The WGBH.org Development Blog

As previously mentioned we’ve decided it’s time to overhaul WGBH.org. New look and feel, new information architecture, new CMS to manage all of the wonderful content we have, bigger offices with comfier chairs for the WGBH Online staff - the whole shebang! Ok - just kidding about the offices and chairs! Gotta make sure you’re awake.

The $64,000 question then is, what’s the plan for building the new system? What technologies are going to replace our tried and true circa 20001 tools? Like all good consumers we gave this a lot of thought, kicked lots of tires, flipped lots of coins and ultimately decided to hitch our wagon to the star that is (drum roll, please) Drupal!

What is Drupal, you ask? In short, it’s a leading open source content management system, with a neat logo to boot.

The The name Drupal comes from the Dutch word druppel which means drop, hence the logo. More info on the derivation of the name here.

We chose Drupal for a whole bunch of reasons, including (but not limited to):

• Open Source - Our current CMS is an open source tool and we feel that the whole idea of open source dovetails nicely with the goals of public media, so we wanted to continue using (and supporting) open source.
• Rich Functionality - Of course, open source tools aren’t worth it if they can’t (reliably) do what you need them to do. Drupal has been around since 2001 (version 6 is about to launch) and is a very mature product, with a rich offering of core functionality and add-on modules that provide much of what we need right out of the box, especially lots of Web 2.0 bells and whistles (e.g. blogs, comments, RSS feeds, etc.)
• Flexibility - Being an open source tool if there is something which it doesn’t do but which we need we have the ability to modify it or (more importantly) add on to it using Drupal’s various APIs and hooks.
• Technology - Drupal is written in PHP, a well known scripting language, and uses MySQL, a well known open source relational database. Again, we like the open source thing.
• Performance and Scalability - Drupal is the engine behind many high profile and high volume web sites, such as The Onion, MTV UK, and Lifetime TV, so it has a proven track record of scalability and performance.
• Support - Drupal has a strong and active community of developers and users, available to answer questions and help with solutions. There are a number of companies and individuals offering Drupal consulting, development and training services (for example, Lullabot) should the need arise.
• Public Media Acceptance - A number of other public media companies are either already using Drupal or are in the midst of switching to it (e.g. WETA, NHPR, WXXI) and by other units within WGBH (e.g. The World, WGBH Lab). Being on a common platform with other public broadcasters and with other groups within our own foundation is very advantageous and should facilitate information sharing and application development and support.

Whew! See, once we considered all that we figured we couldn’t afford not to use Drupal!

In the end we settled on the following (warning: nerd terminology coming) technology stack for the new WGBH.org:

• CMS - Drupal, which means a code base written in PHP!
• Hardware & OS - Solaris. Drupal is often run on Linux, but we wanted to take advantage of existing hardware. So, no open source OS. You can’t have it all.
• Database - MySQL
• Web Server - Apache
• Code Control - Subversion

So, it’s Drupal run on SAMP (Solaris, Apache, MySQL, PHP).

In the coming days I’ll start talking in more detail about the build plan and some actual code writin’!

Before we move forward with the redesign of WGBH.org, let’s take a few minutes to look back. After all, those who don’t learn from history… yada yada yada.

First off, a point of clarification: when we discuss WGBH.org here, we’ll generally be talking about www.WGBH.org, and not one of the many subsites/subdomains that you may encounter (e.g. shop.wgbh.org, forum.wgbh.org, lab.wgbh.org, etc.). Those sites and related tool sets don’t fall under my purview. Thank goodness, too, because my hands are full with the “main” WGBH site (not to mention being a parent - but that’s a whole other story).

Now, the current version of WGBH.org - more or less - launched in the Spring of 2002. Do you recall 2002? Does anybody remember laughter? I sure do!

• The New England Patriots won their first Super Bowl
• Queen Elizabeth celebrated her Golden Jubilee
• Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake were still an item

Ah, good times.

Anyhow, I came on board WGBH that summer and took over the maintenance and continued development of the web site and associated content management system (CMS). Though much work has been done on the site over the last 5+ years to improve functionality and performance, the essential site architecture (both hardware and software) hasn’t changed. Here’s what we’ve got…

Back End

• Hardware - All Solaris. Two web servers, one database server, plus development and test suites.
• CMS - The current content management system was based on the ArsDigita Community System (ACS), an open source CMS, written in TCL and PL/SQL.
• Database - Oracle
• Web Server - AOLServer
• Code Control - CVS

All of this is hosted in-house. Now, rich media (i.e. streams, podcasts, downloads) are hosted on a separate, externally hosted server. We moved these out-of-house a couple of years ago to ease the bandwidth burden on our internal network. Te sholw rich media end of things is another kettle of fish that I’ll let Pete Bull talk more about tin the near future…

Anyhow, the ACS was/is quite flexible, in that - once you get up to speed with it - creating new content types and modules isn’t too painful. By “isn’t too painful” I, of course, mean that in the best 2002 sense (i.e. assuming you know TCL and PL/SQL and don’t mind doing a lot of hand coding it’s not so bad).

Anyway, that’s the system that we’ve had and we’ve done well with it, all things considered. However, after 6 years, it’s more than time for an overhaul of the back end. There are much better tools available that easily support all of the Web 2.0 bells and whistles we want out of the box but that our current system doesn’t natively offer (e.g. comments, RSS feeds, blogs, etc.). So, it’s time to junk the (sort of) beloved old jalopy and get us some new wheels!

Front End

Lots of things have changed with WGBH in the last six years which have made the information architecture that was designed back in 2001/02 somewhat obsolete. The biggest change is the growth of our TV offerings. Back in 2002 we had 2 local broadcast channels: channels 2 (WGBH) and 44 (WGBX). Today we have those channels plus one local cable channel (Boston Kids & Family), three digital cable channels (‘GBH Kids, WGBH Create and World), a high definition channel (WGBH HD) as well as on demand offerings. The current site just wasn’t designed to handle that many channels.

We’ve also learned a lot over the years about what our visitors like and don’t like and what works and doesn’t work on the site, so we’d really like to reorganize the information in a more user friendly way. We’ve already done a lot of thinking on how to reorganize things and we even have a plan of attack, which I’ll be talking about as we go along.

Finally, like an aging celebrity, every few years the site could really use a face lift - or at least a few shots of Botox.

So, there you have it. More details on the old system will be coming as we build the new tools and site.

Onward!