CMS Migration + Custom Search · Florida Panhandle
First Judicial Circuit — Drupal to Gatsby + Algolia Search
Migrated Florida’s First Judicial Circuit from Drupal to Gatsby a few years ago, and shipped custom Algolia search — including the header search control that opens an Algolia modal — so the public can find court content fast across four counties.
First Judicial Circuit of Florida · Visit live site
Challenge
The First Judicial Circuit’s Drupal site needed a modern, maintainable front end without losing public access to court information across Escambia, Okaloosa, Santa Rosa, and Walton counties. Visitors also needed a faster way to find pages, announcements, and resources than Drupal’s default search.
Approach
We migrated the circuit from Drupal to Gatsby with a cleaner content model and SEO-aware cutover. On top of that, we built custom Algolia search wired into the site header — click search, open an Algolia-powered modal, and query the circuit’s indexed content without leaving the page.
Outcome
Live at firstjudicialcircuit.org on Gatsby with Algolia modal search in the header. That platform became the foundation for later ADA remediation and the Pith document pipeline.
Drupal to Gatsby for a four-county circuit
A few years ago we moved the First Judicial Circuit off Drupal onto Gatsby. Court sites carry dense information architecture — locations, judges, announcements, forms, and procedural content — so the migration prioritized URL continuity, content modeling, and a front end the circuit could keep shipping on.
Custom Algolia search in the header
Default CMS search was not good enough for public users trying to find the right court page quickly. We implemented custom Algolia search and connected it to the header search control: visitors click search, an Algolia-powered modal opens, and results come from the indexed circuit content. Fast, familiar, and available from every page.
Foundation for what came next
The Gatsby platform set up later work on the same property: ADA remediation for public access, and Pith for converting thousands of legacy court PDFs into structured Sanity data.
Related: ADA remediation case study.
Related: Pith document pipeline case study.
Live site: firstjudicialcircuit.org.