  • Ensured data sovereignty: As NZ History is hosted on Catalyst Cloud, all their data is sovereign to New Zealand, which means it remains under NZ law.
  • 20 different content types, 41,000 nodes, and 37,000 media items were migrated and updated. 

The outcome is fantastic. We have a fit-for-purpose site on up-to-date infrastructure with processes in place to manage the code and deployments. Everyone’s really happy. 

- David Turton, technical lead, Ministry for Culture & Heritage

Drupal 7 EOL is in place

Since January 5 2025, Drupal 7 EOL has been in place. If you’re considering upgrading your CMS, check out our blog post for more resources. Or if you’d like to learn more about Drupal we’re happy to discuss what you’re looking for in a CMS. Contact us to discuss your goals.

Services provided

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  • Recommended best practices
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