Drupal at Digital Library and Information Technology at Cornell University

• How we chose Drupal
  • The committee that built the new (2008) main CUL web page evaluated several options and decided on Drupal
    • How the WebVision committee decided on Drupal
    • The CUL Vision Report (a .pdf document) - Web Site Development Recommendations - 5/24/2008
  • Many of us were working on the main CUL site redesign, gained experience with Drupal in the process, and saw that it was a good tool.
  • It made sense to develop/convert other web sites with the same tool.
  • We decided to stop supporting CommonSpot, and developed tools to migrate the CommonSpot sites to Drupal.
• About Drupal
  • Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website.
  • Built in features include web based content management and administration, user authentication, role based permission system, SEO features, threaded comments, blogs, version control, content syndication, caching, and extension capabilities based on modules.
  • Community contributed modules include text editors, media handlers, SEO tools, online form handlers, date and calendar tools, javascript tools, user interface enhancements, surevy tools, shopping carts, anti-spam tools, and social engagement tools.
  • Drupal is open-source software distributed under the GPL ("GNU General Public License") and is maintained and developed by a community of thousands of users and developers.
  • Awarded Best Open Source PHP CMS 2009(Wordpress won Overall in 2009) - also Overall Winner 2008, 2007
  • Basics
    • All the data entry is done through the browser. There are role based permissions to control who can enter what data. Users have to log in to the site to enter data.

• • • Content is stored in 'Nodes'. Nodes have a title, a body, menu settings, revision information, URL settings, comment settings, author information, and publishing options. The user can add more fields to nodes to make different types of nodes.
    • Nodes have a default display, but one or more nodes can be displayed together in a 'View'. Views control which fields of the node display, and can filter to select which nodes display. One or more views can be displayed on a page of the site.
    • There is built in support for basic site navigation, search, file uploading, authentication, comments, contact forms, etc.
    • There are many different 'Themes' (skins) available.
• DLIT Drupal Sites

• Test Site	Production Site	Features
  test.2cul.library.cornell.edu		Collaboration with Columbia University
  test.aerial-ny.library.cornell.edu	aerial-ny.library.cornell.edu	Aerial Photos, Mapping, interface to LUNA (Formerly CommonSpot site)
  test.asia.library.cornell.edu	asia.library.cornell.edu	(Formerly CommonSpot site)
  test.clo.library.cornell.edu
  test.communications.library.cornell.edu	communications.library.cornell.edu	(Formerly CommonSpot site)
  test.cuneiform.library.cornell.edu		Cuneiform Tablets
  test.engineering.library.cornell.edu	engineering.library.cornell.edu	(Formerly CommonSpot site)
  test.eship.library.cornell.edu	entrepreneurship.cornell.edu	Interface to VIVO
  test.lts.library.cornell.edu	lts.library.cornell.edu	(Formerly CommonSpot site)
  test.mathematics.library.cornell.edu	mathematics.library.cornell.edu	(Formerly CommonSpot site)
  test.psl.library.cornell.edu	physicalsciences.library.cornell.edu	Virtual Library (Formerly CommonSpot site)
  test.research.library.cornell.edu	research.library.cornell.edu	Surveys (Formerly CommonSpot site)
  test.seanews.library.cornell.edu		Southeast Asia Newspapers
  test.socialwelfare.library.cornell.edu		(Formerly CommonSpot site)
  test.staffweb.library.cornell.edu	staffweb.library.cornell.edu	Internal site protected by CUWebAuth
  wwwstage.library.cornell.edu	www.library.cornell.edu	Main Cornell Library site
  test.wordsworth.library.cornell.edu
  ?	mannlib.cornell.edu	Mann Library (Formerly CommonSpot site)

• Drupal Modules we use

• DLIT Drupal Development Server Setup