the new it web site
DESCRIPTION
The new IT Web Site. Tim Bell Cath Noble IT Technical Forum 15 th June 2012. Agenda. What is Drupal ? CERN Drupal implementation Old IT web site New site Next steps. What is Drupal ?. Free and open source Content Management System Small core engine written in PHP with DB backend - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
CERN IT Department
CH-1211 Genève 23
Switzerlandwww.cern.ch/
it
The new IT Web Site
Tim Bell
Cath Noble
IT Technical Forum
15th June 2012
CERN IT Department
CH-1211 Genève 23
Switzerlandwww.cern.ch/
it
Agenda
• What is Drupal ?
• CERN Drupal implementation
• Old IT web site
• New site
• Next steps
IT Web Site
CERN IT Department
CH-1211 Genève 23
Switzerlandwww.cern.ch/
it
What is Drupal ?
• Free and open source Content Management System
• Small core engine written in PHP with DB backend• Themes to set the look and feel• Over 16,000 modules enhancing functionality
available• Developed by community of 18,000 members at
http://drupal.org
IT Web Site
Drupal Usage
• Originally written by Dries Buytaert in Belgium in 2001
• Over 700,000 sites worldwide (1.5% of all websites)• Drupal 7 is becoming the standard version with
legacy sites on Drupal 5 and Drupal 6
IT Web Site
CERN IT Department
CH-1211 Genève 23
Switzerlandwww.cern.ch/
it
IT Web Site
Powerful but complex
CERN IT Department
CH-1211 Genève 23
Switzerlandwww.cern.ch/
it
Typical Sites
IT Web Site
CERN IT Department
CH-1211 Genève 23
Switzerlandwww.cern.ch/
it
Drupal Structure
Sites are built dynamically rather than serving static HTML pages•Themes – the colors, fonts, layout•Taxonomy – list of terms such as IT groups/sections, keywords, …•Nodes – Sets of fields such as text, taxonomies, numbers, links•Views – Dynamic content based on selecting fields from nodes such as tables or RSS feeds•Panels – Combining views, fields and custom PHP to provide a page
IT Web Site
Example – User View
IT Web Site
Example – Edit
IT Web Site
• Editor just modifies contents of field without worrying about the layout
CERN IT Department
CH-1211 Genève 23
Switzerlandwww.cern.ch/
it
CERN Content Management
• Work started in 2010 at how to renew the CERN web content– Main CERN site www.cern.ch– Experiment sites– Department sites
• During 2010, IT surveyed the various content providers at CERN on providing a new CMS– We also added questions into the IT user survey
IT Web Site
CERN IT Department
CH-1211 Genève 23
Switzerlandwww.cern.ch/
it
Survey results
IT Web Site
The “other” category produced a long list of known (Python, vi, emacs, perl, PHP) and exotic (TextWrangler, SeaMonkey, KompoZer, plin, redmine, ezPublish etc)
CERN IT Department
CH-1211 Genève 23
Switzerlandwww.cern.ch/
it
ENTICE community
• The ENTICE user community was formed“Enterprise Needs for Tools and Infrastructure for Content Exploitation”
• IT provides the base infrastructure and some specific modules for IT applications
• Users help each other on entice.web.cern.ch–Module reviews–Tutorials–Themes–Forums
IT Web Site
CERN IT Department
CH-1211 Genève 23
Switzerlandwww.cern.ch/
it
New CERN Site
• The CERN main site www.cern.ch is high maintenance and is not a showcase for the organisation
• Activities started to define– Style guide for CERN web sites– Support smartphones and tablet form factors– Framework for deploying Drupal sites with these
characteristics easily
IT Web Site
Style Guides ux.web.cern.ch
IT Web Site
Toolbar – standard navigation
IT Web Site
• Provide a Google-like bar with• User name• Search
• Adapts to browser for mobiles, tablets, etc.
