Mandatory Assignment DRUPAL

Yordan Atanasov
Roxana Jula

http://aarhustechsocietyn2kuqfmkl3.devcloud.acquia-sites.com/

Administrator Credentials: Username: admin, Password: default

User Credentials: Username: yordan, Password: sommer11

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Mandatory Assignment DRUPAL

Part 1: Aarhus Tech Society

Introduction

Interview Page Taxonomy

Extra modules

1. Backup and Migrate

2. Login Toboggan

3. Slideshow

Extra menu item

Theme/Sub-theme

Conclusion

Part 2: CMS Evaluation and Comparison

(Drupal vs. Umbraco)

Presentation
1. Usability

9
9

2. Speed

10

3. Effective navigation

10

4. Metadata

11

Contract & business

12

1. Training

12

2. Documentation

13

3. Skills required

14

4. Reference sites

14

References

15

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Part 1: Aarhus Tech Society

Introduction
Aarhus Tech Society looks to solve todays problems with tech education. We impart nextgeneration tech survival, new-age computing, and tech entrepreneurial skills with the simple
goal of making technology and entrepreneurship fun, engaging, and accessible.

Interview Page Taxonomy

Taxonomy is a powerful core module provided by Drupal which allows us to organize data
efficiently. We can categorize terms in vocabularies that can be used to connect, relate or
classify our websites content. An example from our website is the interviews Role of person
vocabulary.
As our websites target audience is tech enthusiasts we categorized the possible viewers into:
CEO, CTO, Entrepreneur, Programmer and Reader which is basically anybody else who does
no relate to the other categories. Drupal offers a nice way to manage vocabularies through the
UI which can be accessed from the menu in Structure-> Taxonomy.

Here we can edit the vocabulary, add terms or edit the current terms by clicking on list terms:

The use of this taxonomy in our Interview section is to provide readers an easy way to choose
the interviews they are interested in based on their profile. This taxonomy is a closed one as we
as administrators are the one who defined the vocabulary terms.

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Extra modules
1. Backup and Migrate
https://www.drupal.org/project/backup_migrate
The first extra module that we used is called Backup and Migrate. It can Back up and restore
our Drupal MySQL database, code, and files or migrate the site between environments. The
module supports gzip, bzip and zip compression as well as automatic scheduled backups. With
Backup and Migrate we can dump some or all of our database tables to a file download or save
to a file on the server or offsite, and to restore from an uploaded or previously saved database
dump.

Using the form above, we can backup our database, public files or all together. The best feature
of this module is that generating the backups is highly customizable. For example if we click on
the Advanced Backup Page link we will be redirected to a page where we can configure the
backup, for example: the timestamp format for the backup, the compression type, email
notifications when backup is generated and many other options.
A disadvantage of this module in is that we need to install another module (AES Encryption ) in
order to enable backup encryption. It would have been better if this was included in the module.

2. Login Toboggan
https://www.drupal.org/project/logintoboggan)
The 3rd module that we used is called Login Toboggan. The module offers several modifications
of the Drupal login system in an external module by offering some features and usability
improvements:
Allow users to login using either their username OR their e-mail address;
Allow users to login immediately;
Provide a login form on Access Denied pages for non-logged-in (anonymous) users;
The module provides two login block options: One uses JavaScript to display the form within
the block immediately upon clicking "log in". The other brings the user to a separate page, but
returns the user to their original page upon login;
And more.

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This is how the configuration panel of the module looks like:

In our opinion the best feature of this module is that If set, the user will be logged in immediately
after registering. Also, that we can Customize the registration form with two e-mail fields to
ensure accuracy.

3. Slideshow
https://www.drupal.org/project/views_slideshow
The second extra module that we used is called Views Slideshow. It can be used to create a
slideshow of any content (not just images) that can appear in a View. Powered by jQuery, it is
heavily customizable: we can choose slideshow settings for each View we create.
In the form below it is demonstrated how we can create a Slide Show view from our existing
content types. (Note the Display format - Slideshow)
One disadvantage of this module is that it has two dependencies Views-Cycle - which can be
installed as a regular module and jQuery-Cycle that must be manually installed in the websites
libraries folder. It would have been better if the jQuery library was bundled with the Views
Slideshow module.

