Our upgrade from D7 to D8 was…unexpectedly challenging. With D8 now powering uspto.gov, we’ll provide an overview of our migration milestones over the last 12 months -- what we successfully anticipated and planned for, what went well, what totally surprised us, and what we wouldn’t do again in hindsight.
Our site is much like others in the government — with customized and sometimes baffling code, complex content types, and a reliance on online documents. And like many agencies, equally important to the project was planning how we communicated with our team – 100+ users of varying technical expertise and a blended contractor/federal web team. The challenges we ran into and how we addressed them will hopefully give you ideas on how to better prepare for your own transition.