Case Study: Cornell University rescues 100+ websites from design anarchy with Pantheon

Building a Dream Distribution on Pantheon

Weill Cornell Medical College’s 12-person Web Communications team manages 100+ departmental websites and was struggling with “digital sprawl”: dozens of sites on various platforms, inconsistent branding and user experience, and no shared design or framework to speed new builds while respecting each department’s unique needs.

They built a custom Drupal distribution and moved to Pantheon’s Upstreams (one site per codebase) to standardize base functionality while allowing customization. The result: faster, more predictable projects (first launch on time and under budget), removal of ~100 virtual hosts, consistent UX across sites, simpler pricing and vendor handoffs, and strong buy-in from departments.

Cornell University

Dan Dickinson

Associate Director, Web Communications