This presentation was part of the FCN-FICM intranet-sharing webinar in July 2015.

1. Shared Functionality on
Department of Commerce Websites

2. Background

3. Background
• We started building our new Content Management
System (CMS) platform about two and a half years ago.
• Commerce.gov was several years old, the theme was
not mobile-friendly, and it was running on Drupal 6.
• Our small team was responsible for maintaining a number
of other DOC Drupal 6 sites, plus a handful of static HTML
sites put together with Dreamweaver templates --
including the Department-wide intranet (internal DOC link).

4. Goals
• Move from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7
• Fully responsive design
• Cohesive look-and-feel for sites managed by our team
• Multimedia galleries
• Web content able to be produced and maintained by
Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
• Efficient maintenance of all of our sites

5. Plan
• (Originally) Central content repository, with several
sites consuming and displaying content from that
repository.

6. Plan
•(Ultimately) Build functionality that would be usable
on all sites managed by our team (Commerce.gov and
other public-facing sites, the Department-wide
intranet, and any other sites that might come along).

7. “Base Theme”

8. “Base Theme”
•Cohesive look-and-feel
•Options to use preset color palettes or fully customize
your colors
•Branding
•Other theme options
•(examples)

11. Drupal Features

12. Drupal Features
•All “Features” -- bundles of functionality -- are available
to all sites using our platform, and each “Feature” can be
enabled or disabled on a per-site basis.
–Structured content types
–Content listings, layouts, and landing pages
–Roles and permissions
•Some “Features” are site-specific.
•One code repository for all Drupal 7 sites.

13. Examples: Reusable
• Most content type definitions (i.e. structured content
type schemas for policy content, blog posts, events,
tools and resources, etc.)
• Multimedia gallery functionality
• Taxonomy definitions (i.e. categorization)

14. Examples: Platform-specific
• Some content types vary on public vs. internal sites
• Some content types are only meant for internal sites
• Some content types are specific to just one site
• Some content types were built for use on a specific site
but intended to be reusable if a need arises

15. “Cons”
• Making configurations reusable is very tricky and time-
consuming...
• Codebase is huge

16. “Pros”
• Cohesiveness -- for end-users and content managers
• Easier development and maintenance -- only have to
build, update, or fix things in one place.

17. One more gratuitous kitten picture