Public Page Prototype
Combine the style guides to produce a user page
IT Web Site
CERN IT Department
CH-1211 Genève 23
Switzerlandwww.cern.ch/
it
Drupal Infrastructure
IT Web Site
CERN IT Department
CH-1211 Genève 23
Switzerlandwww.cern.ch/
it
Database Selection
IT Web Site
• Oracle was not widely used in the community• IT database team agreed to support Drupal MySQL DB• Experience gained led to establishing the DB on Demand
service for MySQL
CERN IT Department
CH-1211 Genève 23
Switzerlandwww.cern.ch/
it
Infrastructure
• Base configuration– SLC 6– Apache / PHP 5.3– MySQL via IT/DB– NetApp storage for shared files– Pacemaker for high availability
• Shibboleth for SSO integration– E-groups for roles
• Site owners can install modules themselves– Common ones are shared between all sites
IT Web Site
Department Sites
IT Web Site
Outreach
IT Web Site
Experiments
IT Web Site
Clubs
IT Web Site
Old IT Web Site
IT Web Site
Old IT Web Site
• User Experience• Information fragmented and hard-to-find
– 300+ independent websites• Majority based on previous department structures• Lots of sites, lots of conflicting information
• “Variations on a theme” template make usability difficult and unpredictable
• Navigation is unstructured & has often disintegrated
• Information is unreliable• Content maintenance…Owners come, owners go• No archive policy
• No central editorial or style control
IT Web Site
Aims
• Information architecture based on audience needs– Who ?– Why ? – What ?
• Improved control over– Style– Navigation– Content
IT Web Site
New IT website
IT Web Site
New IT site… digging deeper
IT Web Site
CDS Integration
• Allows embedding of photos, slideshows and videos from CDS
IT Web Site
Indico Feeds
• Uses an Indico module which imports new meetings automatically
IT Web Site
Workbench
• Manage permissions and document lifecycle– Sections of the site are owned by editorial teams such as
IT secretariat, Safety or an IT group– Lifecycle defined between draft, review, published and
retired– Rules to force documents to be reviewed automatically
every year
IT Web Site
Books
• Structured documents such as user guides, and configuration documents– Automatic table of content and navigation
IT Web Site
Broken Link Checking
• Regular checks that all links are externally accessible– Issues reported to content owner– Explain root cause of problem
IT Web Site
Upcoming : Multi Language
• Drupal has excellent multi-language functionality– Translator– Site builder– Content manager
• New Drupal site builders – how to figure out what to enable for a multilingual site?
• When you request a new Drupal site, plan to ship a CERN Drupal site with the option of:• a ‘normal’ site• or multilingual site
• relevant internationalisation modules would be pre-enabled • Final go-ahead pending
IT Web Site
Upcoming : Multi Language
IT Web Site
• Tutorial on how to build/retro-fit multi-language functionality in Drupal– Published on ENTICE www.cern.ch/entice
Upcoming : New Modules
• LDAP– Automatically import people’s phone numbers, office
location, e-mail addresses– Allows pages to be created without hard-coding these
details
• Search Integration– Indexing of protected content to CERN Search– Custom searches such as all IT sites
IT Web Site
Upcoming : SNOW Integration
• Use SNOW as a master data source– Service descriptions– Service levels– Links to create incidents and standard requests
• Add service specific information– Service Status– User guides– Installation packages– News / Developments
• Target is to limit service specific web sites with inconsistent look/feel and quality
• Work to be done on the catalog alignment firstIT Web Site
Upcoming : SNOW Integration
IT Web Site
Further Ideas
• MyIT / Newsletter– News from groups / services can be consolidated into
RSS feeds or weekly newsletter assembled– Service managers publish information with tags– Users select what interests them
• Service manager internal documents for functional elements– Installation guides for how to set up an application– Problem determination guides– Exploit document lifecycle to enforce review or archive of
old procedures
IT Web Site
Summary
• The IT web site has been refreshed with new look and feel• Modern content management techniques are used to create
dynamic content such as RSS feeds• Import of existing information is advancing and replacing
links to legacy content• Work is ongoing in the service area to define the structure
and align the web site and service catalog– We’ll contact service managers when this is ready
• Many options for future enhancements such as custom newsletters
Feedback is welcome via https://cern.ch/it/feedback
IT Web Site
Useful Links
• IT web site– http://cern.ch/it
• ENTICE– http://entice.web.cern.ch
• Drupal– http://drupal.org
• New CERN site blogs– http://change.web.cern.ch– http://ux.web.cern.ch
IT Web Site