Patrick Johanneson: Brandon University (Case Study)

A study of some of the challenges encountered, and solutions discovered, in moving the Brandon University websites from IIS/ASP to WordPress. Presented by Patrick Johanneson at WordCamp Toronto: Developers 2012.

Transcript

1. Patrick Johanneson • 1st dynamic webpage: a Perl script to select a restaurant for lunch • 1st WordPress experience: moving my blog from Blogger to self-hosted WP • B. Sc. 1994, Computer Science major • Worked in IT at BU since Jan. 1994 • Involved with 1st web server at BU in 1996(ish)
2. The Big Move
3. Wayback - 1997
4. Wayback - 2000
5. Wayback - 2001
6. Wayback - 2007
7. Today (well, last week)
8. Faculty Homepage
9. Department Homepage
10. Some of the plugins we use • Gravity Forms • page fold list (forked because project was no longer updated) • Quick Page/Post Redirect • Role Scoper • Tribe Events (on test) • Email Address Encoder • Post Expirator
11. Navigation: Old vs new • “Phone-book” navigation evolved organically, as a result of internal pressures and HIPPOs • Sample URL: /academic/arts/departments /anthropology • Goal-based navigation developed with prospective students in mind • Sample URL: /anthropology
12. Navigation Every site has a simple URL /science, /physics, /itservices, /helpdesk, /alumni Some sites have “parents” eg: /physics has /science as its parent site This is accomplished using the WP options table, and maintained with a custom plugin
13. BU-Nav plugin – Site Parent component • PLUGINS/bu-nav/parent.php contains the code that sets the site parent; let's have a look at that now
14. Breadcrumbs • Breadcrumbs are generated by PLUGINS/bu- nav/breadcrumbs.php
15. Contact info • Contact information is set site-by-site • If a site doesn't have contact info set, then its parent's contact info is set • If the parent[s] don't have any contact info, then the overall BU information is used • If that isn't set, then a default is used • This is handled by PLUGINS/bu- nav/contactinfo.php
16. Homepages – News and Events • News and Event listings on homepages are handled by THEMES/brandonu/bu_customizations/news- events.php (which is include()d in functions.php)
17. On the horizon • Switch option code to use Options API (get_option(), set_option(), etc) • Moving events to Tribe events system • New Prospective Students site
18. Questions? Comments?