How Cleveland State University Builds a Scalable, Secure Digital Future

At Cleveland State University (CSU), the website is more than a digital asset – it’s the front door for thousands of students, faculty and alumni. As universities nationwide adapt to new operational challenges, maintaining that central point of connection has become more critical than ever. By 2023, that central point was showing signs of wear. With aging Drupal 7 sites, growing security concerns, and mounting pressure to streamline content management, CSU faced a pivotal moment.

What followed was a transformation driven by smart partnerships, the right platform, and a vision for a modern digital campus.

CSU’s digital transformation wasn’t just about technology. It was about enabling a small team to do big things — safely, efficiently, and with a focus on the student community we serve.” 

– Anthony Roundtree, CSU’s Director of Web Development and Strategy

From DIY legacy to leading edge: The need for change

CSU managed its sprawling digital footprint — over 400 subsites across 14 main properties in Drupal and WordPress — in-house, supported by a small but agile web team. Many of those sites ran on Drupal 7, some untouched for over a decade. The team needed a scalable, sustainable way to modernize.

To support the University’s future-forward growth plans, the project also required a website operations and hosting platform that could handle CSU’s scale and security needs. That’s where Pantheon came in.

In addition, CSU partnered with digital agency Mediacurrent to take on the Drupal 7 to Drupal 10 migration. That level of CMS migration was challenging and required assistance from external partners. 

Migration at scale: Upstreams and speed

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Migrating more than a dozen major sites — and hundreds of subsites — was no small feat. Using Pantheon's migration wizard, Drupal 8 sites were the first to move. But the Drupal 7 to 10 transition required hands-on coordination between CSU, Mediacurrent and Pantheon. It took several weeks to complete. 

To streamline ongoing development, CSU established an Upstream on Pantheon for their Drupal sites. This gave the university centralized control over codebase updates, allowing them to push changes from GitHub to Pantheon simultaneously across all college Drupal 10 sites.

“If I were to use our College of Business site, for example, we could rapidly deploy a marketing site just by creating a new organic group,” said Anthony Roundtree, CSU’s Director of Web Development and Strategy. “Content editors can quickly add their content to the site and have something up within minutes.”

IgniteCMS in action: Empowering editors, maintaining governance

Following the migration, Mediacurrent introduced CSU to IgniteCMS, a powerful set of tools for Drupal that enhances the Layout Builder experience with a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface. It gave CSU’s editors the tools to create flexible, brand-consistent sites without needing external support or deep technical skills.

IgniteCMS allowed CSU to balance decentralization with governance. Editors across departments could build visually compelling pages using pre-built components — hero banners, cards, videos — while the marketing team retained control over headers, footers, and branding.

The result? More engaging content, faster deployment, and happier users.

“It was important that our sites offered fantastic content, so we made sure to give our editors better tools so they didn’t have to rely on third-party vendors,” said Roundtree. “IgniteCMS made that possible.”

Security spotlight: mitigating a bot attack with Pantheon

In early 2025, CSU’s College of Arts and Sciences and Washkewicz College of Engineering sites went dark. Visitors encountered 504 errors. A coordinated bot attack was cycling through filterable news pages at high speed. The volume of requests overwhelmed the server, locking out both users and administrators.

Initially, the web team tried blocking individual IP addresses. But new addresses appeared faster than they could react. “It was something akin to blocking spam phone calls. Sure, you can block one, but a new number would appear before you know it. After discussion and support tickets, the solution was to use Pantheon’s Advanced Global CDN service. This allowed us to identify those “bad bots” and block them as a group,” said Roundtree.

The CSU web team also leaned on New Relic, which helped diagnose affected pages. In summary, Pantheon’s tools turned a major vulnerability into a case study in responsive security.

A platform for growth

Today, CSU hosts 14 sites on Pantheon. The WordPress network supports faculty-built sites, while the flagship and college sites live on Drupal – optimized for performance, governance, and student experience.

The team uses Multidev for safe development and Dev, Test, Live environments to ensure stability at every stage. Daily content updates are routine, thanks to a streamlined authoring experience powered by IgniteCMS.

With phase one of its web strategy complete, CSU is preparing for Drupal 11. Next up: optimizing the student journey through improved content strategy and a smarter use of tools like the program finder.

Every successful digital transformation requires the right mix of internal champions and external expertise. The CSU team brought deep institutional knowledge and clear vision, while Mediacurrent contributed both technical and user experience specialization. The real magic happened in that collaboration and helped create an evolved digital experience that truly serves their students, faculty and staff." 

- Elliott Mower, CEO, Mediacurrent