Why the change to drupal?

zombie67 [MM]
zombie67 [MM]
Joined: 10 Oct 06
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Topic 85003

Is it documented or explaind somewhere why albert/einstein is moving to drupal?  What are the reasons and benefits over the current web site environment that we all already know so well?  I hope it's not just change for change's sake.  

 

Also, is it just albert/einstein?  Or is there a bigger plan for all BOINC project to migrate to drupal over time?

Dublin, California
Team: SETI.USA

Oliver Behnke
Oliver Behnke
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Hi Zombie,No, it's certainly

Hi Zombie,

No, it's certainly not just for change's sake - we neither have time nor a budget for that ;-)

There are two main reasons why we started this effort:

  • We wanted to have a complete redesign of the Einstein@Home project website
  • We wanted to use a proper content management system (CMS) to allow, well, easy content managemant - without touching the HTML code itself

For the first point: if you have a look at the current Einstein@Home website it's obvious that it's neither visually appealing by today's standards, nor is it particularly accessible because of the current structuring of information. First time visitors might be confused by this and we want to avoid that of course. So, we wanted to get a fully revamped website with an entirely new modern design as well as a complete overhaul of how we present information - all with an improved user-experience in mind.

Secondly, the current Einstein@Home website maintenance is cumbersome. Every content change requires a change to the code! That's not the best way to get scientists to add or update content, like blogging about their current work or providing additional scientific content. We needed a way to facilitate that to expand the information we provide to our volunteer community, increasing their insight into what's going on behind the scenes. Drupal is a true CMS that allows us to do exactly that. Yet it's possible to extend its functionality in a way that it can fully include the functionality of BOINC's stock webpages. Other projects separated their content/science pages from their project management/community website, effectively providing two websites for a single BOINC project! That's something we wanted to avoid. We want a fully integrated, coherent solution and Drupal allows us to do that.

Currently only Einstein@Home is going to use this. However, we designed the Drupal integration with other projects in mind. There's a clear distinction between the generic features and the Einstein@Home-specific parts. The generic part is already integrated in the BOINC codebase, just not pushed upstream. The same applies to theming: there's already a generic theme in addition to our custom theme. Other projects have already expressed interest in this so there might be others transitioning to Drupal in the future. Time will tell...

You can find more information about this project on this page (follow the links at the bottom).

Hope this clarifies our motivation.
 

Cheers,
Oliver 

zombie67 [MM]
zombie67 [MM]
Joined: 10 Oct 06
Posts: 73
Credit: 30924459
RAC: 0

Thanks for the info!

Thanks for the info!

Dublin, California
Team: SETI.USA

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