Library Web Site Content Management Options Using

PHP

Mark DahlLewis & Clark College

Portland, Oregon

Problem of content management

Building and maintaining a web site requires the collaboration of multiple specialists

Designers, writers, editors, programmers, etc.

Even in a small environment (college library with 25 employees) collaboration required

Content management systems

Software packages designed for the construction and maintenance of large web sites

Expensive In use in some higher ed environments

and libraries

Characteristics of content management systems

Separation of content from presentation Defined document schemas Access and workflow controls

Our solution

Not a full blown content management system A mixture of commercial and homegrown tools Achieves some of the features of full blow

system• Separation of content from presentation

• Defined document schemas (metadata)

• Limited workflow controls

We sought a system that:

Allowed multiple staff members to edit pages on the site with little knowledge of HTML or web editing tools

Separated the content of the site from the presentation as much as possible

Structured data to promote consistency and ease of migration to future platforms

Allowed data used redundantly to be updated in one central location

Two-pronged strategy

All pages on site• Distributed updating

• Separation of content from presentation

Only our research resources pages• Structured data

• Redundant data in one place

Informational pages

Structured data and redundancy of data not as important as these pages (hours, library mission statement, etc. did not adhere to specific schema.)

Part 1: the template system

Built to support the “interior pages” of our website that all feature a sidebar and banner (including pages edited by our resources editor to be discussed shortly)

These pages are also available in text-only format (that is, with the sidebar and banner removed)

Template page in graphical mode:

Template page in text-mode:

Dreamweaver environment

Template system• Certain regions fixed, unchangeable

• Certain regions editable Template system inadequate

• Doesn’t display CSS coding correctly

• Won’t let you flip between different versions of template (text and graphical)

• Hard to change templates globally across multiple Dreamweaver sites

Solution: Templates + include files and PHP

Use server-side includes for the code to display • Graphical sidebar/banner

• Text-only banner

PHP browser-sniffer code checks for compatibility with CSS2 compatible browser

Central links file

The main set of links on the interior sidebar and on homepage are controlled with a central file

PHP code automatically inserts the links from this file

The code creates flyouts as needed

Central links file

Fine-tuning Content Mgmt.

Sometimes, Dreamweaver can be an awkward tool for staff:

•It’s easy to check out files and forget to check them in•You must be conscious of remote and local files•There are many options for editing and formatting

Macromedia to the rescue with:Contribute

Allows users to simply browse to a page and click edit to edit page

Checkin/checkout of files handled transparently

Respects Dreamweaver templates, synchronizes to latest version of templates

Can restrict access to certain files Can restrict types of edits (dynamic pages,

fonts, etc.)

Keys to flexibility of our site’s look:

Template system keeps content within certain parts of the pages

Server side includes allow banner/sidebar to be changed centrally

An attached stylesheet allows font and site colors to be changed globally

This fall, we changed the fonts used across the whole site

Part 2: The resources editor

Like most academic libraries, we maintain web pages that direct users to databases, electronic reference works, and “web sites”

These web pages are organized by subject

We built a database driven system to maintain these pages

The resources editor

It meets objectives 3-4 that I mentioned earlier:• Structured data as much as possible to promote

consistency and ease of migration to future platforms

• Allow redundant data used across the site to be updated in a central location

We designed a database driven system for organizing research resources (including databases, web sites, and links to library catalog records of print resources)

Goals for the resources editor:

Consistent metadata for each resource Same data presented in multiple places

kept in one place Flexibility in displaying resources (A-Z

list, by pathfinder) Can be used to edit resources by the

relatively untrained

The precedent

There are many examples of libraries building database driven systems to organize resources on their web sites

Open source projects available for this:• Scout portal toolkit

• MyLibrary

• ResearchGuide

Building our own

Existing code base from work at Central Oregon Community College

Linux OS Apache Web Server PHP scripting PostgreSQL relational database

Why build our own?

Special requirements for organization into pathfinders

Complete display flexibility (fussy librarians) Laziness More on this later

Resources database

Each resource represents a research database, web site, or reference to printed library material

Kept in a ‘resources’ SQL table Fields in table loosely based on Dublin Core

metadata standard: publisher, title, description, coverage, etc.

Resource editor: staff interface to allow adding and editing of new resources

Building pathfinders

Each pathfinder would have a unique name corresponding to an L&C discipline: History, Psychology, Sociology & Anthropology, etc.

Resources would be organized into librarian-defined categories (history databases, history metasites, etc.)

Resources would be put in a certain order within those categories

Resources & Pathfinders

-Academic Search Premier-Anthropological Literature-Historical Abstracts-Internet Movie Database-Lexis-Nexis

Anthropology

History

Film

News

Resources: Pathfinders:

Pathfinder SQL table

Contains references to resources Each row contains:

• ID of resource

• Name of pathfinder in which resource is found

• Name of category in pathfinder

• Position within category Link to resources table to create

pathfinders

This shows the basic structure of a pathfinder:

category

resource

Staff interface to pathfinder

Allows staff to search for resources or pick from drop-down menu

Pick appropriate spot in pathfinder, then add resource

Staff can also add and move categories

Displaying the data

Done by creating a PHP class within an HTML document

Displaying the data

Our librarians can create the PHP class in their web page in order to display resources

Or they can simply send a parameter to an existing page custom built to display pathfinders:

http://library.lclark.edu/reference/resourcedisplay.php?subject=History

Display options

Display pathfinder normally (brief description of databases, extended description of websites)

Display 1 category of a pathfinder within a normal web page

Display data about single resource List all databases A-Z List all full text databases

Special features

Easy ability to link to print resources in catalog

Staff member updating data has name/time updated recorded

Book reviews field for info about how to find book reviews on a particular item

Future enhancements

Patrons can build their own pathfinders Patrons can comment on resources Electronic resources management

features Search

Reflections on doing it on our own.

Kind of like reinventing the wheel But we do have special features of our system

others (MyLibrary, ResearchGuide, Scout Portal Toolkit) don’t:• Resource records can be used across multiple

pathfinders (ResearchGuide doesn’t support)

• We support categories and unique order within categories

• Many display options (brief, combined, alphabetical, full-text only)

• Special fields (book review, database/website)

Technical details

SQL databases (resources, subjects (pathfinders), links)

Query class (for querying database and returning result sets) PHP, built for PostgreSQL db

Displayclass extends queryclass, can be called with various parameters to display resources as desired

Technical details

Staff interface (PHP)• Separate from other

• Uses queryclass for lookups

• Not object oriented

• Writes to database without using special class

Written using Nusphere PHPEd (allows FAST PHP debugging and testing)

References:

This presentation: http://www.lclark.edu/~dahl/presentations/

Web site discussed: http://library.lclark.edu/ Macromedia: http://www.macromedia.com Nusphere PHPEd: http://www.nusphere.com Oss4lib Open Source Systems for Libraries

(links to ResearchGuide, MyLibrary, Scout Portal Toolkit): http://oss4lib.sourceforge.net