Why Drupal 8 Is a Game Changer for Higher Education
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Drupal 8 is a transformative content management system for higher education, offering institutions a unified platform to enhance their digital strategies. It aims to integrate various campus needs while improving efficiency and reducing costs through shared resources and standardized practices. The upgrade presents both opportunities for enhanced functionality and challenges in coordination and migration from previous versions.
Why Drupal 8 Is a Game Changer for Higher Education
- 1. Why Drupal 8 is a Game Changer for Higher Education September 9, 2015
- 2. Why Drupal 8 is a Game Changer for Higher Education → Chris Hartigan, VP Higher Education, Acquia → John Kealy, Website Support Manager, UCSF → Chris Miller, Solutions Architect, Acquia
- 3. What is Drupal 8? → The next release of the most popular content management system in higher education → An evolved digital platform that institutions can use to deliver exceptional online experiences to all constituents → A reason to get really excited about the future of digital at your school!
- 4. Main .EDU Colleges Departments Admissions Alumni Faculty Students Community What Does the Institution of Tomorrow Look Like, Digitally? → Integrated? → Branded? → Centralized? → Controlled (Governance)? → Optimized? → (More) Cost Effective? → Seamless experience?
- 5. What Does the Institution of Tomorrow Look Like, Digitally?
- 7. Today’s Reality? 19 Schools & Colleges 12 Brand Experiences 6 CMS SoluCons (Integrated? Centralized? OpCmized? Cost effecCve? Seamless experience?)
- 8. Digital is the Next Enterprise Platform on Campus → Payroll → HRM → Financial Aid → Student Information → Portal → LMS → CRM → Digital Distributed Enterprise 1970’s 1980’s 1990’s 1990’s Early 2000’s Mid / Late 2000’s Late 2000’s 2015…
- 9. Why Drupal 8 is a Game Changer for Higher Education Drupal 8 represents an extraordinary opportunity for colleges and universities. It provides institutions with the ability to drive an enterprise digital strategy from a single, centralized platform that can support all campus requirements.
- 10. Why Drupal 8 is a Game Changer for Higher Education → John Kealy, Website Support Manager, UCSF
- 11. Plan for Success and Level Up → Upgrade provides a clean slate → Improve your business process → Reach out to business partners to plan → Effective planning gains economies of scale
- 12. UCSF’s Drupal 6 Hosting → Very little community coordination → No cross campus sharing of code → All sites were custom builds § Costly ($15,000 -$150,000 per site build) § Difficult to maintain (full time employee to manage > 40 sites) → No hosting intake process
- 13. Service Improvements → Monthly Drupal Users Group meetings (2012) → Better Coordination between schools and central IT (Summer 2012) → Standard Install package (Winter 2013) → Self service site request form (Winter 2013)
- 14. UCSF Drupal Hosting Growth 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 (est) Sites Created 0 0 309 194 324 Starter Kits Site Built 0 0 215 135 228 Sites Hosted 26 59 493 609 933 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000
- 15. UCSF Drupal Hosting Costs 2011 2012 2013 2014 Number of sites 26 59 493 609 Platform Provider Cost $34,000 $84,000 $108,500 $100,000 Approximate FTE Cost $80,000 $160,000 $240,000 $320,000 Hosting Total $114,000 $244,000 $348,500 $420,000 Cost/Site $4,385 $4,136 $707 $690
- 16. Why Not Coordinate in Drupal 7? → Everyone has existing approach § Changes to current stack are hard § Creates winners and losers on decisions → Current sites still need TLC
- 17. Advantages of Planning for Drupal 8 → We are all in planning stage for 8 → All need to develop Drupal 8 distributions → Drupal 8 improvements disrupt current approaches → No winners and losers on architecture choices → Drupal 8 lifespan 6-10 years (more time for ROI)
- 18. Planning For Drupal 8: Goals → Provide a useful service → Save UC time and money → Create more secure webhosting environment → Standardize development practices § Create shared best practices § Create shared stack of modules/functionality § Develop talent pool with common skills
- 19. Planning For Drupal 8: Challenges → Cross UC coordination → Building scalable governance/coordination § Making joint decisions § Coming up with common funding → Building scalable architecture → Creating a flexible central “stack”
- 20. Why Drupal 8 is a Game Changer for Higher Education → Chris Miller, Solutions Architect, Acquia
- 21. Drupal 8: ~6 Critical Issues Left!
- 22. Drupal 8 Benefits Everyone… → Content Authors → Site Builders → Developers → Designers → End Users
- 23. Drupal8.edu/platform → Enable centralized development teams § Common features and distributions → Empower distributed content creation → Create Once, Publish Everywhere (COPE) → Mobile & Services → Multilingual & Localization → 508 Compliance
- 24. Drupal 8: Opportunities → Enhanced functionality included in Drupal core § New theming framework § Mobile first § Improved administrative and publishing experiences § Native multilingual § Robust configuration management → New innovations will occur in D8 § New features and functionality § Enhancements to core § New modules → Performance improvements § Improved caching strategy → Developer resource onboarding made easier; more accessible § Ability to build a team more quickly § New architecture allows PHP or Object Oriented developers to learn Drupal more easily § Front end development adopts a more common standard
- 25. Drupal 8: Challenges → Rebuilt Drupal 8 codebase requires developer lead time → Theming, while simplified, is different → Waiting for “Contrib” to port modules to Drupal 8 → Some migration required to move from Drupal 6 & 7
- 26. Why Drupal 8 is a Game Changer for Higher Education September 9, 2015