North Dakota State University Consolidates 300 Sites into One Drupal Platform

North Dakota State University launched a unified Drupal-powered platform that consolidates nearly 300 legacy websites into a single recruitment hub. The new site achieves Lighthouse performance scores up to 99 and delivers a first contentful paint of just 0.5 seconds on its homepage.

Four Kitchens led the rebuild, migrating hundreds of TYPO3 and legacy Drupal sites into a modular solution built on Drupal and Emulsify, with critical frontend components rewritten in vanilla JavaScript using AI-enhanced tools. A Netflix-style program finder organizes academic offerings by themes like "Pursue a Career with Purpose" to guide prospective students through program discovery.

A campus-wide "Web Principals" initiative trained more than 150 content editors on sophisticated authoring tools powered by Drupal's Layout Paragraphs module. The intuitive drag-and-drop interface provides real-time visual previews and hundreds of flexible layout combinations, giving editors unprecedented control and confidence in content management.

The new platform implements sophisticated governance through Drupal's Group module, creating content silos that mirror NDSU's organizational structure. Each department can manage their own content independently while maintaining brand consistency across the entire platform. A complete portfolio of the project is available here. 

Accessibility and SEO enhancements achieved near-perfect scores, ensuring compliance and improved visibility. The transformation supports NDSU's "One NDSU, One Voice" brand vision by unifying nearly 300 disparate sites into a cohesive digital experience.

Four Kitchens will continue to support NDSU under its Continuous Care program, delivering ongoing security updates and feature improvements.

Explore the new digital experience at NDSU.edu.