3 Months Later:An (Almost) Beginner’s View of Drupal

Christoph WeberDialog Consulting

dialogconsulting.biz

formerly at the Scripps Research InstituteSr. Application Analyst

IT Services department

Rebranding of department from Research Computing to IT Services

Basically an Intranet site

but mostly open to the internet at large

New Web Presence

The Team

Alexa Cain - Team lead, Admin - 5%

Jim Keais - Webmaster - 5%

Tofan Rafati - Sysadmin - 20%

Amy McDonald - Helpdesk - 5%

Nancy Fournier - Software Lic. Coordinator - 5%

Christoph Weber - Sr. Application Analyst - 30%

~ 600 pages of content

~ 150 nodes created in Drupal, rest “retired”

dozens of PHP and CGI scripts

(Almost)Complete Separation of

Content and Presentation

Database

Drupal

Web page

raw text

filter

display

No more formatting headaches when composing content

No issues with menu restructuring

No link updating

Only minor issues for site facelifts

Drupal

Joomla

also had some exposure to:

Wordpress

Vignette

Sharepoint

CMS evaluation

Reputation:Drupal is hard

Reality:Drupal IS hard

Drupal is harder to grok than many competing

systems.

Do you want:A Playmobil toy?Or a Lego set?

Drupal Pluses

Clean architecture

Clean code

100% XHTML and CSS 2.0 compliant

Very versatile system

Countless modules freely available

Received patch for FAQ module within 12 hours!

Drupal Minuses

Versatility demands abstraction more complexity

Administration could be reorganized

Missing module updates for Drupal 6

Getting Started section for Drupal 6 needs serious love

incl. PDF version

Resources:

Getting Started sectionat drupal.org/handbooks

specifically v.5 PDF

Rest of drupal.org/handbook

Get an account on drupal.org

Lullabot.com podcastsspecifically #40 and #60

Pro Drupal DevelopmentJohn VanDykApress, 2008

CategoriesTaxonomy

(Tags)

Taxonomy is cornerstone

Each story is tagged with all applicable Categories

Navigation based on

Categories

No story is ever lost

InformationAbout Us Contact Info Forms / ApplicationsService Fees BillingSoftware License Info

Platform (mandatory!)Windows

Windows 2000Windows XPWindows Vista

MacOSXMacOSX 10.4MacOSX 10.5

LinuxUnixCitrixGeneral Information

ServicesCitrixEmailHelp DeskMailing ListsNetworkingRemote AccessSecuritySoftwareStorageSupercomputingSystem SupportTrainingWeb Support

Taxonomy VTN module

Theme:tweaked Marinelli

Other themes evaluated:Andreas02

Pixture

Modules

AnnouncementsFAQFCKeditor and IMCEPathauto and TokenRefreshTaxonomy VTNXML Sitemap

Sitenotes

Modr8Revision_moderationDiff

Authoring Policy

All department members can create and edit content

Use all available expertise

All new or revised content goes into moderation

Guarantee Quality and Accuracy

Spiffy Little Features

Configurable Blocks

Rotating Banner

Outlook

More features

CCK and Views 2 modules

Dynamic lists of new or most popular content

Other navigational improvements

Help users find answers fast

Migrate other subsites to Drupal

Institute leadership is on board

Aim: Ease workload on webmasterPut departments and labs in charge

Thank you!