FROM CONTENT STRATEGY TO DRUPAL SITE BUILDING: CONNECTING THE DOTS
R O N A L D A S H R I , B L U E S P A R K
@ronald_istos, #drupalcs
D E F I N I N G C O N T E N T S T R AT E G Y
- S A R A WA C H T E R - B O E T T C H E R , C O N T E N T E V E RY W H E R E
“The practice of understanding what content is needed to meet both users’ needs and organisational goals, producing it and creating realistic publishing and governance plans to
keep it that way”
R E L AT E D D I S C I P L I N E S
• Information Architecture
• User Experience
• Content Management
• Editorial Management
• Social Media Engagement
• Community Management
• Site Building
• Development
• Business Goals
W H AT D O E S S U C C E S S F U L C O N T E N T S T R AT E G Y L O O K L I K E ?
• Content is not bound to a page - flexible and future-ready
• We can provide the content that best stands a chance to fulfil user goals given context
• Finding, using, sharing and repurposing content is easy
• Message and editorial vision clear
• Content creators can focus and enjoy the process, not fight with technology to get their message out
• We know it works because we measured it
D E F I N I N G D R U PA L
S I T E B U I L D I N G
D R U PA L S I T E B U I L D I N G
• From drupal.org: “implementing business functionality and features into your Drupal site.”
• Thinking of the structure and creating the content types, vocabularies, views, panels, menus
• Taming the thousands of modules on drupal.org into a coherent set that performs useful functionality
T H I S I S D R U PA L
D R U PA L + C O N T E N T S T R AT E G Y
D R U PA L + C O N T E N T S T R AT E G Y
D R U PA L + C O N T E N T S T R AT E G Y
The Drupal Site Builder is often an unrecognised Architect. Assimilating a wide range of concerns and implementing
them in a way that can support evolving needs
M O D E L L I N G T H E W O R L D I N D R U PA L
A B S T R A C T I O N A N D M O D U L A R I T Y A R E Y O U R B E S T F R I E N D S A N D W O R S T E N E M I E S - W H E N I T W O R K S I T
A L L O W S Y O U T O A C H I E V E A L O T W I T H B A S I C E L E M E N T S
G U E R N I C A - P I C A S S O
… O R I T C A N L E A D T O S O M E T H I N G T H AT I S H A R D T O U N TA N G L E
Number 8 - Jackson Pollock
There is no mathematical proof as to the correct structure of a site
C O R E P R I N C I P L E S+ B E S T P R A C T I C E
• stick to a core set of tools as much as possible
• balance flexibility with complexity
• build prototypes, test, break them and build them again
L O R E M I P S U M C A N B E B A D F O R Y O U R W E B S I T E ’ S H E A LT H
• build, prototype and test with a realistic simulation of the actual content
• let content creators test the process from early on
TA K E A D VA N TA G E O F C O R E D R U PA L F U N C T I O N A L I T Y T O C O N S T R U C T
F L E X I B L E D ATA M O D E L S
E N T I T I E S
TA K E A D VA N TA G E O F C O R E D R U PA L F U N C T I O N A L I T Y T O C O N S T R U C T
F L E X I B L E D ATA M O D E L S
E N T I T I E S F I E L D A P I
TA K E A D VA N TA G E O F C O R E D R U PA L F U N C T I O N A L I T Y T O C O N S T R U C T
F L E X I B L E D ATA M O D E L S
E N T I T I E S
N O D E S U S E R S T E R M SC O M M E N T S F I L E S
F I E L D A P I
TA K E A D VA N TA G E O F C O R E D R U PA L F U N C T I O N A L I T Y T O C O N S T R U C T
F L E X I B L E D ATA M O D E L S
E N T I T I E S
N O D E S U S E R S T E R M SC O M M E N T S F I L E S
P R O D U C T S P R O F I L E B E A N S
F I E L D A P I
TA K E A D VA N TA G E O F C O R E D R U PA L F U N C T I O N A L I T Y T O C O N S T R U C T
F L E X I B L E D ATA M O D E L S
E N T I T I E S
N O D E S U S E R S T E R M SC O M M E N T S F I L E S
P R O D U C T S P R O F I L E B E A N S
F I E L D A P I
C U S T O M E N T I T I E S
TA K E A D VA N TA G E O F C O R E D R U PA L F U N C T I O N A L I T Y T O C O N S T R U C T
F L E X I B L E D ATA M O D E L S
E N T I T I E S
N O D E S U S E R S T E R M SC O M M E N T S F I L E S
P R O D U C T S P R O F I L E B E A N S
F I E L D A P I
C U S T O M E N T I T I E S
TA K E A D VA N TA G E O F C O R E D R U PA L F U N C T I O N A L I T Y T O C O N S T R U C T
F L E X I B L E D ATA M O D E L S
C U S T O M D ATA S T R U C T U R E S - H E R E B E D R A G O N S
S T O R Y
B U I L D R E L AT I O N S H I P M O D E L S A N D R E A S O N A B O U T E A C H E L E M E N T
L O C AT I O N
A U T H O R ( U S E R )
T O P I CT I T L E
T E A S E R
B O D Y
F E AT U R E D I M A G E
C H O O S E T H E R I G H T F I E L D ( A N D W I D G E T ! ) F O R T H E TA S K AT H A N D
Numeric
HierarchicalSelect
Simple Dropdown
Text Area
F I E L D C O L L E C T I O N S F O R G R O U P I N G R E L AT E D F I E L D S T O G E T H E R
U S E F U L M O D U L E S - I
• Dozens (hundreds?) of field modules
• Geofield - drupal.org/project/geofield
• Addressfield - drupal.org/project/addressfield
• Tablefield - drupal.org/project/tablefield
