Background and History

drupal iconThe current department website runs on our own server, and was built on Drupal 6.  Drupal is an open system that makes editing content easy, without having to worry about messing up the looks or layout of the website.  At the time, the advantages of using Drupal were huge.  This was the first time anyone in the department could personally update any section of the website (if they had permission, of course).  Faculty, staff, and students could update their content as many times as they like to get it just the way they want it.

Back when the website was created, the VT website layout was painstakingly ported into a Drupal 6 theme.  This process took me an entire summer to complete.  At that time our work study, Ryan, manually copied all the text and pictures into the new Drupal system.

The entire site replacement took about one year from start to finish with me working full time, and Ryan working part time.

In my opinion, the old Drupal 6 based website has been a success.  The site history shows content being constantly revised by faculty and students.  The longest time span between updates is about a week.

Drupal 6 Reaches End of Life

In Fall of 2017, I began testing Drupal 8 to see if it could work for us.  It was very broken and there was no way it could have been made to work.  Specifically, the LDAP module that connects Drupal to our department servers was not working.

In Fall of 2018, our current CMS, Drupal 6, was no longer supported, which meant we no longer received security updates from Drupal.  It was time to start looking for a replacement.  I took another look at Drupal 8 (including the LDAP module) and it was close enough to working that I began learning the new system.

VT Website Layout Changes Regularly

In Winter of 2018, I tried again to port the current VT website layout into a Drupal 8 theme.  Unfortunately, the new VT website was much more complicated than the VT website from around 2008.  Additionally the VT WEB team was constantly making changes.  After two weeks worth of porting work, the VT website had already changed.  This meant that compared to the VT website, our Drupal 8 website layout would look old almost immediately.  There was no point in doing all of this if our website would look old so quickly.

It was time to re-consider the VT CMS.

Advantages and Disadvantages of the VT CMS

The VT CMS works on the same basic principle as Drupal.  It makes editing content easier.  After looking into both systems, here is what I found:

Advantages of VT CMS over Drupal

  • The design and layout (the way it looks) is maintained by the VT WEB team, so we do not have to worry about the website looking old.  I understand that there is some work to do after a big website redesign, but most of the content gets carried over.

Advantages of Drupal over VT CMS

  • The Drupal LDAP module automatically adds and removes faculty, staff, and grad students to our people pages.  This is a big deal because there is a complete department people page, and also a partial people page for each lab/center.  As students enter and graduate the program, all of them get sorted out automatically.
  • Editing people pages is easier in Drupal.  Anyone with a people page can sign in with their department username and password, and start editing immediately. This makes the people pages easy to keep up-to-date.
  • Editing lab/center profiles is easier in Drupal.  The LDAP module automatically adds and removes students to their lab/center.  Anyone in that lab/center can update its profile.  This means the content will be easy to keep up-to-date.
  • Permissions in Drupal are better than the VT CMS.  Everyone has access to edit their own profile.  Additionally faculty and grad students can edit their own lab profile.  In the VT CMS, if you get permission to edit one page, you can edit all pages.

Best of Both Worlds

For a brief period, we considered condensing and removing parts of our people pages to make them work on the VT CMS.  However, a website traffic analysis showed that over half of our visitor traffic comes from guests visiting our people pages.  This was mostly done by people google searching any of our faculty directly, and we dont want to mess that up.

So after considering both CMS options, we decided to use both of them for their strengths.  We will use the VT CMS for most of our front page content, allowing that content to look modern and match all the other VT webpages.  Additionally, we will use the Drupal 8 system for our people profiles and our lab profiles, allowing them to have the most up-to-date information possible.

Two Target Audiences

After considering the two new CMS ideas for a while, I began to realize that the two systems will actually target two different audiences.

  • The VT CMS, with all of our front page information ('undergrad information', 'graduate information', and 'diversity and inclusion', etc) will mostly target prospective students (some information may need to be shifted if we want to follow this analogy more precisely).
  • The Drupal CMS, with all of our up-to-date people profiles and lab profiles, will mostly target current students, study participants, visiting speakers, etc. 

The analogy doesn't work out perfectly, but it makes sense in a lot of cases.

With this realization, I decided it would be best to setup the VT CMS with the URL www.psyc.vt.edu and the Drupal CMS with the URL support.psyc.vt.edu. 

I also realized it would be best if the Drupal CMS used a very basic layout, while still being modern, mobile and print friendly.  If I tried to make the Drupal layout match the VT layout, it would just look old as soon as the VT layout changes.  Drupal, having its own unique layout, would help prevent the support site from looking old.

That is how we have arrived at the current web site configuration.

Proof of Concept

Both the new websites are currently in the proof of concept stage.  They are both working but dont really have much content.  Here are some sample pages:

Front Website Samples (may or may not be visible, not sure):

Front page:
https://psyc.stage.cms.vt.edu/content/psyc_vt_edu/en/index.html

Advising:
https://psyc.stage.cms.vt.edu/undergrads.html

Diversity and Inclusion:
https://psyc.stage.cms.vt.edu/diversity_and_inclusion.html

Support Website Samples:

People Listing:
https://support.psyc.vt.edu/users

People Profile:
https://support.psyc.vt.edu/users/mabell

Center/Lab Listing:
https://support.psyc.vt.edu/labs

Center/Lab Profile:
https://support.psyc.vt.edu/labs/socialdev