British Cryogenics Council
The British Cryogenics Council is a UK charity and professional membership organisation connecting professionals, academics, and industry leaders across the cryogenics sector through events, training, and research
Challenge
The British Cryogenics Council's website had been running on Drupal 7 for over a decade and had reached end of life. This created security risks and made it difficult to evolve the platform to meet the needs of a growing professional community.
Membership renewals were handled manually, requiring offline invoicing, payment chasing, and significant administrative effort for the BCC team. Over time, the site's navigation and structure had also become harder to follow, making it difficult for new visitors to understand the organisation, its work, or the value of membership.
The Council needed a secure, sustainable platform that could modernise membership management, reduce administrative burden, and better support engagement across its community.
Goals
- Create a secure, maintainable platform
- Upgrade the website from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10
- Replace manual membership processes with automated renewals and payments
- Reduce administrative effort for the BCC team
- Improve navigation and usability for members and non-members
- Preserve existing content, member data, and search visibility
- Tools for member networking and collaboration
Background
The British Cryogenics Council (BCC) is a UK-based registered charity and professional membership organisation promoting education, research, and collaboration in the field of cryogenics.
Cryogenics the science of low temperatures is critical to advances in medicine, energy, engineering, and industrial research. BCC brings together academics, engineers, and industry professionals, providing a forum for sharing knowledge through events, training, publications, and collaborative projects.
Approach
We started with a discovery workshop to understand member needs, administrative pain points, and opportunities to improve engagement. Key findings included the time spent on manual invoicing and confusion around membership benefits. These insights shaped the site's information architecture, membership flows, and feature set.
Our focus throughout was simple: make life easier for BCC administrators while improving the experience for members. We planned the migration carefully to preserve all existing content and member data while modernising the underlying platform.
Solution
We upgraded the site from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10, creating a secure and maintainable platform.
We built a new membership system using Drupal Commerce with defined membership tiers, recurring subscriptions, automated renewals, and automatic invoice generation. Secure online payments eliminated manual payment chasing and cut administrative work significantly.
We reworked the site's navigation and content structure to make it easier for visitors to understand the organisation, join as members, and find information. All existing content and member data migrated safely, with URLs preserved to maintain SEO rankings.
We added a public member directory and online discussion forum to help members connect and collaborate. We also implemented analytics to track how members and visitors use the site.
Key Features
Automated membership subscriptions
Members can join and renew online with recurring subscriptions that handle renewals automatically, cutting manual admin work.
Online payments and invoicing
Membership payments are processed securely online with automatic invoice generation, eliminating manual invoicing and payment chasing.
Community discussion forum
An online forum where members can ask questions, share knowledge, and connect with peers across the sector.
Public member directory
A searchable directory of organisations and professionals in the cryogenics sector, making it easier to find and connect with others in the field.