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Extra menu item

We created an extra tab called Gallery. This tab uses the module Views Slideshow. This
allows us to display different custom content types in a Slide Show view which is customizable.
Currently, we display our Interviews in a Slide Show, but it would probably make more sense to
use the module for showing pictures from Events.

Theme/Sub-theme
We used as base theme the Multipurpose Zymphonies Theme developed by Zymphonies &
Designed by FreeBiezz. (https://www.drupal.org/project/multipurpose_zymphonies_theme)
To create a sub theme we followed this steps:
1. Copy the theme folder and rename it to multipurpose_zymphonies_subtheme
2. Changed the name and description and added the base theme in the .info file:

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3. Deleted the code from the template.php file as this was bringing the following error:
https://www.drupal.org/node/1127452
4. Set the sub theme as default in the Appearance tab.

The base theme we used already provides a nice design but for the purpose of this learning
exercise we made some small changes in the sub theme.
1. We have changed the logo and the fav icon of the website by replacing the
current ones.

2. We changed some styling in the style.css file, so our website now looks like this:

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3. We have changed the screenshot of the sub theme as well for easier reference:

Conclusion
Drupal is an overall easy to use CMS with an extensive documentation and tutorials.
We found it really easy and fast to setup and start working on the project.
The best thing about this CMS is the library of modules that can be used, so you can create a
great website in no time.

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Part 2: CMS Evaluation and Comparison

(Drupal vs. Umbraco)
Presentation
1. Usability
When we talk about usability we should consider aspects such as ease of use, learnability and
efficiency. Usability can be assured by conducting tests on the prototype designs with real
users.
We tried to analyze some usability problems and good features from both CMS systems and we
decided to search for other developers/companies that have experienced the same good/bad
issues.
What does it feel like to be a new Drupal user?
We felt a little bit confused by Drupals presentation of features/options
We faced some unexplained terminology throughout Drupal
Not sure about the extent of Drupals capabilities
Uncertain about our progress while performing tasks
Not sure if we are using Drupal correctly
Examples:
After adding a new module via the link in the modules page, it is not obvious that it must be
enabled or configured;
Oh...? This is disabled?? (user realizes installing a module does not also enable it)
New users do not understand the concept of a teaser as a display or formatting type.
Can I look at a manual? (while trying to understand what a teaser means)
What does it feel like to be a new Umbraco user?
From a usability point of view Umbraco is more familiar, as it follows the normal windows
explorer tree node hierarchy and this is a nice benefit, as anyone without technical skills can
modify content without worrying that the design of the site will break.
The learning curve for Umbraco is short but steep. It's different from other CMS platforms that
will set you up with a default template and allow you to drop in pre-built functionality.
It is difficult to say if Umbraco is hard to use in general. We were especially challenged by the
lack of useful documentation and all the potentially useful video resources at their website are
paid.
The administration back-end user interface certainly looks and feels better than Drupals
administration user-interface. Many times we would introduce some changes and forget or do
not see the Save button in Drupal. That way we lost our changes which was not the case with
Umbraco, since Saving operations felt more natural, plus we can use keyboard shortcuts like
CTRL + S.

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2. Speed
To start there are technical differences between Umbraco and Drupal. Drupal uses PHP and
usually runs on Linux operating systems while Umbraco uses .NET and runs on Microsoft
operating systems. This is significant because the language a site is built in often affects the
functionalities, performance and needs moving forward.
Umbraco provides a solid, reliable skeleton that it's easy to modify and adapt to changing needs
while Drupal benefits from a vast library of pre-built modules that have been created by
developers from across the world.
It is safe to say that both CMS can provide fast loading of pages, high availability and scalability,
but there are some scenarios to consider:
Based on our research on a few online stats, the Linux OS and ext4 (most used production
environment for Drupal) performs better (IO) than Windows OS and NTFS (file system).
Common Scenario:
Most Linux / Unix servers are run very lean without any extra unneeded packages or GUI
interfaces and therefore the OS uses a lot less CPU and RAM which provides more allocation to
the database and web server.
Most windows servers run clunky and with many unneeded packages and GUI which will be
using much more CPU and RAM.
Not Very Common Scenario:
Umbraco uses extensively C# which generally speaking, is a faster programming language
than PHP. So if the programming language needs to run a 2,000,000 loop execution of a
calculation, C# will win over PHP. However, this is a very uncommon scenario, the most loop
executions of a calculation would be in 100s and not 2,000,000s.
We would like to conclude that there are a number of more important factors that affect speed
and performance:
Ability and knowledge of programmer(s) to optimize the code;
Ability and knowledge of programmer(s) to write proper and optimized SQL queries;
Functionality required (some functions may take longer to execute in the .NET platform and
less time in PHP platform and vice versa;

