Plone at the University of Washington
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Plone at the University of Washington Melody Winkle Web Collective October 27, 2010 Plone Conference 2010
Transcript of Plone at the University of Washington
Plone at the University of Washington
Melody WinkleWeb Collective
October 27, 2010Plone Conference 2010
University of Washington
● Large research university● 3 campuses● 47,000 students● 30,000 faculty and staff● 140 departments● $1 billion in research funding● 900,000 pages indexed by Google
What was the Project?
● Move the central UW web site into Plone● Centrally supported pages
– For everybody's use
– Maintained by UW Marketing team
● Most sites at the UW are maintained by local development teams
Goals of Project
● Centrally support a CMS for common navigation and branding
● Looks like everybody is part of the university
● Web site creation and maintenance easy for users
● Provide features not available to people coding HTML in Notepad
Ultimate Goal for Plone support
● Provide Plone sites for any group who wants one
● Central support (hard to charge money)
The Idea of a Central CMS
● People still want autonomy, but support and buy in for central CMS has been strong
● People are clamoring for tools
Economic Realities
● People want to play but don't have resources
● Departments are losing resources● Need for central CMS became even
greater● People want to be part of the brand, but
they need help and tools to do it
Achievements
● Home Page maintained in Plone● Hundreds of central pages created, served
from Plone● More editors are being added to the site
Agile
● Project management methodology● Iterations● User stories
– features are expressed in user stories "As a web manager, I want to understand the best option for blogging in Plone so that editors will be able to easily create and maintain blogs."
More Agile
● Acceptance tests– Objective statement of functionality: "The
proposed blogging solution can support use of categories (controlled vocabularies)"
Agile Meetings
● Daily standup– People working on the site meet together
for 15 minutes (longer, discussed requirements)
● Demo Reviews– Live demonstration of finished stories
– Discussion
– Retrospective
Agile Meetings
● Iteration Planning– Choosing stories for the next go-round
– Estimating and prioritizing
Project Stats
● 12 iterations● 2 weeks in length● Launch prep
– Design changes
– Templating
– Performance work
Team for the Project
● UW Marketing team– Gina Hills - Associate Director, Web
Communications
– Tim Chang-Miller - Web Producer
– Jeff Hendrickson - Web Editor
– Chris Heiland - Web Developer
UW Marketing Team, cont
– Kilian Frey – Graphic Designer
– Dane Odekirk – Web Programmer
– Frank Fujimoto – Software Engineer, UW Information Technology
The Team, continued
● Web Collective team– Melody Winkle - Project manager
– Derek Hoshiko - Project manager
– Bryan Wilson – Developer
– Ross Patterson - Developer (consultant for Web Collective)
One Site vs Many
● One site for unified navigation● One site is more complex
– Bigger
– Many template exceptions
– Need to manage more permissions
Site Software
● Plone 3.3.5● Zope (latest)
Installed Products
● Theming– Web Couturier Dropdown menu 2.0
– Plone JQuery Tools Integration 1.0dev
● Navigation– Portlet Navigation Extended 1.0.2
● Editing– TinyMCE Editor Support 1.1rc9
Installed Products
● Syndication– Feedfeeder 2.0
– Products.fatsyndication 1.0.1
● Multimedia– Flowplayer 3.0b3
– plone.app.blob: ZODB Blob support 1.1
– plone.app.imaging 1.0
Installed Products
● Forms– Form Criteria 2.0dev
● Maps– Maps 2.0.3
● Authentication/Authorization– WebServerAuth 1.5
– LDAP support 1.1
– UW Plone LDAP 0.1
Installed Products
● Custom Products– UW Marketing Theme
– UW Marketing Site 0.2
Hardware
● Slicehost● 4 GB RAM● 2 instances● 1 ZEO
Architecture
Site Visits
● 350,000 visits/week for the live Zope pages
● 450,000 visits/week for the Home Page
Site Statistics
● 50 users● 15 groups● 3200 objects in the site
Workflow/Roles
● Simple Publication Workflow● Managers – core Marketing team● Other groups
– Editors
– Readers
XDV
● Theming was done with XDV● Theme HTML file● rules.xml file● Compile with XDV complier into XSLT file● XSLT file is used by Apache
Approaches to Theming
● collective.xdv● Deliverance● XDV with mod_transform
XDV
● Apache mod_transform● Used dv.xdv server● Workflow
– Make change locally
– Commit change
– Update on uwplone2
– Rerun theme buildout
What We're Doing with XDV
● Using mod_filter– Lets us specify different transform sets
based on location
– Hoping to use it for content types
– Got Plone to return the content type in the header
– Needed a new Apache module to use it
More with XDV
● Did a lot of work outside the rules.xml file● Complicated transforms● Editing XSL
Custom Features
● Tiles– Blades on Home Page
– Portal tiles
● Portal Types– Spotlight story (page)
– Tiles
– Portlets
● Portlets - 'Edit Portlet'
Tiles
● Blades on Home Page● Tiles on Portals
Portals
● Custom type● Top section● Middle tiles● Bottom portlets
Portlets
● Edit Portlets● Lots of portlets
Successes
● Two very strong developers● Communication
– Standup
– Face-to-face meetings, training
– Time with developers
– Web/sysadmin part of team
Successes
● Training– Bryan learning XDV a few weeks ahead,
but still teaching
– Chris, Tim learning Plone and XDV
– Good decisions in where to spend time around training
– UW team now responsible for site
Successes
● Attitudes– People all dedicated to the project
– Everybody worked together
● Quality– Pleasure to work on a big project with a
team that has high standards
Challenges
● Communication– more face time earlier
– remote debugging hard
– remote communication more difficult
– primer on terminology
Agile Process
● User stories were confounding● Bryan came in later to a massive backlog
and designs from DNA● Translation between design and stories
would have helped● Looking at the whole process more
broadly - avoid the tunnel vision
Learning Plone
● Demo at beginning– User Interface
– Back end
● Best way to learn is to use the tools
Content
● Helps to get real content in as soon as possible
● Start with content type that makes up 90% of content, rather than the specialized type
Design
● Design – initial design changed a lot● Many design iterations while developing
theme● Design changes were in response to
testing and political realities
Development
● Complex project– new features would cause earlier ones to
break
● Issues wouldn't get fixed until later
Testing
● Challenging to get features tested right away
● Unit tests didn't cover everything● More testing after rollouts● Longer debugging period
Launch
● More time for launch● Lots of content going in● Many design changes● Performance issues
What UW Team Wishes Plone Did● More portable portlets● More portable URLs – ResolveUID caused
some problems● Image handling
– Can't always delete images
– Credits field as option
● Easier editing– More drag-and-drop for layout
More Wishes for Plone
● Dropdown that would allow a editor to change the layout or theme their site/section uses would be ideal.
Future Plans
● Move to Plone 4● Move to in-house dedicated boxes● XDV for theming? mod_transform is fast,
but development workflow is hard because of complexity
Future Plans, cont.● XDV to theme non-Plone sites
– Drupal implementation
– Wordpress implementation
– Hand-coded header/footer
CMS at the UW● Plone just one of several● More sites on Drupal
– Cheaper, simpler hosting
– Harder on the users
● Joomla dying out● UW Medicine, Business on Sharepoint
