The problem
bahia.com.br is the tourism website for the State of Bahia, in Brazil. It ran on Drupal. The decision was made to move it to WordPress.
I joined Equilibra Digital's front-end team on contract for the job.
The constraint
Visitors weren't supposed to see a redesign. Same theme, same layout, same functions, on a different CMS underneath. The best outcome was a launch day with zero comments about the website.
What I did
- Migrated the site from Drupal to WordPress.
- Rebuilt the front end in the new CMS to match the existing theme, layout and functions.
- Staged the cutover with the old and new sites running in parallel.
- Verified the new site against a documented test checklist before the switch.
How it went
The site moved to WordPress with its look and behaviour kept as they were.
The method is simple: run both sites in parallel, write the checklist down, and switch only when every line is ticked. It's boring, and it works.