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)
   

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2. The Big Move
   

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3. Wayback - 1997
   

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4. Wayback - 2000
   

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5. Wayback - 2001
   

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6. Wayback - 2007
   

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7. Today (well, last week)
   

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8. Faculty Homepage
   

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9. Department Homepage
   

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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    page fold list (forked because project was no
    longer updated)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
    

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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
    

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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
    

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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
    

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14. Breadcrumbs
    ●
    Breadcrumbs are generated by PLUGINS/bu-
    nav/breadcrumbs.php
    

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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
    

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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)
    

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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
    

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18. Questions?
    Comments?
    

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