BrownSites: Year Two Brown University WebServices

Bill Bordac - Web Design Team Manager Alozie Nwosu - Senior Web Developer

The Power of Drupal in Higher Education

July 31, 2012 — Acquia HQ, Burlington, MA

•  BrownSites = Departmental Web Template Service

•  BrownSites is part, not whole presence of Drupal @ Brown

•  Other groups/apps using Drupal: o  Library o  Advancement o  Transportation o  News

BrownSites & Drupal @ Brown

Redesign Brown.edu

2009: Public Affairs (PAUR) and IT (CIS) began brown.edu redesign effort

BrownSites Begins

Summer 2010: Development begins on new Web Template Service (BrownSites)

Brown.edu Reloaded

Fall 2010: brown.edu redesign launched

Before: Brown Home Page c. 2010

After: Current Brown Home

BrownSites Launch

Jan-Feb 2011: BrownSites Pilot Sites launched

Before: Modern Culture and Media (MCM) - Old

After: MCM Now - as BrownSite

BrownSites Year One

Feb 2012: Version 1.2 Sites in Production: ~80

BrownSites Now

Version 1.3 Sites in Production: 100!!!

BrownSites

•  the Product •  the Service •  the Support •  the Platform •  the Infrastructure

BrownSites as a Product: Features

•  Departmental web template/CMS •  Customizable banner image •  Brown masthead with universal navigation •  Customizable banner image •  Default IA (customizable; designed for academic

depts, but all depts use BrownSites) •  Footer—half Brown; half customizable •  Role-based permissions •  Workflow •  Revision support •  Newsfeed

BrownSites as a Product: Features (cont'd)

•  Inline Media paste URL directly into Body embeds player -works with YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr slideshows similar functionality for local streaming server -Wowza

•  CalWidget Bedework calendar integration

•  Department Course Listings Banner integration (plus other data sources)

•  Restricted Nodes users can restrict viewing to Brown community only

BrownSites as a Product: Lessons

•  Default IA being used!

•  Getting a sense of what customizations are frequently sought after

•  Users want Google integration (calendars, forms, etc.)

•  Content, content, content! Great templates don't make great web sites

BrownSites as a Product: Next

•  D7

•  Responsive Design

•  Department Faculty Listings Banner integration (plus other data sources)

•  MACE/Grouper integration (?)

•  Restricted File Support

BrownSites as a Service: Features

•  Base site free; depts pay for customizations •  Sites placed in new IA (as they migrate to BrownSites)

•  One short URL per site •  Self-service short URL tool (similar to bitly) •  Online request system

Spin-up script (incld'g project management integration) •  Pay Services (partial list):

Content Migration Plug and Play Features

slideshows, external news feeds, etc. Custom Features

BrownSites as a Service: Lessons

•  Overall adoption has been successful •  Quiet acceptance of fee-for-service model •  Universal navigation (masthead) can still be a

hard sell •  Updating older versions problematic

need to maximize use of Features instead of versioning base site, version individual Features

BrownSites as a Service: Next

•  New Request System: o  fully automate approval & spin up process o  provide site owners with 'You Are Here' in process o  system of record for site data o  track customizations (for metrics and for support)

•  Feature-ize components

BrownSites Support: Features

•  Attendance at 3 hr training session required

•  Help Desk staff also trained refresher with each version BrownSites HD 'pros' given Editor roles on all sites

•  Online documentation for baseline BrownSites

BrownSites Support: Lessons

•  User management is time consuming Site Owner role instituted to allow for adding of new users, changing roles, etc.

•  Many departments aren't ready to build lack of content strategy delays require retraining/site respins (versioning)

•  Retraining issues with customized features due to staff turnover/lack of documentation

BrownSites Support: Next

•  In-site documentation for customizations

•  Expand documentation align with Features

•  Add more screencasts

BrownSites as Platform & Infrastructure

from 2010 Project Proposal: •  simple maintenance of core software •  easily supported, flexible, and scalable •  dynamic feature integration across multiple web

sites •  easy migration from existing CMS

BrownSites as Infrastructure: Features

•  Core CMS Implementation: o  Drupal 6.x - single core multisite

•  Leverage existing web publishing infrastructure: o  Apache 1.x round-robin cluster o  PHP 5.x o  MySQL 5.x

•  Platform maintenance utilities: o  drush o  custom site deployment scripts - Perl and PHP o  additional custom management scripts (PHP, bash)

BrownSites as Infrastructure: Lessons

•  Needs over bleeding edge: o  Drupal 7 launched Jan 2011 o  BrownSites on Drupal 6 launched Feb 2011

•  Set the stage: o  Staging platform a must for testing and upgrades o  Integrate deploy and upgrade tools

•  Legacy lag: o  Legacy apps + BrownSites = updgrade headaches

•  Keep friends (infrastructure teams) close: o  strong communication/coord REQUIRED

BrownSites as Infrastructure: Next

•  BrownSites 2.0 -> Drupal 7 o  now building new students.brown service using D7 o  required for future upgrade to Drupal 8

•  LAMP stack upgrades o  MySQL 5.x - already done o  PHP 5.3 - underway (Drupal 6 issues) o  Apache 2 - forthcoming

•  Planning for custom and legacy o  Virtual hosts for one-off sites and apps o  Move to "touch-free" BrownSites infrastructure

BrownSites as Platform: Features

•  Implement flexible and reusable functionality o  Modules, config, and content as package o  Planned upgrade cycle

•  Transparent CMS o  Let departments be content experts not CMS

experts •  "It just works"...or fail gracefully

o  Caching o  Backup and Migrate o  Handling errors

BrownSites as Platform: Lessons

•  Build to upgrade: o  BrownSites version upgrades labor intensive o  Upgrading existing sites requires extra work o  Difficult to manage features without Features

•  For the Win/FAIL o  "Drupal does it" / "There's a problem with 'Drupal'" o  Platform improvement - invisible o  Platform errors - extremely visible

•  Cache in hand: o  Boost module = significant speed increase o  Overall server performance gains o  Backup redundancy

BrownSites as Platform: Next

•  BrownSites 2.0 -> Features (+ Apps?) o  ease deployment and upgrades o  consolidating modules and config

•  Power Deployment - to be investigated: o  Jenkins? o  Aegir + multisite patch?

•  Bolstering the Platform o  investigating Varnish cache w/UNIX team o  additional caching tools - APC and Memcache o  performance testing - measure, monitor, alert o  Shibboleth integration (for auth and groups)

Admin UI and Sites Folder

switch to desktop to demonstrate admin UI and to view core file structure

Contact http://www.brown.edu/webservices http://www.brown.edu/go/brownsites

Bill Bordac Email: bill@brown.edu Drupal.org: bbordac LinkedIn: bbordac@gmail.com Slideshare: bbordac

Alozie Nwosu Email: alozie@brown.edu Drupal.org: alozie LinkedIn: alozie@brown.edu Slideshare: alozie