The WGBH.org Development Blog

It’s official - WGBH Online has gone into testing mode for the new TV Programs and Schedules module!

I’ve whipped up a whole mess of this:

I’m talking about the user documentation, not the coffee. All of our documentation has been posted to the WGBH Online wiki.

The obvious advantage here is that not only can everybody access the documentation but they can edit it as they see fit! Love that.

Anyhow, yesterday I shared this documentation with our little content production team and had a training session on the new system. They will now spend the next week testing out the functionality and implementation on our test suite. That means Pete and I will shift into bug fixing mode for a bit.

After that our next big step is to get the staging suite configured and running properly. What’s the difference between our test suite and our staging suite, you ask?

Good question.

Well, the test suite is a stand alone server, much like our development suite, with everything on the same box (MySQL, Drupal, Apache, etc). The test suite is used for testing functionality, design implementation, etc.

Our staging suite, on the other hand, is meant to mimic the real live environment in which the new site will run (e.g. separate web and database servers, uses Memcache, etc.). It will allow us to ensure that the new site will function properly when we launch it live and, more importantly, that it will coexists peacefully with our current site. Recall that we’re not converting all of WGBH.org to Drupal just yet. The first phase will only involve the TV programs and schedules. All of our other content (home page, radio programs/schedules/playlists, kids section, etc. etc.) will remain in our current CMS and be served by our existing application for the time being.

So, we need to ensure that the two systems will work properly together. The staging suite will also be a place where IT can work out system upgrades and such before attempting them on the live systems.

Once we have our staging suite configured and running smoothly, we will focus on application and database tuning. After that, we’ll be ready to begin the launch phase!

Exciting? That’s one word for it.

Of course, we’re also busy thinking about life after the launch of TV programs and schedules on Drupal. That’s when things will get really interesting. We’re rethinking everything: information architecture, look and feel, personalization, the whole she-bang. While we’ve been busy with TV schedules, others have been busy meeting and thinking about the bigger picture. As part of that process, we’ve diagrammed out all of the content currently on the site. It looks something like this:

Actually, that’s only half of it. Here’s the other half:

You can see we still have lots of work to do…

I’m on vacation next week meaning Pete is running the shop! Lucky him!