turning open source on its side: drupal from the top down (176295620)

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Turning Open Source On Its Side

Drupal From The Top DownBuilding the GW Drupal Cookie Factory

Mark R. Albert – Director, University Web Services

Nadya Rose – Supervisor, Applications Integration

Dhinakaran Thamanan Ramaian – Web Developer/Architect

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The George Washington University has adopted the Drupal open-sourceContent Management System (CMS) for the centrally managed yet

flexible CMS for the campus.

While most Drupal implementations are single-purpose websites, GW

has adapted this system to meet the needs of feature and security

updates while allowing individual sites freedom to experiment.

GW Drupal allows for quick deployment of a site allowing users to add

content within hours where the previous system took weeks.

The Summary

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The Challenge

Replace "best of breed" commercial enterprise content managementsystem NOT suited to the decentralized nature of higher education

Centrally managed to keep the system updated and constantly expanding

the capabilities

Flexible to satisfy independence of colleges and schools

Strong pressure to select an open-source CMS

Provision websites for departments and offices quickly

The idea became known as “the cookie factory” – variety and

consistency with the ability to support a number of customers quickly

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Designing The Factory

Views Display Templates –

 Change display of views results throughpane configuration

Site Placement – Taxonomy tags used to specify the placement of 

content in a hierarchy

Features – Content types, panelizer settings, image settings etc.

packaged as modules Panels/Panelizer – Used for page layouts

Themes – Control the look and feel

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Building The Factory

The Installation Profile (IP) –

 Collection of core, modules, themes andconfigurations that make up GW Drupal

Used to create new sites as requested

Profile updated as new items are released

New versions created for IP when changes are major (1.x)

Features Module –

 Used to move updates to existing sites

Aegir – Site hosting module that is used to deploy sites from the IP

Also used for backups and migrations to new versions

Site on subdomains – supports GW URL strategy

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The Results

200+ modules 109 sites live

100+ sites in content entry mode

15 minutes to provision site

Three site types – Leadership, School, Main

Responsive design incorporated into theme

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The Specifications

Drupal 7.1.5 – migrating to 7.2.3 Varnish for content caching – performance with pages displaying in

under half second

Approximately 100,000 hits daily

All environments virtualized

Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity achieved by utilizing GW’stwo data centers – cloud being considered as well

Load balanced service on web and database

Integrated into GW architecture - connected to Enterprise Active

Directory via LDAP module

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The heavy lifting in the backend… 

… makes it easy to operate!!!

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The Output

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The Output

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The Output

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The Output

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The Output

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The Output

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Resources

www.gwu.edu

it.gwu.edu

onlinestrategy.gwu.edu

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Contact

Mark R. Albert

Director of University Web Services

Division of Information Technology

The George Washington University

malbert@gwu.edu

703.726.8393

Nadya Rose

Supervisor of Applications Integrationnrose@gwu.edu

Dhinakaran (Dhina) Thamanan Ramaian

Web Developer/Architect

dhina@gwu.edu