Support for Drupal 7 is ending on 5 January 2025—it’s time to migrate to Drupal 10! Learn about the many benefits of Drupal 10 and find migration tools in our resource center.Elevating Global Brand and Driving Growth with Drupal 8
Working closely with the engineering and design teams at Pinterest, Phase2 architected a Drupal 8 system to elevate their global brand and drive growth via a new suite of marketing, business, and community sites.
Creating Truly Reusable Design Systems
Business.pinterest.com is the first in a series of marketing, business, and community sites that will help drive international growth for Pinterest. Ensuring that brand standards, design, and user experience are consistent across all properties is paramount.
A big component of this project was the integration of Pattern Lab Starter 8, Phase2's starter theme with Pattern Lab, which acts as the style guide, component library, and prototyping tool needed for a modern approach to theming. Pattern Lab Starter 8 uses Pattern Lab 2 and the same templating engine that powers Drupal 8: Twig.
By using the same templating engine, along with the help of the Component Libraries Drupal Module, the tool gives Drupal the ability to directly include, extend, and embed the Twig templates that Pattern Lab uses for its components without the need for template duplication.
This approach speeds up the entire development cycle and empowers Pinterest to create a consistent suite of marketing, business, and community sites.
Why Drupal was chosen:
Why Drupal 8?
- Multilingual capabilities.
- Close integration with Smartling.
- Capability to apply functionality across multiple sites.
- Improved system integration.
Describe the project (goals, requirements and outcome):
Internationalization
Ensuring that their digital marketing and partnership properties were responsive to unique global markets needs was more than a technical requirement for Pinterest, it was a business imperative. A combination of Drupal 8’s multi-lingual functionality and a custom Smartling integration enabled the first platform site, business.pinterest.com, to launch in 31 distinct languages.
Integration with Powerful Systems
Drupal 8 supports a better ecosystem for digital integrations, which means that it has better support for email, analytics, marketing automation, and other digital tech solutions. The new business.pinterest.com is tightly connected to Pinterest’s Salesforce CRM, allowing the digital marketing team to capture new business opportunities and grow existing partnerships.
Empowering Editors with Component-Based Design
Pinterest needed to empower their editors to architect and publish content quickly and easily. Pinterest’s new design system uses modular, component based libraries that integrate seamlessly into their platform by building on Drupal 8’s flexible Paragraph system. This methodology not only speeds up the entire development cycle, but it also empowers content editors and designers to create new page layouts without reliance on the technical team.
Moving Forward
Pinterest is moving forward with plans to launch 4-5 more marketing and community sites in their mission to reach global markets. With Phase2’s help, Pinterest will create a consistent and efficient suite of sites using beautiful, reusable design components.
Technical specifications
Drupal version:
Drupal 8.x
Key modules/theme/distribution used:
Why these modules/theme/distribution were chosen:
Paragraphs Module
Paragraphs allows content editors to structure, edit, and post content without developer assistance.
Components Module
Components ties the definition of Twig components between Pattern Lab and the Drupal theme.
TMGMT Translator Smartling
This plugin allows users to submit translation jobs to the Smartling Translation Management Platform for translation in Drupal 8.
Acquia connector, Search API, Search API Solr
These connectors power search across Pinterest’s new platform.
Lighting Distribution
Core Drupal 8 distribution. Pinterest used components of lightning, not the whole profile.
The list above shows the basic Drupal 8 modules that Phase2 advised Pinterest to utilize in their migration to Drupal 8.
Team members:
Project team:
Pinterest team members:
- Grant Gaudet
- Tim Cosgrove
Phase2 team members:
- Anne Sturdivant
- Mike Vanetta
- Judah Ferst
- Eden Gwyn
- Terry Stephenson
Sectors:
Technology
