Drupal in Higher Education in Higher Education

   

John Bickar, johnbickar@stanford.edu

Irina Zaks, irina.zaks@stanford.edu

Definitions – web publishing processDefinitions – web publishing process

• The web publishing process allows non-technical people to not only read the web, but also to submit their content to the web; to sort, tag, and classify it; and work on the content collaboratively

• The tools/software that enables web publishing is called content management system (CMS). CMSs have been in use / development for about a decade

• Today we will talk about why Drupal is our CMS of choice, and give examples of how different users benefit from using Drupal, with emphasis on use of Drupal in a university environment

Definitions - the Content Definitions - the Content

• Content can be news, events info, a person’s profile, pictures from a trip, new publications, or more specialized content, for example, medical records, properties of novel nano-materials, botanical plants info.

• In addition to common attributes each content type has its own custom attributes.

• All types of content need to be sorted, tagged, and displayed in a various ways, for example, alphabetically

• Different content types have predefined relationships; for example, publications have authors who have profiles and who participate in events.

Dream-CMS would have Dream-CMS would have

1. Ease of use for data entry (text, images) for non technical users and advanced features (e.g. CSS classes) for technical users

2. Capability to classify content (categories, tags, keywords)

3. Flexibility to display content (templates)

4. Customization options for different content types

5. Search Capabilities

6. Access permissions

7. Capability to add NEW FEATURES without changing the whole system

Overview of Web Publishing Tools Overview of Web Publishing Tools • Wiki: Pages for static information submit and edit

collaboratively• Moveable Type: Automatically updates News • WordPress: Pages & News in one system • You can build beautiful custom sites with each of these

applications • http://baoc.org - wiki• http://mrsec.org wordpress• http://hiphoparchive.stanford.edu movable type

• Sophisticated systems with different content types for multiple users cannot be easily built with just these tools

Drupal ConceptsDrupal Concepts

• Enter data only once – display where needed• Different Content Types (course, faculty, events, news,

publications, photos, etc.) have different fields for data entry

• Relationship can be established between different content types at the time of data entry

• Some pages are compiled from information submitted via individual entries using Views module

• Add features using additional modules, e.g. Panels, Apager, Organic Groups, etc. – use the power of Open Source Development

Examples of Drupal Use @ StanfordExamples of Drupal Use @ Stanford

• Department web sites (how many at Stanford?)

• Libraries (totally drupalized)

• Portals – Tech Commons – DriP: Drupal in Practice

Cubberley Education LibraryCubberley Education Library

The front page automatically

shows “featured” items – no need

for additional “blog” entry to announce new

arrivals

Single entry conceptSingle entry concept

All information about this item is

stored in one place, web admin

decides where which info can be

displayed

Active Search Active Search

Active Search (http://drupal.org/

project/jstools) tabs allow a user to filter results of search visually

Department of Economics Department of Economics

List of courses taught by a

professor is compiled

automatically from a Course

Info

Hm… views? Arguments? What’s the problem?Hm… views? Arguments? What’s the problem?

Thanks!Thanks!