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#access2009pei – Cary Gordon – Drupal In Libraries
2 Oct 09
Drupal is free, OS, simple, based on blogging idiom. Beneath that is a content management framework that can be used as a rapid, web-based development platform.
Hook system, very flexible for inserting your own code. CVS used for versioning, pretty much anyone can build modules and add to the official repository.
Community designed, with about 800 contributors to core (thousands of contributors to modules), 25 maintainers, 2 core committers. By comparison, Mozilla has 50 contributors, 10 staff (Drupal has no staff). Most OS projects follow that more centralized model.
Drupal principles; D has its own lingo (nodes, blocks, etc.); modules and themes to extend capabilities and customize. “Core” means the basic Drupal install, “contrib” is everything else that can be plugged in.
Requires PHP, most installations on the LAMP stack. Drupal modules connect through the hook system. Use jQuery and PHPTemplate as presentation helpers.
Best practices:
– plan your site before you build it, not after!
– plan for the future, don’t lock yourself in
– get involved in the D community
– back up your site
– test your php snippets: Drupal allows you to put PHP in your content, but there’s no safety net!
– observe Drupal Programming Best Practices
– use a version control system
– keep your site up-to-date; should be in the latest release (usually security patches)
Warning:
– Don’t use a Windows server and IIS
– Don’t hack core: cautionary tale about outsourcing to offshore developers….
Of the 4849 modules contributed, there’s often little info on what they do, most start as solutions to specific problems; strongly encouraged to contribute if we write modules that can be generalized. Easiest way to find out what modules are good is to get out in the community and ask. Gordon’s company has a collection of modules they make available to all sites they build; slightly different packages for different types of libraries.
Rather than get new copies when versions come out and overwrite the old, they use links in the root folder.
Examples
– Ann Arbor District Library; wanted the library site to be a social site.
– Darien Library; next version of the social opac (SOPAC), integrating catalogue data.
– Genesee Valley BOCES; mostly school libraries, again integrating catalogue data
– Idaho Commission of Libraries
– Troy Public Library; higher level of theming
– Benicia Public Library; good example of a library with few resources, had no website previously, not fully integrated but lots of features
– Camarena Memorial Library; bilingual, have a Spanish site
– North State Cooperative Library System; service site
The whole concept of using a blogging type system is that you have information that’s up-to-date, ideally stays that way.
Example Applications
– CSU San Marcos: digital repository, intranet, e-resources directory; some custom coding, but pretty much take advantage of D’s taxonomy stuff
– SFU Library Thesis submission system; students submit, staff can manage, grad office gets stats
– Cornell Mann Library room booking app
– Anchor Archive Zine Library
– William Hayes’s biometric data curation tool, import data from spreadsheets, with filtering/visualizations and curation tools
– McMaster subject guides
– Islandora (not added to Drupal contrib, yet….)
Brief update on Drupal 7: in code freeze, no fixed release date,
– D7CX pledge: trying to get contribs to commit to being ready for D7 live date
– changes include allowing users to cancel accounts, more semantic class/ID names, friendlier to CSS layout, jQuery 3, and more!
– more database support, SQLite, in theory could extend to Oracle
– Field API
– File API (files now first class nodes)
– Registry
Start with a clear idea of what you’re trying to build, keep your initial install simple
Cracking Drupal a must read
Drupal Library Group, Drupalib, Drupal4lib
DON’T HACK CORE
Posted by pzed on October 2, 2009 at 8.07am
Categories: access 2009, conferences, libraries, twitter
