Drupal Project Issues, Educate Together Case Study. Stephen Kenealy Monsoon Consulting

(1)

Stephen Kenealy

(2)

Building Content Management Systems since 2004 Specialists in Drupal

Build and maintain Drupal sites and applications for Non Profit, Media, Health, Sports, Education, Tourism, Technology, Finance, E-Commerce and Government Agencies Proud to be Acquia Partners in Ireland

We love unlocking the power of Drupal for our clients

(3)

I know what Drupal can do and I use our development team to push it to its limits I flush out and document the project requirement

I wireframe the application/site

I help create our Solution Features Document – ‘Developers Functional Bible’

I manage the design and development stages of the project, the resources and the timeline

(4)

(5)

(6)

Where’s the Pain?

Project Management Design Issues Knowledge and Communication Technical

(7)

Content editing - “is it really that easy?”

Can you do X?”

Hosting

(8)

UX vs Theme

Theme Designer vs Drupal developer

Graphic Designers don’t know Drupal

Design by Committee

Modified Stock Theme vs Bespoke Theme

Prototyping / wireframing

Mobile Enabled, Accessible

(9)

Cost

Scope

Time

(10)

Project Management

Responsibility

Tornado

(Nothing

happening here)

(11)

Design/Dev. Process (Iterative vs Waterfall)

Responsibility for theme design

Responsibility for content (incl. Gaeilge)

Logins & Permissions for different parts of the site

Decision-making process

(12)

Knowledge and Communications

Expectations & Deadlines

Terminology (eg Design, Header, Menu, Rollover)

Distinction between Content & Presentation

Who’s editing what, when

(13)

Understand Drupal broadly

Have real (or example) content ready - text & high quality images

& logos

Have an initial list of functionality you want

Have some idea of design, examples or guidelines

Decide on hosting

(14)

Internal decision maker = Single point of contact with the Drupaler

Control scope creep

Commit resources for duration (give feedback, answer questions,

provide content, user acceptance)

Communicate expectations, deadlines, etc.

(15)

(16)

Educate Together is the patron body to Ireland’s 60 multi-denominational primary schools

Existing site was experiencing speed/performance issues

Built as a website, not a content publishing and distribution platform Content architecture was unstructured

Publishing workflow falling over

Multiple content/transaction types not connected to internal systems

They had outgrown their current CMS and recognised they needed a more Robust Platform

They wanted the new platform to enable greater collaboration within the ET School Network and specifically between ET Schools and the National Patron Office

(17)

Common Deployable Templates

Advocacy/Fundraising Campaign Micro Sites, Petitions

Members/Groups Areas: Teachers, Boards of Management, Parents, Students, Start-up Groups

E-commerce Store

Facilitate the development of school websites through the National Office Event/Conference/Meeting Registration, Payment

CRM Integration

Sophisticated Publishing Workflow

National Office Intranet: Document Management, Event Calendar, News, Project Management etc.

(18)

Solution: Possible Multisite Architecture

1. Phase 1: School Network listing on the ET National website

2. Phase 2: Each ET school gets a unique independent sub-site with its own admin features but powered by Drupal under National Office control

3. Delivers consistency in ‘look and feel’ through standard website structure and templates 4. Allows for mirrored/shared content across the platform (National ET News, School

Network News, Resources, Fundraising, Enrolment Forms) 5. Each school would have unique URLS (domains/sub domains)

http://ashbourne.educatetogether.ie

6. Master site to be the umbrella website with each school summary searchable by Irish map / counties.

(19)

2. Phase 2: Each ET school gets a unique independent sub-site with its own admin features but powered by Drupal under National Office ‘superadmin’ control

(20)

Solution:

(21)

(22)

Solution :

1. 35 different templates/themes designed and implemented on the site

2. 10 of those templates are commonly deployable by an admin to any existing or newly created menu item on the site

3. Summary/Promotion blocks were created for key content areas. The admin can easily toggle any combination/order of these blocks on relevant pages on the main or sub sites.

4. Dynamic Call for Action links were implemented so that an editor could add them to any page/site and customise their links / title text etc...

(23)

(24)

Solution :

(25)

(26)

Solution :

(27)

1. We have implemented a Drupal 7 module called “Workbench” to simplify and streamline the process of managing content.

2. We have created “author”, “editor”, and “publisher” roles and given them a unified interface to manage content relevant to them.

3. Administrators can control who has access to edit content based on the structure of the organisation, not the structure of the website.

4. The custom editorial workflow also applies to media files as well as regular content nodes.

(28)

Solution :

(29)

(30)

Solution :

(31)

processes synchronisation.

1. User Group (Members) Registrations

2. Newsletter Sign-Ups (Campaign Specific Groups) 3. Event Bookings

4. Course registration (Online / Offline courses) 5. Product Purchases

6. Donations 7. Petitions

(32)

Solution : Bi-directional integration with Salesforce CRM and Mail Chimp to ensure data/ processes synchronisation.

1. User Group (Members) Registrations

2. Newsletter Sign-Ups (Campaign Specific Groups) 3. Event Bookings

4. Course registration (Online / Offline courses) 5. Product Purchases

6. Donations 7. Petitions

(33)