Sector(s)

Project Team

  • AMA Digital/Web Team (Product Owner) — Set goals, prioritized migrations, handled UAT, and now operates 30+ sites day-to-day.

  • DevPanel DevOps / Professional Services — Provisioned AWS, automated CI/CD and backups, implemented security hardening, trained staff, and provide 24/7 support.

  • Contracted Developers/Volunteers — Assisted with site upgrades, module/plugin updates, data integrity checks, and QA during migration.

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Organizations Involved

Community contributions

The AMA project demonstrates how DevPanel strengthens the Drupal community by making enterprise-grade infrastructure accessible to small teams and nonprofits. Specific contributions include:

  • Lowering Barriers for Adoption: By simplifying AWS hosting, DevPanel helps nonprofits and small teams use Drupal at scale without needing deep DevOps expertise.

  • Support for Multiple CMS Platforms: AMA’s success managing Drupal, WordPress, and Backdrop in one dashboard shows how DevPanel helps diverse organizations keep Drupal in their stack instead of abandoning it for simpler but less capable platforms.

  • Event and Training Support: DevPanel regularly sponsors DrupalCamps, contribution days, and workshops by providing instant, disposable Drupal environments that make it easier for new contributors to get involved.

  • Knowledge Sharing: Case studies like AMA’s migration help other nonprofits and community groups see what’s possible with Drupal on AWS, encouraging adoption and innovation across the ecosystem

The Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA), the largest model aviation nonprofit in the United States, manages a network of 30+ websites that serve its members, local clubs, and educational programs. These sites, built on a mix of Drupal, WordPress, and Backdrop, had become increasingly difficult for AMA’s small digital team to manage. Relying on traditional managed hosting providers created bottlenecks: developers had to wait for vendors to spin up test environments, security updates were often outsourced, and simple infrastructure tasks required multiple people.

With limited in-house cloud expertise but a desire to move to AWS for scalability and cost control, AMA turned to DevPanel. DevPanel provided an easy-to-use cloud development and hosting dashboard that abstracts AWS complexity while adding automation and compliance features. Within weeks, AMA migrated all 30+ sites to AWS using DevPanel and consolidated operations into a single dashboard.

The transformation was dramatic: what once required a team now takes just one person. Developers can instantly create dev, test, and staging environments without tickets, while security, SSL, and CI/CD pipelines are fully automated. Infrastructure costs dropped through AWS optimization, and the team gained independence from hosting vendors. As AMA’s web team put it: “DevPanel is like training wheels for AWS—it lets us take full advantage of the cloud without the complexity.”

About the project

Goals
The Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA) wanted to modernize the way it managed its 30+ websites, which supported members, clubs, and educational programs. The primary goals were to:

  • Consolidate management of multiple CMS platforms (Drupal, WordPress, Backdrop).

  • Reduce dependency on third-party hosting vendors.

  • Gain the scalability and cost efficiency of AWS without needing deep cloud expertise.

  • Improve developer workflows with on-demand dev, test, and staging environments.

  • Strengthen security and automate ongoing maintenance.

Requirements
To achieve these goals, AMA required:

  • A platform that could run seamlessly on AWS without requiring staff to learn EKS, RDS, S3, or VPC networking.

  • Automation of security hardening, SSL configuration, and CI/CD pipelines.

  • Centralized control across all CMS types through a single dashboard.

  • A solution lightweight enough for a small nonprofit team to operate.

Outcome
By adopting DevPanel, AMA migrated all 30+ sites into its own AWS account and transformed operations:

  • Site management that previously required multiple people is now handled by one person.

  • Development and testing environments can be created instantly and self-service.

  • Security and infrastructure maintenance are fully automated.

  • AWS costs are optimized, lowering hosting expenses.

The project achieved every goal—delivering greater control, independence from hosting vendors, and streamlined operations. As AMA summarized: “One person on our team now manages over 30 websites without needing to know AWS at all.”

Why Drupal was chosen

Drupal was a natural fit for AMA’s digital ecosystem because of its flexibility, scalability, and long-standing reputation as a reliable CMS for membership-based organizations and nonprofits. Many of AMA’s 30+ sites serve local clubs, events, and educational programs that require multilingual support, user management, and integration with third-party systems—capabilities Drupal provides out of the box.

As an open-source platform, Drupal also aligned with AMA’s need to avoid vendor lock-in and reduce costs while maintaining security and accessibility. Its extensible module ecosystem allowed AMA to standardize on a proven set of tools for content management, while still keeping compatibility with their WordPress and Backdrop sites under the same DevPanel dashboard. In short, Drupal gave AMA the stability of an enterprise-grade CMS with the flexibility to grow and evolve alongside the organization

Technical Specifications

Drupal version: