Australian Koala Foundation · Client case study
01 / THE STARTING POINT
The Australian Koala Foundation’s website was doing several important jobs at once. It sold products online, carried a substantial body of conservation information and supported scientific work across Australia. It also had more than 40,000 backlinks pointing into it. This was an established digital asset, not a blank canvas.
An upcoming Drupal upgrade created compatibility concerns with essential systems, including eWAY and FileMaker. Staying on the same path was no longer a straightforward technology decision. The organisation needed a practical way forward without interrupting the services people already depended on.
02 / THE CHALLENGE
The challenge was to change the underlying technology while maintaining online sales and access to scientific data. A three-month delivery window, a large existing web presence and developers working in another city made coordination as important as the build itself.
03 / THE STRATEGY
Joshua led the move from Drupal to WordPress to address the compatibility problem and give the foundation a more suitable platform for its next stage. The project had to be judged on whether the organisation could keep operating, not simply whether the new pages looked better.
The scale of the existing link profile raised the stakes. When thousands of external links lead people to a website, the transition has implications for discoverability as well as software. Protecting the value of that established presence was part of the strategic context.
The migration also created an opportunity to refresh the brand’s online presentation. Technical modernisation and a more current public face were brought together in the same project.
04 / WHAT WE DID
The immediate problem was compatibility with systems the foundation already relied on. Joshua led the Drupal-to-WordPress migration around that operational requirement.
Online product purchases and access to research information had to continue through the transition. These were core functions, not secondary features to revisit after launch.
Joshua managed the project from Brisbane, with parts of the development outsourced to specialists in Sydney. A tightly coordinated team was needed to deliver the migration within the three-month build window.
05 / THE BUSINESS LOGIC
For this project, progress meant protecting the foundation’s ability to operate and support conservation. A platform change would have offered little value if it interrupted sales or made research information harder to access.
The successful migration removed the immediate compatibility barrier while modernising the online brand. It gave the organisation a platform from which to continue its work; this is an operational outcome, rather than a claim of increased donations or sales.
06 / THE OUTCOME
The website moved from Drupal to WordPress, with online product sales and scientific data access maintained throughout the migration. The refreshed digital presence supported the foundation’s continued conservation and research work.
Project account supplied by Joshua Reti. February–June 2020 is the listed project period; the migration delivery window was three months. The 40,000+ figure describes the existing backlink profile, not links created by the project.
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