Drupal Revolution
in H&S
Understanding the needs of H&S units and
responding with an end-to-end service that
includes Stanford Sites Jumpstart
WHO WE ARE
Marion Marquardt and Dustin Liang
Sara Worrell-Berg
Web Consulting Team
School of Humanities and Sciences
Stanford Web Services
University IT
AGENDA
▪ Mission
▪ Why we do what we do
▪ What we’ve accomplished so far
▪ What a website process looks like
▪ What’s next
▪ Contact details
“Understanding the needs of H&S
units and responding with an endto-end service that includes
Stanford Sites Jumpstart”
RESPONSIBILITIES: Value Add
“Provide innovative, best-practice solutions to H&S units
- from project discovery to site launch”
ADVISE
BUILD
▪ Say yes to all project requests; maintain quality and high
client satisfaction
▪ Converge on a common H&S Drupal 7 platform
▪ Take H&S units through discovery
▪ Integrate with campus resources such as Explore Courses,
Events.stanford.edu, and HelpSU
SUPPORT
INFLUENCE
▪ Advocate for and support H&S units
▪ Propel service innovation, such as cloud hosting
PAST PAIN POINTS
Moving away from
▪ One-off hosting situations
▪ Poorly supported sites
▪ Poor security
▪ Hard to edit sites
▪ Lack of accessibility
▪ Lack of identity and branding
compliance
▪ Unshareable innovation
Moving to
▪ A common, best-practices
platform with shared
innovation, that meets
accessibility standards, works
on all screen sizes, and
leverages campus resources.
STANFORD SITES JUMPSTART
Why SWS created a product series
TREAT THE PAIN
Moving away from
▪ One-off hosting situations
▪ Poorly supported sites
▪ Poor security
▪ Hard to edit sites
▪ Lack of accessibility
▪ Lack of identity and branding
compliance
▪ Unshareable innovation
Stanford Sites Jumpstart offers:
▪ Rapid provisioning of basic website
▪ Mobile responsive
▪ Stanford University identity
▪ Tested for accessibility and security
▪ Pre-built architecture and roles
▪ Optimization and launch assistance
▪ User-friendly, built-in instructions
▪ Quick path to support
▪ Drupal patches/upgrades via
Stanford Sites
Stanford Study of Writing Jumpstart Site
Before (html)
After (Drupal 7)
STANFORD SITES JUMPSTART
What happened next +
a growing H&S/SWS partnership
H&S COMMON PLATFORM: Layers
Custom
Stanford
theme
Jumpstart
Academic
Drupal 7
University IT hosting
▪ Often smallish functional customizations
▪ Large chunk of work around
▪ project management,
▪ scoping,
▪ content strategy and information
architecture,
▪ training & information sharing,
▪ quality assurance,
▪ advocating & investing in large
initiatives
▪ etc.
STATUS
▪ Departments: over half on the platform or on their way
▪ Also keeping busy with Interdepartmental Programs, Institutes and
Centers, a nursery school and a museum
Art, Bing Nursery, Cantor, Classics, CMEMS, Economics, English, Global
Studies, History, HumBio, IDA, International Relations, IRiSS, Islamic
Studies, Linguistics, Music, Philosophy, Political Science, Public Policy,
Sociology, SPARQ, Stanford in Washington, Statistics, Text Technologies,
Urban Studies
SITE REDESIGN PROCESS
▪ Objectives and scope
▪ Resource identification, including people, budget and time
▪ Building a culture of web ownership
▪ Simple support points of contact
DISCOVERY & DESIGN
▪ Biggest chunk; we do ourselves
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
▪
Scope
Site crawl
Card sorts
User personas
Site map
Content model
Taxonomy plan
Design metaphors
Visual mockups
CUSTOMIZATION & SITE BUILDING
Various models
▪
▪
▪
▪
From SWS does it all (workshops model) to H&S IT does most
Rely on freelancers and vendors to scale instantly
Consistent quality through small team, comprehensive checklists and documentation
Sharing back:
▪ SWS Photo Gallery,
▪ Conferences,
▪ Working with SWS to identify and prioritize common needs
CONTENT READINESS & TRAINING:
A new culture of web ownership
▪ Content, content, content
▪ Homework: media inventory, content scorecard
▪ Writing for the Web help
▪ Analytics
▪ Training and hands-on sessions
▪ Custom documentation (paper or video)
WHAT’S NEXT? (SWS)
A continually improving platform
Also
▪ Expand the team to address service demand and pace of growth
▪ Continue to partner with H&S and prioritize needs
▪ Partner with other business units to improve the platform for all (e.g. Registrar)
▪ Expanding to offer hosting in the cloud: Amazon Web Services with containerized Stanford
Drupal, Stanford Sites Jumpstart, monitoring and support
WHAT’S NEXT? (H&S)
A continually improving platform
Also
▪ Continue to bring H&S units onto the common platform
▪ Continue to partner with SWS and prioritize H&S needs
▪ Partner with other business units to improve the platform for all (e.g. Registrar)
▪ Keep up our ability to scale quickly and well
▪ AWS hosting
CONTACT US
▪ Marion Marquardt ([email protected])
▪ Dustin Liang ([email protected])
▪ Sara Worrell-Berg ([email protected])