The WGBH.org Development Blog

I don’t want to belabor the whole space travel analogy, but, what the heck - life is short! Let’s belabor-away!

Earlier this week we took one small step for TV schedules and one giant leap for WGBH.org by officially launching the new Drupal-based TV Programs and Schedules section of WGBH.org!

Aside from finding a significant bug literally 10 minutes before launch, it has all gone quite smoothly! Drupal is behaving like a champ and everything is humming along.

In fact, for a worry-wart like me, you could almost say it’s going too well.

So, now I’ve jinxed everything. Oh well. Like I said, life is short.

The list of people to thank for making this all happen so smoothly is long. At the top of the list is my friend and co-developer Pete Bull who did a great job from day one and has saved my bacon on a bunch of occasions already (including tracking down and fixing that aforementioned last minute pre-launch bug). Our good buddies in the IT department, especially, did a ton of work to get a whole new development, testing and production infrastructure in place for us, so a big thanks to Peter M., Bruce D., Sarah, Larissa and all those folks. You guys and gals rock.

Also, our project manager Louise, designer Tyler, WGBH Online Director Darleen and all of our patient content producers were great to work with under the sometimes-trying circumstances. Finally, but not leastly, our former director Bruce K. and my old buddy and our former designer Peter L. (note: WGBH apparently has a rule about employing a large number of guys named “Peter”) played big roles early on in the process.

There were also any number of outside folks who also helped out at different stages, including Drupal-gods Robert Douglass and Moshe Weitzman and the fine folks at Lullabot. Of course, there’s also all the faceless folks in the Drupal community who contribute modules, create patches and document all sort of helpful things. We love open source!

Whew! See, lots of people have contributed here.

Now, of course, the real fun begins: a full blown overhaul of all of WGBH.org, including new information architecture, look and feel and, of course, a complete port of, well, everything to Drupal.

Should be no sweat!

Sadly, though, unlike for the Apollo astronauts, there will be no ticker tape parade. Maybe next time…!