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Designer’s Challenge

Designer’s Challenge. Web-Based Applications Using Drupal and OpenInsight. By Paul Simonsen, Senior Developer, SRP Computer Solutions, Inc. and Jason Green, Systems Administrator, SRP Computer Solutions, Inc. Introduction. Need: A dynamic, user controlled website

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Designer’s Challenge

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  1. Designer’s Challenge Web-Based Applications Using Drupal and OpenInsight By Paul Simonsen, Senior Developer, SRP Computer Solutions, Inc. and Jason Green, Systems Administrator, SRP Computer Solutions, Inc.

  2. Introduction • Need: A dynamic, user controlled website • Built in forums, security, and news support • Work with existing OpenInsight application • Seamless integration on a single off site server • Content Management System (CMS) like Drupal is a perfect fit • OI and web developers’ perspectives.

  3. Reasons for CMS • Highly customizable web pages • Add on component support • After initial setup, user controllable

  4. CMS Benefits • Separates OI from the web • Hosted web server handle majority of bandwidth • OI web server is a “hidden” server • Allows for other web communications

  5. CMS Pitfalls • Added communication layer • Conforming your website to another’s standard

  6. Communicating with Drupal • Using the XML-RPC standard • Mutually agreed upon XML-RPC structure • Handling incoming requests • Updates to Inet_Finalize for transmission of XML-RPC

  7. Security with Drupal • Single point of connection from the off site server • Updating Inet_Security • Working with Drupal’s built in security • Using Drupal’s session keys to track a user

  8. Data Integration with Drupal • Storing all OI data on the backend server • Partial split of data within OI and SQL on the web server • Full SQL support on the web server

  9. Why Drupal? • Designed with the programmer in mind. • Built from the backend forward, the CMS is very accommodating to programmers. • Huge feature-set with lots of exposed hooks so that you can easily hook into Drupal's framework. • Expansive toolset, JQuery is integrated into Drupal core.

  10. Why Drupal? • Good security, with update notification system. • Very Modular • Drupal core comes stripped down to a bare minimum, so you can easily tailor it to whatever your needs are. • Very good documentation. • The Drupal online community is large and very helpful. All code is well documented with many examples available for just about functionality.

  11. Why Drupal? • Role-based permission system. • Easily hook into Drupal's permission system to get very granular control of who is allowed to do what, based on user roles that can be easily created. • User registration supports local or external authentication. • Will integrate with LDAP, for example.

  12. Why Drupal? • Services layer pre-configured for xml-rpc, but also works with SOAP and others. • Very customizable • Well-known templating system, everything is themeable. • Can easily hook into the theme system for custom output. • Localization system for multi-lingual sites. • Custom code can easily hook into the localization module to translate content into just about any language.

  13. Why Drupal? • Good logging and reporting (Watchdog). • Can hook into Drupal's Watchdog logging engine to log anything. • Can have specific log events emailed to a list. • Robust web based administration.

  14. Thank You Any Questions?

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