How EPAORD Moved to Drupal 7 Jessica Dearie US EPA Office of Research and Development Office of Science Information Management Jessica Dearie IT Specialist Federal Government Employee ID: 534768
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Drupal Intranet Implementation
How EPA/ORD Moved to Drupal 7
Jessica
Dearie
U.S. EPA, Office of Research and Development
Office of Science Information Management Slide2
Jessica Dearie
IT Specialist – Federal Government Employee
Web Application Developer turned IT Project ManagerMember of the DC Air National GuardJavier GonzalezSoftware Engineer, AboutWebTechnical Lead – ORD Drupal Migration Effort
About SpeakersSlide3
Old CMS was on it’s last leg
Embracing Open Government Initiative
www.epa.gov moving to DrupalEventually – all EPA intranet content will reside in an enterprise roll out of DrupalWhy Drupal?Slide4
Distributed Content Management
Most CMs had little to no Web CMS experience
New Information ArchitectureMigrate content from two sources: OpenCMS and WordPress
Not all content from either would migrate
Use One EPA Workplace site design
IE 7 as our agency standard browser
Our RequirementsSlide5
Easy to manage content
OneEPA
Web Theme createdUser Controlled Calendar FilteringBlog(s)News ArticlesOnline NewsletterGroup pages have slideshows, content boxes, filtered events
FeaturesSlide6
Two separate systems to migrate from
openCMS
and WordPressHow to map old content to new architecture“Scrapping” a lot of old contentStrip all styling (lot’s of bad code)Maintaining
WordPress
settings
(topics and tags)
Incorporating new URL patterns and Node Hierarchy settingsMigration ConcernsSlide7
Drupal 7
LAMP stack
Two ServersDevelopment and ProductionContent not managed on development server – used to test new featuresLots of Contributed Modules and a few custom ones
Our Drupal Installation Slide8
Organic Groups
Node Hierarchy
ContextCalendar, Date … (several Date type modules)LDAPFAQ (eventually adding FAQ_Ask)Webforms
Modules – The Big OnesSlide9
The Good
Organizational (and some non-org) groups created.
Group pages were customized to create a template for organizational home pagesMultiple roles within each GroupContent managers can manage users within their groupThe BadDoes not play well with editorial workflows
Organic GroupsSlide10
The Good
Menus managed dynamically
Content stays well organizedThe BadHard to manage once site gets largeThe UglyMenu links to external content (I know, I know) requires admin Menu access
Breadcrumbs for content outside the hierarchy – Custom Breadcrumbs and Node Hierarchy fight for breadcrumb access.
Node HierarchySlide11
Allows block placement to be easily managed
Display menus created by Node Hierarchy
Displays fields of certain content types in sidebarDisplay special role-based links (Add Event, etc) Display filtered event content by group on group pagesContextSlide12
Created Event content type, and then built a filter-able calendar
Events use 2 taxonomy vocabularies – ‘Organization’ and ‘Event Type’
Exposed Filters allow users to filter calendarCalendar and DateSlide13
The Good
Use existing Active Directory Accounts to generate Drupal accounts
The BadInternal network issues has caused authentication problemsLDAPSlide14
The Good
Ability to create FAQ categories with Taxonomy and then generate FAQs based on topics
FAQ pages have many nice display optionsThe BadBreadcrumbs (Due to Node Hierarchy)Each question is it’s own content nodeThe Ugly
To make FAQs truly effective, and ready them for the
FAQ_Ask
functionality, each question must be written so that it stands on it’s own.
FAQSlide15
The Good
Quick and easy form creation
Used for comment boxes, simple forms, etcThe BadInability to easily customize the submitted field key presents difficulties trying to POST forms to external applications
WebformsSlide16
Basic Page (with sidebar displays)
News
FAQ – (created by FAQ Module)Group (OG group/Org home pages)Featured Content BlogNewsletter and Newsletter ArticleOSIM Service Catalog
Primary Content TypesSlide17
HomepageSlide18
Navigation - PrimarySlide19
Navigation – Quick LaunchSlide20
Navigation - InternalSlide21
Group HomepagesSlide22
Group HomepagesSlide23
Group HomepagesSlide24
CalendarSlide25
Customized Admin InterfaceSlide26
Workbench + Workbench Moderation
Doesn’t allow content managers to assign their own sub-editors – Adding users to sections still relies on
adminsMediaToo many issues for migrating our files with MediaNot enough time to develop a full solution Still investigating how to implement further media requirements
What we DIDN’T use and whySlide27
Make sure your development staff has the right kind of Drupal experience – and a lot of it!
Organize – figure out how you want to organize content - hierarchical vs. taxonomy based
Plan for requirements you expect to have, even if your content managers say they don’t need it.Media Management – make sure you have enough time to select a media solution – especially if you are doing a migration.
Lessons LearnedSlide28
Invest in training for your content managers
Make sure the interface for content managers is intuitive
Customize your interfaceDashboards Admin moduleDo your Research!Lots of modules do similar things
Spend time in the issue que
Invest in researching your modules before you start using them
Lessons LearnedSlide29
Rolling Drupal out to Lab and Center Sites
Each site runs it’s own technology (ColdFusion, Lotus Notes, Dreamweaver templates, etc)
Theme in additional navigation areaFeatures that will be available to allNewsBlogCalendar
…
Phase 2Slide30
Questions?