3. Effective navigation
Navigation/Menus are a collection of links (menu items) used to navigate a website. Navigations
vary in styles between different website as well as within a certain site. The availability of
different navigational styles allows for the information in the website to be delivered easily and
directly.
Both Umbraco and Drupal provide great features for creating effective and intuitive website
navigations/menus.

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In Drupal 7, you can add, remove and rename menus and menu items/tabs. You can also
configure a special block for a menu and you can specify the default menu to which new items
will be added. In many themes there are at least two menus, the Main (or primary) menu, and a
secondary menu. The Main menu's links drive the main navigation structure for your site, and
are often displayed prominently across the top or side of the site. The Secondary menu is often
used for items like the copyright and privacy notices and are often displayed at the bottom or
very top of the page in smaller text. You can specify which menus are used for the main and
secondary links. When adding or editing site content, you can also specify the content's menu
item. You can specify a default menu for the content authoring form.Each default or custom
menu has a corresponding block. In Drupal 7 there are multiple ways to add Menu Items to a
Menu. We can add a menu item as a direct link to a page or while we create a page or other
type of content, we can specify that we want a menu item pointing to that page/content in some
of our menus.
The overall Drupal Create-Use Navigation experience is good and it results in well structured,
intuitive menus, that are easy to create, find and use.
Generally, in Umbraco the menu will reflect our node structure within Umbraco. If there are
nodes that we would rather not have in the menu, we could use the umbracoNaviHide property
on the document type. There are also some starter kits that are available. They will come with
macros that build the navigation based on our nodes and will give us a good idea of how they
work. We can start by using a starter kit and then just modify it as we like.
To use the default navigation template provided with Umbraco:
In the Umbraco administration panel ( Developer section), there is a menu Scripting Files.
Right-click Scripting Files and choose Create. Choose a filename, like Nav and and from the
"Choose a template" menu, select Site Map, then click Create. You should end up with razor
code that will produce a ul/li menu of the structure of our site. We would plug this into our
template by inserting the macro.
Creating Menus with Umbraco requires more knowledge of the CMS and it may seem more
complicated, while creating a menu with Drupal could take less time/effort.

4. Metadata
Umbraco makes optimizing a website for the search engines quite easy. In most of the
optimization cases programming is not even needed, mostly tweaks to the templates / XSLT
files. For example if we want to add a sitemap.xml to our website we can include a meta tag in
the head of our HTML template, but this may not always work. Google, for example, relies on
the sitemap being in your robots.txt file. Unfortunately, the robots.txt can't be edited from within
Umbraco, so we need to make this improvement by updating it manually.
Dublin core metadata is very structured information about the page we are currently on. It takes
5 minutes updating the main template to include Dublin Core data (title, description, creator &
publisher). This data is easily accessible from Umbraco. We can do the same for the Geo Meta
Tags just add placename, region and coordinates to the template.
There is a lot of meta data out there. Search engines actually look for that information.

