Building User-Centred Websites with Drupal

Building user-centred websites with Drupal

Amanda Etches-Johnson Greg Sennema Catherine Baird

OLA Super Conference, January 29, 2009

Quick show of hands...

how many of you have heard of Drupal?

how many of you are planning to use Drupal?

how many of you are already using Drupal?

Here’s what we’re going to do

The what, how, why of Drupal

The Laurier Experience

The McMaster Experience

Wrap-up: lessons learned, what not to do, etc.

The what, how, why of Drupal

http://drupalib.org

drupalib.interoperating.info

www.lib.uwo.ca

www.londonpubliclibrary.ca

library.wlu.ca

library.mcmaster.ca

Drupal: out of the box

blogs + comments

regular web pages

polls

forum

user profiles

taxonomies

...and a few other things

So, what does “modular” mean?

turn on the features you want

ignore the ones you don’t want

add new “modules” as you build

But, what does it really mean?

out of the box = a reasonably functional site

modules enabled = a super-duper, highly customized, wicked functional site!

Modular is good!

remember that HUGE development community?

over 5,800 modules in the directory

if you can dream it, there is a module that can do it

Working with Drupal

HTML

CSS

PHP

Server admin

The Laurier Experience

library.wlu.ca

easier web site maintenance

web-based maintenance

incorporate different functionality

easily re-purpose content

just completed site redesign

sick of Dreamweaver!

The timeline

June – Aug. 2007: evaluated Drupal

Sept. 2007 – Feb. 2008: surprise me!

V5 or v6?

Mar. – Apr. 2008: tried to break Drupal

May - July 2008: moved content

August 2008: final testing, went live

Altering our workflows

Reformulated web advisory committee

Gave access to more staff

Held series of training sessions

Created help pages

The players

web advisory committee

systems programmer (90%)

me (40%)

The cool stuff...

Library

Tamarak

Juniper

Hemlock

Our plans...

Gallery

Events/Calendar

Taxonomy

CCK/Views/Panels, i.e….

…the cool stuff Amanda will show you from the McMaster site…

The McMaster Experience

Why Drupal?

make site admin easier

past experience with Drupal

The players

advisory committee

sysadmin

co-op student

me

Decision time!

which version of Drupal?

decided on 5

module development

Decision time!

to CCK or not to CCK?

CCK is not essential but it’s a really good idea

think about site updating & permissions

20+ content types

The cool stuff...

The McMaster [Intranet] Experience

Staff intranet redesign

Redesigned public website

Busy organization

Many projects/initiatives

Increased use of blogs/wikis, particularly for projects

Improve internal communication

Clarity and consistency

Where I’m coming from

1992 1996 1998

2006 2008 2009

Where we started

Requirements

Solutions to all of the problems (navigation, search, consistency, etc.)

Self-serve

Customizable permissions

Dynamic

Interactive

Process

Inventory of content

Examined usage statistics

Staff survey

Wireframes

Wrapping my head around Drupal

Content types for staff intranet

Department

Committee

Project

Service

Page (default)

Policy & Procedure

Training & Development page

Sample committee page

Categories/taxonomies

The redesign

The redesign

Time & resources

1 librarian

1 co-op student

Support from User Experience Librarian

Started Fall 2008

Plan to launch Spring 2009

Wrap up:Must-Have Modules, Lessons Learned,

What NOT to do

Must-have modulesCCK

Views

PathAuto

Faceted Search

FCKEditor/TinyMCE

Nice Menus

Akismet/CAPTCHA

Webform

IMCE

Google Analytics

Backup and Migrate

Lessons learnedit can be done!

envision the site first

think about who will maintain what

think of content types in terms of consistency of information and permissions

having a blogging background helps

use PathAuto for human-readable URLs

when templating, start with a core theme (e.g. Zen)

multiple backups and test servers

carefully consider version

What NOT to do

mess with core code

use alpha release versions of modules

install modules 1st time on live server

get deterred: lots of help online and in library community

Questions?

Thanks!

These slides are online at: http://blogwithoutalibrary.net/talk/ola2009/drupal.pdf

amanda@etches-johnson.com

gsennema@wlu.ca

bairdca@mcmaster.ca