Web Solutions for Online Media and Publishing Houses-

Drupal to meet different Stakeholder Requirements

byGomathi Viswanathan

What makes web solutions for media houses more challenging?

• The wide range of stakeholders (Business owners, advertisers, readers – wide range, content providers/ agencies, federal bodies that monitor media).

• Requirements / needs / objectives of each of the stakeholders.

• High level of competition and rapid developments on the allied technology front.

Stakeholder Needs - Readers/ Consumers

• Ease of content access• Intuitive navigation• Need to retain and repeat intrigue reader• Readability across devices• Best in class UI that's trendy and appealing• Faster page loads with good media streaming

capabilities• Ease of translated viewing in local languages

Stakeholder Needs – Reporters, Editors And Publishers

• Ease of updating content from various devices (iPad, laptop) • Intuitive way to post content and relate to sections, albums

etc.• Ease of setting up and administering content update

workflow• Ease of promoting content to different sections / home page• Ease of updating Breaking News• Ease of managing Page Layouts and creating new Layouts on

the fly• Ease of migrating existing content

Stakeholder Needs – Business Owners

• Flexible Ads placement and tracking• Built in Search Engine Optimization Mechanisms • Ability to provide/ integrate easily with good

Analytics • Ease of sharing content on social media by

readers• Ease of integration with third party systems for

content feeds/ sharing• Scalability and Security requirements

How can Drupal help in Media House Web Solutions?

• Drupal is one of the leading Open Source Content Management Systems.

• Its easy to setup and get started. • Its highly flexible and customizable.• If appropriate measures are taken, it can seamlessly

scale to accommodate large number of visits.• Each of the above requirement can be elegantly met

with help of contributed modules (the universe of which is ever growing and improving).

Drupal for Readers/ Consumers Needs

• The graphic design and presentation play a vital part in appealing and engaging UI. There are plenty of out-of-box Drupal Themes (https://drupal.org/project/project_theme) that are also responsive to allow your site to be viewed on various devices. One can also create their own custom design and create a custom Drupal theme to capture the best of class design.

• Drupal has a very flexible menu system that enables multilevel menu creation to have appropriate navigate mechanism apart from the breadcrumbing. Related and recommended content can be positioned using content recommendation modules.

• There are a plenty of UI related modules available to enhance the user experience and bring in best of class effects

• Media files from external sources can be easily embedded using modules like YT player.

Drupal for – Reporters, Editors And Publishers Needs

• Drupal CMS features are highly intuitive. Over and above that, one can extend it with simple means like using Ease to use Admininstrative Menu https://drupal.org/project/Admin_Menu, customizing and providing actionable dashboard

• For displays that are collection of articles from various sections, either the default, promote to home page option can be used (or) nodequeues can be used that can be attached to views/ blocks (or) panels.

• The backend UI can also be a responsive theme, allowing reporters to post content from their hand-held devices. Using workflow and publishing rules can be implemented.

• The page layouts can be managed as various sections being widgets (blocks (or) panels), that can carry content as related and the widgets can be moved around, new blocks added in between. It can be achieved using panels (https://drupal.org/project/panels). You can further extend it to use Contexts that allows you to manage contextual conditions and reactions for different portions of your site (https://drupal.org/project/context)

Drupal for Business Owner Needs• In case the new site being launched is similar, then content from existing database

can be imported either using simple node import via excel/ csv and in case of large volume and multi source the migrate module can be used.

• SEO is highly ingrained into Drupal, by way of ready to use modules that ensure the basics are taken care. Additionally you can also use the SEO checklist module to guide through all the best practices coverage

• Third party popular analytics like Google Analytics can be easily plugged in using modules. Integration with social media can be achieved by way of easy share feature and also using facebook comments. Additionally social media widgets and plug-ins can be embedded.

• Ease of integration with third party application ranging from – Weather updates– Stock price and bullion rate conversions– RSS aggregators

• Ease of extending the site for Online Subscription and Ad Purchases (using E-Commerce Modules)

• Ease of extending the site to a community with forums, blogs, organic groups like modules.

Scaling Drupal

• Drupal on LAMP allows us to leverage the best of scaling mechanisms.

• Multiple levels of caching is possible– Webserver Level Caching

• Default Database Level Caching – Query/ Content Caching, flexible, can be View level, Block Level, Pane Level, Panel Level, Page Level

• Enhanced static page cache Boost (https://drupal.org/project/boost)• Memory Object Caching (Memcahce) (https://drupal.org/project/memcache)• OpCode Caching – APC

– Reverse Proxy Caching• Eg. Varnish with ESI (or) Ajax based blocks to help as needed

– Content Delivery Networks• Quick and Out-of-the –box integration modules for standard CDNs are available on Drupal

Some of the Media Sites on Drupal *

CJOnline.com Capital-Journal newspaper (Topeka, KS, USA)Die Welt (opinion site) (Berlin, Germany)The Deccan Chronicle (Hyderabad, India)The Economist (Hamburg, Germany)The Financial Chronicle (Delhi, India)Greymouth Star (West Coast, New Zealand)Florida Times-Union | Jacksonville.com (Jacksonville, FL, USA)The London Paper (most read newspaper in London, UK)Mediapart (Paris, France)Reporte Indigo (Monterrey, Mexico)Otago Daily Times (Otago, New Zealand)SavannahNow [Savannah Morning News] (Savannah, GA, USA)Seattle Times | NWSource.com (Seattle, WA, USA)Ski Magazine (Victoria, Australia)Sudpresse (Belgium)The Trinidad Guardian (Trinidad and Tobago)Aviation Transport Observer (St. Petersburg, Russia)Madhyamam (Calicut, India)The Chronicle Herald (Halifax, NS, Canada)All About Information (Geneva, Switzerland)Dailythanthi - Tamil News Magazine (Tamilnadu, India)

*Courtesy - https://groups.drupal.org/node/5100, please visit this link for the full list

Related Further Links and Acknowledgements

Related Links• www.drupal.org• http://www.acquia.com/ • http://www.lullabot.com/blog/article/beginners-guide-caching-data-drupal-7• https://drupal.org/project/Nodequeue• http://jamieonsoftware.com/post/59738699304/memcached-vs-redis• http://www.creativebloq.com/web-design/drupal-performance-tips-9122837

Courtesy• https://groups.drupal.org/node/5100 • MS Office Clipart Images• Images and information from various internet sources

Please note:Have covered only a handful of possibilities, in terms of the requirements and the solutions possible

using Drupal, it does not cover them all!

Thank You!