• Link - drupal.org/project/link
• Fieldgroup - drupal.org/project/field_group
• Fieldcollection - drupal.org/project/field_collection
U S E F U L M O D U L E S - I I
• Beans - drupal.org/project/bean
• Entity Reference - drupal.org/project/entityreference
• Inline Entity Form - drupal.org/project/inline_entity_form
• Prepopulate - drupal.org/projects/prepopulate (pre-fill fields based on URL variables)
• Conditional Fields - drupal.org/project/conditional_fields
• Extra Field Description - drupal.org/project/extra_field_description
• Field Placeholder - drupal.org/project/field_placeholder
T E X T F I E L D S A N D F O R M AT T I N G
absolute freedom
T E X T F I E L D S A N D F O R M AT T I N G
absolute austerity
T E X T F I E L D S A N D F O R M AT T I N G
balance between choice and freedom
U S E F U L M O D U L E S
• Better formats - drupal.org/project/better_formats
• WYSIWYG - drupal.org/project/wysiwyg
• EDIT - drupal.org/project/edit
C AT E G O R I Z AT I O N - I
M U LT I P L E O P T I O N L I S T F I E L D
limited choice limited content creator control no automatically generated pages ensures consistency good for simple yes/not
C AT E G O R I Z AT I O N - I I
TA G S
open-ended content creators can easily create new consistency quickly becomes an issue
C AT E G O R I Z AT I O N - I I I
F I X E D V O C A B U L A R I E S
better control can introduce hierarchy adding fields turns them into full-blown content
C AT E G O R I Z AT I O N - I V
F L A G S
simple choices allows user to create arbitrary lists
C AT E G O R I Z AT I O N - V
O R G A N I C G R O U P S
group for permissions group for community a wide-cross section content
U S E F U L M O D U L E S
• Taxonomy Manager - drupal.org/project/taxonomy_manager
• Taxonomy Merge - drupal.org/project/term_merge
• Taxonomy Tools - drupal.org/project/taxonomy_tools
• Taxonomy Menu - drupal.org/project/taxonomy_menu
• Flag - drupal.org/project/flag
• Organic Groups - drupal.org/project/og
F E E D T H E M A C H I N E S
• Facebook Graph - drupal.org/project/metatag
• schema.org - drupal.org/project/schemaorg
• RDFa - core
M O D E L L I N G I TA LY
C O N T E N T A U D I T
organizational goals
user goals
personas
C O N T E N T M O D E L
C O N T E N T C AT E G O R I E S
+ C O N T E N T T Y P E S
• Editorial (stories, features)
• Resources (recipes, language lessons)
• Listings (accommodations, properties, experiences, products)
• Community (community posts, comments)
C O M M O N V O C A B U L A R I E S G L U E E V E R Y T H I N G T O G E T H E R
• location vocabulary: fixed, hierarchical, populated with Wikipedia data
• topics: structured, carefully managed
• tags: open-ended
• sections: define overarching sections (life+style, culture, food + wine, travel)
• think of each in relationship to the rest
• automagic functionality
E V E R Y O N E PA R T I C I PAT E S U S E R - G E N E R AT E D C O N T E N T A S W E L L
• User-generated content cannot follow rigid rules
• Simplify interface and make explicit the benefits
E N J O Y T H E R E S U LT S
http://pedoriowaterdogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Happy-dog.jpg
S E C T I O N S T R E A M
• Brings together different content types for the Pinterest generation
• Content types have a stream view mode
• Can update both manually and automatically
drupal.org/project/nodequeue
A global view of the depth and breadth of content on ITALY - for power users and for the editorial team
Recipes section takes advantages of vocabularies + facets to allow for search by ingredient, cost, etc
U S E R G E N E R AT E D L I S T S
C O N T E N T F O R M A C H I N E S
P R O D U C I N G A N D S H A R I N G C O N T E N T
show the authors love
http://www.bluespark.com/blog/bluespark-midcamp-chicago-2014
Adrian Rollett
• think carefully about how much workflow you actually need
• simple scheduling tools can be very effective
• drupal.org/project/scheduler
• drupal.org/project/workbench
• Depending on the scenario authorship information can be useful
• drupal.org/project/google_authorship
P U B L I C AT I O N
P U B L I C AT I O N!
• study user behaviour
• take care of timing
• prepare an editorial calendar
• think of caching
• sharing tools
M E A S U R I N G R E S U LT S
Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as relevant questions, accurate facts, dislike of anecdotal information
and lovely graphs
M E A S U R I N G R E S U LT S
Make sure to measure specific efforts to provide content creation ROI
C O N S I D E R T H E W I D E R E N G A G E M E N T S T R AT E G Y
• Who are your users
• Where do you engage with them
• How do you engage with them
• What are pivotal actions that lead to goals being achieved
WHAT DID YOU THINK?E V A L U A T E T H I S S E S S I O N :
austin2014.drupal.org/node/2368
T H A N K Y O U !
WHAT DID YOU THINK?E V A L U A T E T H I S S E S S I O N :
austin2014.drupal.org/node/2368
T H A N K Y O U !
