Drupal war stories from a Minneapolis studio: upgrades, migrations, rescues, and module maintenance across 97 production sites.https://deadnorth.io/https://deadnorth.io/notes/inherited-a-drupal-site-2026-survival-guide/https://deadnorth.io/notes/inherited-a-drupal-site-2026-survival-guide/New job, old Drupal site, no documentation? How to tell which Drupal version you're running, the five checks to run first, and when a $2,500 assessment beats guessing.Wed, 17 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://deadnorth.io/notes/taking-over-a-drupal-site-complete-technical-checklist/https://deadnorth.io/notes/taking-over-a-drupal-site-complete-technical-checklist/The developer-to-developer handoff checklist for inherited Drupal: composer and git state, drush access, config export status, and what to do when there's no repo at all.Mon, 08 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://deadnorth.io/notes/long-strange-trip-09-guardrails/https://deadnorth.io/notes/long-strange-trip-09-guardrails/Part nine: standardizing Behat tests across an agency — how one project's safety net became shop infrastructure, and why process you leave behind outlives code you wrote.Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://deadnorth.io/notes/drupal-10-to-11/https://deadnorth.io/notes/drupal-10-to-11/Drupal 10 reaches end of life in December 2026. The move to 11 is the easiest major upgrade in Drupal's history for a healthy site — here's the checklist and the catch.Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://deadnorth.io/notes/long-strange-trip-08-millions-of-nodes/https://deadnorth.io/notes/long-strange-trip-08-millions-of-nodes/Part eight: the defining project — a monolithic Drupal 7 application, millions of nodes, rebuilt as Drupal 10 while the site kept publishing. The memoir angle: what carrying it was like.Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://deadnorth.io/notes/the-maintainer-ledger/https://deadnorth.io/notes/the-maintainer-ledger/Maintaining a Drupal module running on ~97 production sites: the real costs (releases, issue queue, testing every core major) and the real returns — none of them money.Fri, 15 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://deadnorth.io/notes/promotion-math/https://deadnorth.io/notes/promotion-math/Discount stacking runs on sequential math and evaluation order — why combined promotions come out smaller than expected, and the one setting that turns them off entirely.Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://deadnorth.io/notes/what-drupal-maintenance-actually-costs-2026/https://deadnorth.io/notes/what-drupal-maintenance-actually-costs-2026/Drupal maintenance pricing in 2026, with actual numbers: $99 commodity plans, $150–$1,850/mo small-studio programs, and $16k+/yr agency care — what each tier really includes.Thu, 05 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://deadnorth.io/notes/how-drupal-versions-work/https://deadnorth.io/notes/how-drupal-versions-work/The Drupal 5-through-11 map in plain language: what a major version is, what end-of-life actually means, and where every branch stands right now.Tue, 30 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://deadnorth.io/notes/counts-as-the-contract/https://deadnorth.io/notes/counts-as-the-contract/War story from a Drupal 7 to 10 migration measured in millions of nodes: reconcile every entity count every run, migrate in increments against a live site, cut over in minutes.Tue, 09 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://deadnorth.io/notes/drupal-7-to-11-what-a-rescue-actually-involves/https://deadnorth.io/notes/drupal-7-to-11-what-a-rescue-actually-involves/The honest sequence for getting a Drupal 7 site to Drupal 11 — stabilize first, assess second, migrate third — from an engineer who has moved millions of nodes without losing a record.Wed, 18 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://deadnorth.io/notes/how-long-does-a-drupal-migration-take/https://deadnorth.io/notes/how-long-does-a-drupal-migration-take/Honest duration math for D7-to-modern migrations: what makes one site a few weeks and another a few months, and the one thing that predicts the timeline better than size.Mon, 02 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://deadnorth.io/notes/what-a-migration-cannot-lose/https://deadnorth.io/notes/what-a-migration-cannot-lose/Counts as the contract: the discipline that separates a migration you can trust from one that merely looks finished — from an engineer who has moved millions of nodes.Mon, 19 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT