atDove
Three major Drupal upgrades for a veterinary LMS platform, plus WordPress marketing site maintenance — zero downtime across every migration.
Highlights
Hello World has guided atDove through three major Drupal upgrades, from 7 to 8, 8 to 9, and 9 to 10, keeping a complex veterinary LMS platform running without disruption. We maintain both the Drupal application backend and a WordPress marketing frontend, giving atDove a unified technical partner across their entire web presence.
Services
Drupal LMS Development & Upgrades
WordPress Marketing Site Maintenance
Platform Architecture
Ongoing Technical Support
Technical Strategy
Overview
atDove is an online veterinary training platform that delivers professional education through high-quality video content. From surgery and anesthesia to client communication and technician basics, atDove provides hundreds of training topics for every role in a veterinary practice, all through a single subscription.
The platform runs on a dual architecture: a Drupal-powered application handles the LMS backend, including user management, subscription billing, video delivery, continuing education tracking, and team administration. A separate WordPress site serves as the public-facing marketing frontend. Hello World maintains both, providing atDove with a single technical partner who understands the full picture.
The Challenge
Three Major Upgrades. A Complex LMS. Two Platforms.
When Hello World began working with atDove, the LMS was running on Drupal 7. The platform had grown significantly: video libraries, user roles, team management, subscription tiers, and continuing education certificates all depended on custom modules and complex content relationships.
Drupal 7 to 8 was the most demanding migration. It required rebuilding custom modules, migrating content and user data, and rearchitecting the subscription and CE tracking systems for Drupal 8’s new paradigms. Each subsequent upgrade (8 to 9, then 9 to 10) built on that foundation, but still required careful attention to contributed module compatibility, deprecated APIs, and custom code updates.
Throughout every upgrade, the platform needed to remain available. Veterinary professionals rely on atDove for continuing education credits and on-demand training. Downtime means missed deadlines and disrupted learning.
Our Approach
Drupal 7 to 8: The Big Migration
We treated the Drupal 7 to 8 migration as a ground-up rebuild of the application layer. Custom modules for video management, CE tracking, and subscription handling were rewritten for Drupal 8’s object-oriented architecture. User accounts, content libraries, and subscription data were migrated using Drupal’s migration framework with custom plugins to handle atDove’s specific data relationships. We staged everything in isolated environments and ran parallel testing before the production cutover.
Drupal 8 to 9, Then 9 to 10
With the heavy lifting done in the 8 migration, subsequent upgrades were more methodical. We audited contributed module readiness, updated deprecated APIs, ensured theme compatibility, and validated every user-facing workflow. The investment in clean, maintainable code during the 8 migration paid dividends: each subsequent upgrade was faster and lower-risk.
WordPress Marketing Site
Alongside the Drupal application, we maintain atDove’s WordPress marketing site. This includes content updates, plugin maintenance, performance optimization, and ensuring the marketing site and LMS application present a cohesive experience to visitors and subscribers.
Ongoing Partnership
Beyond major upgrades, we handle day-to-day maintenance, security updates, feature enhancements, and performance monitoring across both platforms. Having a single team that understands both the Drupal backend and WordPress frontend means faster troubleshooting, better architectural decisions, and no gaps between systems.
Results
- 3 major Drupal upgrades (7→8→9→10) completed without service interruption
- Dual-platform maintenance across Drupal LMS and WordPress marketing site with a single partner
- Complex LMS features preserved through every migration: video delivery, CE tracking, subscription management, team administration
- Cleaner, more maintainable codebase after each upgrade, reducing the cost and risk of future migrations
- Zero downtime across all upgrades and ongoing maintenance