t44u 2015, sample data

Professional Services UpdateHow we’re improving sample site for everyone

Dave Larkan – Web Developer Team Lead

Defining Digital Engagement for Higher Education

• Course Search

• Course Compare

• Content Tagging

• Course Catalog Builder

• Calendar

http://samplesite.terminalfour.com/sitemap/main-features/

Sample Site Overview

TERMINALFOUR – Sample Site

http://samplesite.terminalfour.com/sitemap/main-features/


Course Search


Course Compare


Content Tagging


Course Catalog Builder


• Sample site is available in it’s entirety

• Now available as modules

• Individual CSS per module

What we’ve done to make it better


• Cleaned up some excess markup and scripts

• Added additional functionality

•More user focussed

How we’ve improved it


Demo


• Continue to refine features

• Get feedback from people using it

• Portal

What’s Next?

Events Calendar 2.0Fully Customizable and Template Driven

Modular CalendarDave O’Dwyer – PHP Web Developer

Defining Digital Engagement for Higher Education

TERMINALFOUR Confidential – t44u 2015

• Driving Factor behind the code re-write

• Advantages of using the new version of the Calendar

• New Features

• How it Works

• Should you update your existing version of the calendar?

• Questions

PHP Calendar Webinar agenda

Agenda


• Code was tightly coupled

•Making design changes involved editing the PHP

• Extending functionality difficult

• Update difficulties – every client instance was custom

• No way to bring in external events out of the box

Limitations of Current Version

Calendar - Problems


• A vision of how it should be written for the benefit of everyone

•Wanted to make the PHP calendar enjoyable to work on as a developer

Why the re-write?

Calendar – Why Re-Write?


New Features

New Features

• Blade Templating Engine – changing HTML mark-up is so simple

• Modularized – logic is broken up, application ‘Core’ remains untouched after customizations

• Caching – makes execution time extremely quick!

• Multi Select List Categories – lists no longer limited to 1 branch

• IoC Container –for speed (Dependency Injection)

• Multi-Lingual Front End – French, German, Spanish and lots more

• API – out of the box API that returns a JSON response of all events based on search parameters provided to it

• Google Calendar API – Google Calendar events can be easily brought into the calendar


•Make it easier for everyone to:• Install

• Customize

• Extend

• Update

• Re-Use Event Data

• Faster loading times

Advantages

Advantages


Install

Advantages - Installation

• Package manager will handle full process

•Multiple instances can utilize the same installation• Instances can point to different event sources

• Look completely different


Customize

Advantages - Customize

• Blade Templating engine – make HTML changes easily

• Calendar instances don’t have to look the same

•Move elements around the page in seconds by moving the mark-up


Extend

Advantages - Extend

• Documentation will be provided

• Easily bring in events from external sources

• Allow external systems utilize events through the new API

• Add new modules to extend the functionality


Update

Advantages - Update

• Efforts to reduce amount of custom calendar implementations.

• Core Folder – contains main application logic• Where updates will happen mainly


Re-use Event Data

Advantages – Re-use Event Data

• The API returns a JSON response of all events associated with the calendar• If more than one resource, creates one point of contact for all event

data


Faster Loading Times

Advantages – Faster Loading Times

• Caching• JSON files containing data in a structured format

• Checked on page load

• MD5 Checksum of events source; XML, JSON, object

• 2 types of caching

• Compare MD5 checksum of source and cache

• Cache that expires after given timeframe

Example Speed Stats

TERMINALFOUR Webinar - CMS Migrations

• Ran on standard local machine

Amount of Events Generate Cache and Load All Events

Read from Cache and Load All Events

100 0.0845 0.0227

1000 0.6647 0.0438

1500 1.0457 0.0534

Should You Update?

Questions?

t44u 2015, sample data

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