Computer Science Department Web Site & Drupal

Peter Cappello

Our Site’s Current Problems

1. Its content is, in some cases:• Out of date

• Erroneous

• Limited

2. Its structure & style:• Are out of date

• Lack appeal

Why does it have these problems?

Problem: Its content is, in some cases:• Out of date

• Erroneous

• Limited

Cause: Only technical staff update content• Advantage: Uniform structure & style enforced

• Disadvantages: Slow & error-prone

Why does it have these problems?

Problem: Its structure & style:• Are out of date• Lack appeal

Cause: • Incomplete separation of content from

structure/style• Only technical staff update structure/style• Experimentation & cutover are difficult.

Web Content Management Systems

• What is it? http://

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_content_management_system

• Separate content from structure/style.

• Enable faculty/staff to directly update content.

Why Drupal?

• http://drupal.org/about

• Free, open source

• Significant Drupal expertise at UCSB

• Serious community (Whitehouse.gov)

future development/improvement.

• In what follows, I focus on content problems.

Content Management Benefits

• Version control

built in at the page level

• Authenticated users

update content while preserving uniform look & feel.

• Form generation & handling

improving faculty/staff/student productivity

Core Drupal Concepts

• Users• Anonymous vs. Authenticated• Authenticated: Faculty, staff, & selected students

• Roles• We define roles – for example:

Public relations editorUndergraduate affairs editorStudent ACM editor

• Permissions• CRUD: Create, Read, Update, Delete

Map Users to Roles

USERSFaculty

agrawalalmerothamrbultanpconrad. . .

Staffbenjigretatiffany

Studentsjohndoe

ROLES

Department

Undergraduate affairs

Graduate affairs

Public relations

Student ACM

. . .

Content Tree ExampleDistributed Edit Authority

site

depthome ugrad grad courses research people news

choose ucsb tech sup jobs growth

visitingendowed chairs

PR TS STAFF STAFF PR

STAFFPR

UA

calendar mission

Content Tree ExampleDistributed Edit Authority

site

depthome ugrad grad courses research internal

Faculty/Staff

Only faculty/staff have read access to internal pages: (e.g., per committee: agenda, responsibilities, roster, minutes, & discussion forum)

Forms Reduce paper, increase productivity

Possible applications• Undergraduate

• Major Area Elective formonline submission auto-emailed to faculty & staff Undergraduate Advisors

• Graduate• Thesis Plan

online submission auto-emailed to faculty & staff Graduate Advisors• Financial

• Travel formonline submission auto-emailed to financial staff

• Faculty• Publication list• Contracts & grants list• Bio-bib (ambitious, but theoretically possible)

A Peek at Some Site ThemesBy Brian Wolf Using Drupal

• Center for Scientific Computing

• LSCG Web Development

Possible Next Steps

1. Establish CS Web Committee

Peter Cappello, Don Voita, Public Relations person, Staff person, …

Brian Wolf - consultant

2. Specify Web Site Requirements

CS Web Committee

3. Design & Implement – Regular Web Committee progress/quality review

• Content organization

Pete Cappello & Don Voita

• Site theme (look & feel)

Brian Wolf, Don Voita, & Pete Cappello

Iterate steps 2 & 3: Agile Web Site Development