Trex Umbraco CMS Migration

Founded in 1992, Trex invented the composite deck category, becoming the world’s largest manufacturer of wood-alternative decking products. They offer the industry’s widest array of high-performance composite products, which are available in more than 42 countries around the world. Marathon provides complex web development and application development services for Trex.

Challenge

Trex had been using an extremely expensive and inflexible content management system (CMS) to manage 32 public websites (2 domestic and 30 international). The CMS unnecessarily required IT resources for simple content updates, and Trex decided it was time to find a better solution. After selecting Umbraco as the replacement CMS, Trex sought out an Umbraco Gold Partner and ultimately selected Marathon to complete the migration.

Solution

Trex was looking for a partner who would take the lead on the CMS project and provide thought leadership on the design and implementation of the Umbraco CMS to replace existing technologies, specifically addressing the following goals:

  • Complete the project by the deadline to avoid renewals of expensive license fees.
  • Minimize the risk and impact to the business, including the translations of the international websites.
  • Develop a base site to be used as a starter site for all websites.
  • Implement Salesforce Sales Cloud integration points in Umbraco.
  • Replace Google Search Appliance.
  • Migrate all Trex websites to new hardware.

Working with Trex’s IT department, Marathon designed a high-performance, highly available architecture for all 32 of Trex’s websites. Once the hardware was provisioned, Marathon set up and configured the web and database servers. Two (2) base sites were developed – one for the domestic websites and one for the international sites. Each Trex website was then migrated into Umbraco, which included coding each integration point into Salesforce Cloud. Marathon also replaced the Google Search Appliance with Umbraco Examine and then performed system integration testing and load testing on each Trex website. After successfully completing user acceptance testing with the Trex team, each website was deployed to the production environment.