Dotsquares Migrates 17 Samuel, Son & Co. Sites to Drupal 10 with Unified Architecture

Dotsquares has delivered a full-scale digital rebuild for Samuel, Son & Co., migrating the company’s infrastructure from Optimizely to Drupal 10, and redesigning 17 of its websites into a unified, modular ecosystem. The transformation touched nearly every part of the company's online operations — from backend architecture to frontend responsiveness, multilingual support to user training — but it did so without spectacle. This was not digital disruption for its own sake, but a precise, purposeful renovation of systems that had outlived their usefulness.

We connected with Sumit Thakur and Narender Singh, Solution Engineers at Dotsquares, who shared technical and strategic insights into the project, not in sales patter, but in the language of people who think carefully about building things that last.

Samuel, Son & Co., founded in 1855, is one of North America’s oldest and largest metal processing and distribution companies. Its global footprint is vast, but its web infrastructure was struggling to keep pace. Spread across multiple independent websites and an ageing CMS, the company’s online presence had become difficult to manage, slow to adapt, and increasingly disconnected from user needs — especially in regions requiring multilingual content and local administrative control.

The objective was comprehensive but clear: migrate from Optimizely to Drupal 10; build a system that could support 17 individual sites from a single backend; allow for both central and local control; refresh the design without over-designing it; make everything mobile-friendly, lightweight, and fast; and — perhaps most importantly — ensure Samuel’s internal teams could manage it all independently after launch.

Dotsquares began, sensibly, by first studying what already existed. There were no assumptions made about what should be changed until the underlying architecture was understood.

“We conducted a thorough analysis of the existing design, URL structure, and content architecture. One of the key features we focused on was enabling drag-and-drop functionality combined with role- and permission-based access. To achieve this, we created a flexible block-type system, allowing content editors to reuse newly created blocks across different pages while maintaining design consistency. This approach ensured both data integrity and system stability during the migration.”

The scale of the multisite requirement was significant, but not novel. Dotsquares responded by designing a domain-based architecture, leveraging Drupal’s Domain module. This allowed them to manage all 17 sites under a unified backend, while still giving autonomy to each business unit.

“We implemented a domain-based multisite architecture using the Domain module in Drupal. This allowed us to create and manage multiple domains within a single back-end while providing site-level permissions. Super Admins have full control over all sites, including user management, site settings, and content oversight. Meanwhile, individual Site Admins have autonomy to manage their specific site's content, sitemap, and certain configurations.”

The design approach, meanwhile, was governed by restraint, not visual flair. Samuel, Son & Co.’s brand conveys heritage, trust, and industrial strength. Dotsquares didn’t seek to dress it up. Instead, they made it lighter, sharper, and more functional.

“We utilized Tailwind CSS to craft a lightweight, highly responsive frontend, ensuring consistent performance across all devices. For templating, we leveraged Twig, which allowed for clean, maintainable, and efficient rendering of pages. Additionally, we developed custom modules to manage the design components, giving backend users flexibility to update layouts and styles while adhering to Samuel, Son & Co.'s luxury brand standards without compromising site speed or performance.”

Multilingual support was a non-negotiable element of the project. With Samuel operating across regions and customer bases with differing language needs, the platform had to offer more than a single toggle for translation. It needed flexibility — and control.

“We approached multilingual support by providing two translation methods at the block level: manual translation by content editors and automated translation via the Google Translation API. This allowed editors to fine-tune content that required sensitivity, while also automating routine or large-scale content translation.

Yet no matter how elegant the system, it would only succeed if Samuel’s internal teams could use it — confidently and independently. Dotsquares dedicated the final phase of the project to structured training and documentation.

“We delivered comprehensive training sessions tailored for content editors, site admins, and board members, supported by detailed documentation. This enabled the internal team to manage content, site configurations, and basic maintenance independently.”

Underneath these technical layers lies a quiet transformation. The migration was not merely about getting off an old CMS. It was about building a foundation that could evolve with the business — securely, flexibly, and without dependency on external vendors for everyday tasks.

The 17 sites now run on a unified backend. Editors can control layouts without needing developers. Site admins can govern their own content without waiting for corporate approval. Language can be scaled globally, and the system performs consistently across devices. And perhaps most telling: since the handover, Samuel, Son & Co. has been able to manage the platform with its own team, as planned.

This was not innovation for headlines. It was infrastructure built with purpose — measured, disciplined, and designed to endure.

Here is the link to the full case study.