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Staying in Our Lane: Supporting LMDA's Move to WordPress

Customer Database (CRM) Maintenance and Support Training and Documentation
ornate theater with three floors, gold trim, and red chairs

Overview

Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA) has been the professional home for dramaturgs and literary managers across North America and beyond since 1985. The organization supports its members through an annual conference, a peer-reviewed journal, grants and awards, regional programming, and Find a Dramaturg, a public directory connecting theater-makers with working dramaturgs. At its core, LMDA exists to affirm the role of dramaturgy in theater-making and to build community among the people who practice it.

When Drupal 7 reached end of life, LMDA decided to rebuild their site in WordPress, with their longtime webmaster leading the effort. Skvare's role was specific: make CiviCRM work correctly in the new environment. Not take over the project. Not displace the person already doing the work. Come in where our expertise was genuinely needed, then step back.

Challenge

CiviCRM held everything that mattered operationally, including member records, donation history, event registrations, and member-only content access. It also powered Find a Dramaturg, where members maintain their own profiles and theater-makers search for working dramaturgs. That directory pulls directly from CiviCRM contact records, so keeping user accounts correctly linked to their CiviCRM contacts wasn't just a data integrity concern, it determined whether members could log in and update their own information.

Their webmaster was strong on WordPress and knew the site well. CiviCRM was a different matter. Transplanting a live CiviCRM database from one platform to another, migrating hundreds of users without breaking their links to CiviCRM contact records, and making the integration work correctly in a new environment, that's specialized work.

Before migration could begin, the existing system also needed attention. CiviCRM was running on a version that hadn't been supported in years, and PHP was on a release that had been out of support for over four years. Scheduled jobs hadn't run in years and security warnings had been stacking up.

Solution

  • Upgraded CiviCRM and PHP from outdated, unsupported releases to current versions, clearing years of accumulated security warnings before migration began
  • Set up Git-based version-controlled development environments, giving LMDA's webmaster a proper workflow for managing changes going forward
  • Transplanted the live CiviCRM database into the new WordPress environment, preserving all member data, contact records, and history
  • Wrote custom migration scripts to move users, profile pictures, and roles, preserving original user IDs so CiviCRM contact links stayed intact across the transition
  • Configured automatic member role sync so WordPress access updates when membership status changes in CiviCRM, keeping member access tied to real data
  • Diagnosed and resolved a conflict between LMDA's page builder and CiviCRM's session handling that was blocking form submissions and threatening to delay the launch
  • Advised LMDA's webmaster on how to embed CiviCRM data in WordPress pages using shortcodes, so he could build and design around it without relying on us
  • Assisted in the go-live cutover, including final database refresh, cron reconfiguration, DNS switch, and domain search-and-replace across the WordPress database

Results

LMDA launched their new WordPress site with every CiviCRM capability intact. Memberships, the Find a Dramaturg directory, donation forms, event registrations, member-only content, and bulk email all carried over without data loss. Role sync keeps member access current automatically. The webmaster retained full ownership of the site and codebase.

By working within a defined scope and handing off cleanly, Skvare helped LMDA complete a major platform transition within their budget, without displacing the developer they already trusted.

If you're working with an existing developer and need CiviCRM expertise to fill a gap, we can help. Let's talk.