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Fortunately, Umbraco makes it painless to update the entire site with relevant metadata and
meta tags.
In Drupal 7, SEO does not seem to come out-of-the-box. But this does not mean that it is very
difficult to do SEO in Drupal 7. As most things in Drupal, we need to install a module that will
take care of our SEO needs. The most used module is called Drupal SEO Tools which
seamlessly integrates a sophisticated all-in-one suite of search engine reporting, analysis and
optimization tools into our website. It provides a dashboard that integrates analytics reports with
links to webmaster tools and vital Drupal SEO modules. This module will also make sure that
we can supply meta tags and other metadata, it will help us with keyword research, link
management and many other aspects. The module will also make sure that we can supply meta
tags and other metadata, it will help us with keyword research, link management and many
other aspects.

Contract & business

1. Training
Umbraco

https://umbraco.com/products/training
http://umbraco.tv/

Drupal

https://www.drupal.org/node/627198
https://buildamodule.com/collections

When it comes to training, we will talk about the tutorials and courses offered by those CMS
vendors. There are many online learning platforms available today that probably offers
extensive training on both of them, but we will look at the training mentioned on their official
website as this is probably the first place you look when you start using a specific CMS.
Umbraco offers some really nice on-site programs that you can enroll to become a certified
developer. They also have the umbraco.tv website with training videos which are nicely made
and easy to follow. Unfortunately you have to pay for both the on-site and online training which
could get a bit expensive.
Drupal on the other hand, offers a lot of online training resources, but for a beginner, the way
those are organized might be a bit overwhelming and messy. Getting to a tutorial requires you to
go from link to link to link and so on. The advantage is that most of Drupals online training is
free of charge, so this might overcome the bad structuring of the tutorials.
Overall, both vendors offers developers extensive resources and tutorials to use their content
management systems.
Umbraco.tv: 19 Euros/Month
Drupals Build a Module: 29 $/Month for access to the full library.

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2. Documentation
Umbraco

https://umbraco.com/documentation

Drupal

https://www.drupal.org/documentation

The CMSs documentation can be easily accessed from both of those 2 vendors websites.
Umbraco wins again in terms of organization of their resources. The documentation section is
easy to use and follow:

Drupal offers a more extensive documentation, because of their big community who contribute a
lot to it, but again, as in the training case, it can be a bit overwhelming it terms of information
structure.

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We should also take into consideration that at this point, Drupal is more widely used than
Umbraco, which also means a bigger community.

3. Skills required
Umbraco Developer Skills

Drupal Developer Skills

C#, Ruby

PHP, Javascript

SQL

SQL

html5, css, javascript, jQuery

css, jQuery

Model View Controller

Modules and The hook system

RazorEngine

Drush command line tool

The skills required for Umbraco and Drupal are of the same complexity more or less. However
after working with both of those CMS vendors, Drupal is definitely faster to set up and start
using. This is an advantage for beginner developers.
Choosing a CMS could also come down to the skills required as some developers would choose
the one that uses the language they are proficient in. Unfortunately this is not a good approach
and they should take into consideration many more facts besides the programming language
required.

4. Reference sites

Both Umbraco and Drupal showcase some big reference sites as seen in the pictures above.
Overall Umbraco does a better job at selling their CMS and having a portfolio with big names
like Microsoft, Peugeot, Vogue and others definitely gives them a more professional feeling.
Drupal has a more extensive portfolio with featured and community projects.

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References
https://groups.drupal.org/node/218959
http://www.bluegrassdigital.com/blog/2012/september/21/umbraco-vs-wordpress-cms-whichto-choose/References
http://www.liquidprint.com/blog/drupal-or-umbraco-which-cms-should-my-business-use.aspx
http://www.comentum.com/php-vs-asp.net-comparison.html
https://www.drupal.org/documentation/modules/menu
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14911418/can-i-create-customizable-menus-in-umbraco
https://cultiv.nl/blog/seo-optimizing-in-umbraco/
https://www.drupal.org/project/seotools
https://www.drupal.org/documentation/modules/taxonomy
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2825290/what-are-the-skills-a-drupal-developer-needs
http://umbraco-home.blogspot.dk/2012/08/umbraco-developers-required-skills.html
http://vschart.com/compare/umbraco/vs/drupal
https://www.drupal.org/case-studies
https://umbraco.com/why-umbraco#caseStudies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQpK_WLlaCU (Drupal Tutorial to create a subtheme)
https://www.drupal.org/node/1127452

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