How to Migrate, Manage and Centralize your Web Infrastructure with Drupal

Jim KellerPrincipal, Context

9-person Drupal team based just Outside of Philadelphia

Background in Software Development

Extensive server management & website deployment experience

http://thisiscontext.com

A common problem

- Different departments within an organization create, manage, and maintain their own website

- No thought given to scalability, centralization, or ongoing viability

- No consistency in approach

In the end, organizations are left with a tangled mess of different platforms, different development techniques, and proprietary components

A plan

AssessWhat do we have now, and who is it important to?

Migrate & IntegrateTransferring data from one platform to another, or sharing data between systems

ManageKeeping everything running

MaintainPreventing the mess from happening again

Drupal

What is Drupal?

A content management system

An application development framework

A multi-site management platform

Who uses Drupal?

Who uses Drupal?

The Plan

Migration to Drupal

Assess

Before making any kind of platform decision, take an inventory of your current web properties

Start slow and break the process into manageable chunks

Collaborate with stakeholders to identify priorities

Take extra time assessing integrations / data sharing components

Migrate

Entities provide a single building block for all types of data stored in Drupal

Entities can be blog posts, news entries, users, taxonomy terms, comments – any piece of data is considered an entity

Entities have fields, not unlike tables in a database

Drupal modules act on entities using the entity API. Once a piece of data has been imported into Drupal as an entity, it can be manipulated, displayed, aggregated, or referenced by other entities.

Drupal 7 Entities

Migrate

One-off imports and periodic aggregation of content

Import or aggregate RSS/Atom feeds

Import or aggregate CSV files

Import or aggregate OPML files

PubSubHubbub support

The Feeds Module: Your friend in migration

Create nodes, users, taxonomy terms or simple database records from import

Extensible to import any other kind of content

Granular mapping of input elements to Drupal content elements

Exportable configurations

Batched import for large files

...Combine with the Feeds Tamper module for custom pre-processing of incoming data

Migrate

You may have to write some custom code to massage your data into place, but Drupal can make this process approachable

Learn more about feeds:

The developer's guide to feeds: https://drupal.org/node/622700

Contributed Plugin modules for feeds: https://drupal.org/node/856644

Integrate

Drupal provides almost limitless opportunity to integrate outside systems, but there areSome important decisions to be made before beginning the technical aspects of integration:

1. Does the cost (both time, money, and opportunity) of performing the integration outweigh the benefit of actually having the systems integrated?

2. Can the existing system and the new system live harmoniously, but still remain separate, without compromising user experience or internal workflows?

3. Does the existing system provide strong integration opportunities, without the need to rebuild a significant portion of the application’s business logic?

Integrate

Some help with your integration, courtesy of Drupal:

The services module – http://drupal.org/project/services“A standardized solution of integrating external applications with Drupal.

Servicecallbacks may be used with multiple interfaces like REST, XMLRPC, JSON, JSON

RPC, SOAP, AMF, etc.”

Custom Drupal modulesYou probably won’t come away with a successful integration without building a few of these. Don’t be afraid to build custom where needed, but remember to search first so you don’t reinvent the wheel.

Feeds, Again Feeds can be your friend here as well. For integrations that don’t require realtime communication, a custom feeds plugin running on a set interval is a practical way to import and export data.

Manage

Multi-site capabilities are built into Drupal core

A single Drupal core installation can drive dozens of sites

Module installations can be shared across multiple sites, creating a centralized hub for management &updates

Drupal Multi-Site

Manage

Module installations can be shared across multiple sites, creating a centralized hub for management & updates

Drupal Multi-Site

Manage

Drupal can run on Linux or Windows, and supports a number of database engines including mySQL and MS-SQL

Drupal has a 40-person security team

Drupal has been combat tested on high-profile, high traffic sites

Enterprise hosting platform and 24/7 support through Acquia

Enterprise Hosting

Manage

Provides traffic & bandwidth reports, server performance & resource usage data, downtime alerts

New Relic Integration

Maintain

Create standards and best practice recommendations for your organization

Having clear, written policies and procedures for change management is critical to ensuring that

Make sure stakeholders are aware of the procedures and have adequate time to account for them in planning

Policies and Procedures

Maintain

Policies and Procedures

Provide a list of the approved, activated modules developers will have access to in your multi-site environment

Maintain

Policies and Procedures

Provide documentation on how to properly structure sites for deployment

Maintain

Policies and Procedures

Provide documentation for change management

Other Considerations

AdoptionHelping people understand the benefits of change

TrainingCentralizing helps makes training efforts much more practical

Ongoing SupportKeeping your users happy and productive

For another time...

Thank You