Supporting a Drupal site over the Longterm

Supporting Drupal Over the Longterm

Anne Stefanyk (@eskimoYogi) & Meghan Sweet (@meghsweet)10 June, 2012

Sacramento Drupal Camp 2012

Site Launches!

Now What?

Empower Your Users

Drupal Web Team

• Learning Drupal Takes Time

• Early & Often Team Engagement

• Train the Trainer

• Backup Expert Level Support

• Effective Documentation

Content Manager Training• Onsite Training Sessions

• Web Team Trainers

• FAQ / Forums

• Help Videos

• Training Materials

DocumentationDetailed logs in source codeExtensive commenting Onscreen helpTraining Videos FAQ Capture

RecruitingSuccession Plans

Internships

Drupal Give

Stop Gap Solutions

Support Best Practices

Ideal Solid Foundation• UX Strategy

• Documentation

• Early Client Engagement

• QA by Web Stakeholders

• Scalable Architecture

Communication Ticketing Tool

Expectation Management

Expect Ongoing Education

QA Best Practices • Development, Testing & Production

• Stakeholder Sign-off by Review

• Regular Release Cycle

• Batch work

Prevention is better than cure

Audits and Monitoring

Auditing what to look for:

- Version Control- Hacks- Hacked! module- Custom Modules- what do they do?- Contributed Modules- updates, errors?- Custom Theme- Core- update and/or upgrade?- Live Feeds?- Site Logs- Permissions- php filter, security risks.- Spam Prevention- Performance Optimization- SEO Checklist Module

Periodic Auditingis important!

Security Review• Input formats• File system permissions• Error reporting• Private files• Allowed upload extensions• Database errors• Failed logins• Drupal admin permissions• Username as password• Password included in user emails• PHP access

Training is key. Users need Drupal awareness!

Monitoring- Most of the time in recovery is figuring out what’s broken. - Monitor Trends- Use Syslog to write Drupal logs to text file- Monitor Servers, SEO- Cron- Drupalmonitor.com- Are your admins educated?- Every time you have an issue- start to monitor.

Detecting Problems- Spam- number of nodes, emails being sent, comments, users. (Good to know trends) - Mollom, Captcha, Admin Views

- Use Version Control to check diffs- revert to good version

- Hacked! Module - switch to unhacked contrib module

- Security Review Module will look for spam in content.

What to do with those error messages?

Security & Module Updates

UpdatesKeep on top of Updates- within 30 days at least.

Finding a bug in a contrib module.

Do Not Hack Core! No exceptions.

Planning for Custom Modules

Staying in tune with Advances in Community Modules

Version Upgrades

TimingCommunity Catch-up New ModulesConsider a Rebuild?TestingWhat’s the plan?

Community Connection

Groups.Drupal.orgInternal Knowledge SharingLocal User Group Meet-upsDrupal Camps, Cons & Summits

Taking Over Another’s Work

discoveryread the documentationtalk to all stakeholdersget clear line of sight to prioritiesreview the laundry list

Key PointsContinual Love & Attention

Keep Documentation Fresh

Use good communication and feedback/QA tools

Foster Drupal Talent

Community Contribution

Thank You!@chapter_three