implementing and running joomla at a large south african university
DESCRIPTION
An in-dept look at the challenges and processes that led to the successful implementation of Joomla at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. As the largest university in the Western Cape, we explore our approach to implementing and maintaining our Joomla 2.5 to suite the needs of our more than 1 million monthly visitors. Additional Info Presenter::Lovemore Nalube Category::JoomlaTRANSCRIPT
Joomla! at a large South African university
Lovemore Nalube University Web Developer
www.cput.ac.za
About our university
• URL: www.cput.ac.za • Number of staff and students: 40 000, • Largest university in the Western Cape, • Result of a merger with more than 8 colleges
and technikons, • 30 000 visits per day
CMSs at SA universities
• Joomla! (CPUT), • Drupal (ex-UFH, NWU, UCT), • Microsoft Sharepoint (UWC, UFH,
Stellenbosch) • Proprietary (Rhodes)
History with Joomla! CMS
• Pre-2010 = custom PHP based CMS, • 2010 – April 2013 = Joomla! 1.5 • May 2013 – present = Joomla! 2.5
Getting onto Joomla! 1.5
• Money spent on a template = R50 000, • Time = 1 year, • Skills = outsourced, • Manual copy-paste from PHP CMS into
Joomla!,
Joomla! 1.5 deliverables
• 6 templates, • 20 to 30
“main menus” made,
• 100 “submenus” made,
Migration to 2.5
Time: 4 months, People: 3 (Web Editor + 2 developers), Cost: less than R1 000, Migration procedure Article migration with J2XML, Rebuilt: Menus, modules, plugins.
Result:
• 3 menus only, • Subversion for code versioning Extensions • Security: RSFirewall!, • Moderation: Article Factory Manager, • News: K2, • Clickable telephone numbers: Re-replacer, • Events management: RSEvents!, • Electronic forms: RSForm! • Logging: User audit, • Custom code: Sourcerer, • Embedding: Modules Anywhere, • Module Manager: Advanced Module Manager
Template system
• Joomlart T3 template
Why? • One template for whole site, • ‘themes’ for various faculties, • CSS and JS combining and compressing, • Caching system, • Already responsive.
FYI: Search Engine metadata
Ever wondered why some Google results look funky? eg:
vs
Answer: Semantics. Read more by googling: “Google Rich snippets”
Optimizing: Supporting files
Combine CSS, JS and image files as much as possible • Reduce request and response hits
97
35
Before After
Number of files loaded for homepage
Optimizing: Page size
Compress your images and files
0 0,5
1 1,5
2 2,5
3 3,5
4
MB
Size of the homepage
Reverse proxy Apache with Nginx
YOU
Optimizing: Caching on the server
Enable caching in PHP. Memecache and APC
Optimizing: Serving static files
Apache is good for processing PHP Apache is BAD for CSS, JS and images Enter: NGINX
Optimizing: Security and SSL
Always use SSL when users must login • GoDaddy Wildcard certificate = R1 000 per annum • Verisign Wildcard certificate = R20 000 per annum
Joomla RSFirewall module:
Monitoring: Graphs and Alerts
Google Analytics • Visitors, Search Engines, etc…
SNMP and Cacti • Server, Apache, MySql, PHP, custom variables
Off-Campus monitoring • Free: uptimerobot.com
Mobile app integration
• Varsity mobile hybrid app
• JSON remote feeds • Events • News
Problems
• Load balancing with front end editing, • Some rich snippets do not show up on Google, • Moving scripts to bottom of page,
Thanks