Ambitious projects with constrained budgets: D7 WebExpress Install Profile to Backdrop CMS

Several years ago the article “How One Stanford Team Saved Nearly Half a Million in Migrating from Drupal 7 to BackdropCMS”  made headlines for a good reason.   Half a million is not a small amount. “It is equivalent to several postdoc salaries, which – quite honestly – the university (and the world) needs more than we need any particular website technology”, said  Zach Chandler, Director of  Research IT and Innovation at Stanford University. 

Aten Design Group estimated that a move to Drupal 9 could cost up to a million dollars. So the team chose Backdrop CMS, a fork of the Drupal project.  “Migrating to Backdrop ended up costing RITI 10 times less”, says the article published in Pantheon blog. 

Last year when the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado Denver began moving the WebExpress installation profile off Drupal7, they were inspired by the success that BackdropCMS had with many universities.   Penn State, Stanford, UCSF and many others are using BackdropCMS.  The Backdrop community has extensive experience building sites for Higher Ed, and is now introducing a project conceivably called CampusDrop, a specialized BackdropCMS-based platform designed specifically for educational institutions.

In the session today we will present the CampusDrop project, its roadmap and features that are common across all higher ed organizations (profiles, departments, courses, events, news, etc.).  We will also provide a brief comparison of Backdrop CMS's performance and dependencies relative to other major platforms like WordPress and Drupal.

By the end of this session, participants will gain a clear understanding of the CampusDrop project’s directions, potential, and technical integration strategies. From module compatibility and data migration to theming considerations, attendees will leave with practical insights to navigate the challenges of platform transitions in higher education.