How Tealium Successfully
Implemented a Fresh Website Design while
Maintaining Thousands of Legacy Pages

About Tealium

Tealium offers customer data orchestration solutions to hundreds of enterprise-scale businesses. Their real-time data insights and easy-to-use CDP solution enable their clients to meet the needs of their customers.

Case Study Highlights

Challenges:

• Implement new website design without modifying 3,000+ legacy pages.
• Remain within the client’s set budget.
• Ensure the website is publisher-friendly for non-technical staff. 
• Integrate and coordinate with client’s small web development department.
• Maintain multilingual capability of website.

Solutions: 

• Create crucial building blocks for the new design.
• Leverage Compiled Rogue’s theme-within-a-theme strategy to maintain legacy pages.
• Clean up existing code to ensure the website is working efficiently.
• Establish best website development practices so client staff members can interact with the website as needed.

Results: 

• Complete Phase One of the project on time, on budget, meeting all specifications.
• Experience no website downtime since implementation.
• Introduction of user-friendly back-end functionality. Even non-technical members of client’s staff can migrate legacy pages and create new, branded pages.
• Eliminate the need for a legacy tool that provided a cost savings to client.
• Preserve multi-language functionality of client’s website.

Background: A complex website development project

As a fast growing global company, Tealium was ready for a website overhaul in 2021. They wanted a streamlined website experience that was user-friendly and featured a cohesive design. They also wanted their website’s back-end to allow staff to update information and create pages with ease.

Tealium hired a design firm, who created a website redesign the company loved. But when it came time for development, Tealium faced a significant hurdle: they needed to successfully update their site without disrupting their legacy pages, which provide crucial support and functionality for clients and staff.

Challenge: Avoid disrupting legacy page functionality while rolling out new design

Guided by Tas Bober, Director of Digital & Website, Tealium decided on a Three Phase approach to its website rollout. This would enable Tealium to remain on-budget and create a timeline that worked for them.

While Phases Two and Three focused on updating legacy pages, Phase One contained what Bober describes as the “heavy lifting.” Phase One included deciding on new branding and design, implementing the design on 80 primary pages, maintaining over 3,000 legacy pages, cleaning up the code, and building essential blocks within the new design for the creation of pages in the future.

Bober explained,

“Prior to me joining Tealium, the website switched hands many times, with revamps attempted in various areas. I called it a quilt site, where everything was patchwork. It was a great opportunity to bring everything together under a new design umbrella.”

Breakage is common when a developer switches a legacy page’s theme to update its appearance. It was important that the new website rollout keep its thousands of legacy pages intact, without deleting, modifying, or removing them—as they were still in use and providing important functionality. Making this process even more complicated, Tealium’s website needed to maintain its multilingual capability through the update, supporting five different languages.

Bober had overseen hundreds of website overhauls before, so she understood the massive scope of this project. Because she had limited in-house resources and only one developer on staff, she began searching for a development team who could help her tackle the project.

Solution: Theme-within-a-theme legacy page support from Compiled Rogue

Bober was referred to Michael Sablone of Compiled Rogue, who has extensive expertise in legacy support. After learning about the project, Compiled Rogue suggested their unique theme-within-a-theme strategy. This is a different process from most developers, who create a new theme, or a child theme, which impacts every page during a redesign; this is what causes tools, links, and formatting to break.

Instead, Compiled Rogue took an innovative approach, building an entirely new theme within the existing theme Tealium was already using. This strategy allowed Tealium to continue using their historic pages while simultaneously creating new content on the site. It also paved the way for a gradual migration of those legacy pages without disrupting their content or functionality.

Bober said,

“I don’t know if any other team would’ve come up with the theme-within-a-theme solution. It’s worked wonderfully for us, and it’s an instance where the quality of the implementation matched the quality of the strategy.”

Sablone and his team built out the new theme for 80 fresh pages, while ensuring Tealium’s 3,000 legacy pages were intact. Best of all, Compiled Rogue was able to guarantee a zero percent chance of breakage. They also maintained Tealium’s website’s multi-language capabilities, cleaned up the code, and built out designed blocks for non-technical staff members to create new pages.

Bober spoke about how partnering with Compiled Rogue has impacted Tealium:

“Everybody’s excited about what we see on the website today. It’s new, it’s fresh. But what Complied Rogue has done on the back-end is just as exciting to me. They’ve cleaned up the code, established best practices and processes, set up versioning history, and built a foundation for us that focuses on the long-term, best interest of the site. They don’t hack together quick fixes or shortcuts. They leave everything in a better state than they found it.”

Results: Seamless website rollout, no downtime, and thousands saved

Thanks to Compiled Rogue’s implementation strategy, now Tealium has a website they can rely on. Without impacting the front-end user experience, they can rebuild any legacy page within the new theme—or create a new page altogether. The process is seamless, even for non-technical staff members, such as the Tealium marketing team.

Bober is thrilled that the Tealium website has experienced no downtime since the migration. In another win, Compiled Rogue’s cleanup work enabled Tealium to retire a legacy tool, providing a considerable cost savings.

Bober pinpoints the benefits of working with Compiled Rogue:

“The Compiled Rogue team is multifaceted and strategic, which is hard to find. Most development teams are great order-takers, but Compiled Rogue thinks strategically and points us in the right direction. The marriage of the development side and the strategic side has been really wonderful for us.

“Plus, they’re extremely fast. They’re always unfazed when I bring up a problem. They are open to feedback and flexible. They’re always seeking efficiencies, and they do everything they can to make sure their client is satisfied.”

Phase One of the new website rollout is complete. It remained on-budget and within Tealium’s set timeline. Bober has engaged Compiled Rogue for Phase Two via an ongoing contract. She said,

“My intention with bringing them on was to ensure my in-house developer felt supported. But the relationship has gone beyond that. They are strategic and intelligent developers, and I consider them part of our team. As long as I can control the website budget at Tealium, I’ll always hire them.”

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