Observations on web solution requirements for Online Media and News Portals, key stakeholder wise and how Drupal can fit in.

1. Web Solutions for Online Media and
Publishing Houses
Drupal to meet different
Stakeholder Requirements
by
Gomathi Viswanathan

2. What makes web solutions for media
houses more challenging?
• The wide range of stakeholders (Business owners,
advertisers, readers – wide range, content
providers/ agencies, federal bodies that monitor
media).
• Requirements / needs / objectives of each of the
stakeholders.
• High level of competition and rapid developments
on the allied technology front.

3. Stakeholder Needs - Readers/ Consumers
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Ease of content access
Intuitive navigation
Need to retain and repeat intrigue reader
Readability across devices
Best in class UI that's trendy and appealing
Faster page loads with good media streaming
capabilities
• Ease of translated viewing in local languages

4. Stakeholder Needs – Reporters, Editors And
Publishers
• Ease of updating content from various devices (iPad,
laptop)
• Intuitive way to post content and relate to sections, albums
etc.
• Ease of setting up and administering content update
workflow
• Ease of promoting content to different sections / home
page
• Ease of updating Breaking News
• Ease of managing Page Layouts and creating new Layouts
on the fly
• Ease of migrating existing content

5. Stakeholder Needs – Business Owners
• Flexible Ads placement and tracking
• Built in Search Engine Optimization Mechanisms
• Ability to provide/ integrate easily with good
Analytics
• Ease of sharing content on social media by
readers
• Ease of integration with third party systems for
content feeds/ sharing
• Scalability and Security requirements

6. How can Drupal help in Media House Web
Solutions?
• Drupal is one of the leading Open Source Content
Management Systems.
• Its easy to setup and get started.
• Its highly flexible and customizable.
• If appropriate measures are taken, it can seamlessly
scale to accommodate large number of visits.
• Each of the above requirement can be elegantly met
with help of contributed modules (the universe of
which is ever growing and improving).

7. Drupal for Readers/ Consumers Needs
• The graphic design and presentation play a vital part in appealing and
engaging UI. There are plenty of out-of-box Drupal Themes
(https://drupal.org/project/project_theme) that are also responsive to
allow your site to be viewed on various devices. One can also create their
own custom design and create a custom Drupal theme to capture the best
of class design.
• Drupal has a very flexible menu system that enables multilevel menu
creation to have appropriate navigate mechanism apart from the
breadcrumbing. Related and recommended content can be positioned
using content recommendation modules.
• There are a plenty of UI related modules available to enhance the user
experience and bring in best of class effects
• Media files from external sources can be easily embedded using modules
like YT player.

8. Drupal for – Reporters, Editors And Publishers
Needs
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Drupal CMS features are highly intuitive. Over and above that, one can extend it
with simple means like using Ease to use Admininstrative Menu
https://drupal.org/project/Admin_Menu, customizing and providing actionable
dashboard
For displays that are collection of articles from various sections, either the default,
promote to home page option can be used (or) nodequeues can be used that can
be attached to views/ blocks (or) panels.
The backend UI can also be a responsive theme, allowing reporters to post content
from their hand-held devices. Using workflow and publishing rules can be
implemented.
The page layouts can be managed as various sections being widgets (blocks (or)
panels), that can carry content as related and the widgets can be moved around,
new blocks added in between. It can be achieved using panels
(https://drupal.org/project/panels). You can further extend it to use Contexts that
allows you to manage contextual conditions and reactions for different portions of
your site (https://drupal.org/project/context)

9. Drupal for Business Owner Needs
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In case the new site being launched is similar, then content from existing database
can be imported either using simple node import via excel/ csv and in case of large
volume and multi source the migrate module can be used.
SEO is highly ingrained into Drupal, by way of ready to use modules that ensure
the basics are taken care. Additionally you can also use the SEO checklist module
to guide through all the best practices coverage
Third party popular analytics like Google Analytics can be easily plugged in using
modules. Integration with social media can be achieved by way of easy share
feature and also using facebook comments. Additionally social media widgets and
plug-ins can be embedded.
Ease of integration with third party application ranging from
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Weather updates
Stock price and bullion rate conversions
RSS aggregators
Ease of extending the site for Online Subscription and Ad Purchases (using ECommerce Modules)
Ease of extending the site to a community with forums, blogs, organic groups like
modules.

10. Scaling Drupal
• Drupal on LAMP allows us to leverage the best of
scaling mechanisms.
• Multiple levels of caching is possible
– Webserver Level Caching
• Default Database Level Caching – Query/ Content Caching, flexible, can be View level, Block
Level, Pane Level, Panel Level, Page Level
• Enhanced static page cache Boost (https://drupal.org/project/boost)
• Memory Object Caching (Memcahce) (https://drupal.org/project/memcache)
• OpCode Caching – APC
– Reverse Proxy Caching
• Eg. Varnish with ESI (or) Ajax based blocks to help as needed
– Content Delivery Networks
• Quick and Out-of-the –box integration modules for standard CDNs are available on Drupal

11. Some of the Media Sites on
Drupal *
CJOnline.com Capital-Journal newspaper (Topeka, KS, USA)
Die Welt (opinion site) (Berlin, Germany)
The Deccan Chronicle (Hyderabad, India)
The Economist (Hamburg, Germany)
The Financial Chronicle (Delhi, India)
Greymouth Star (West Coast, New Zealand)
Florida Times-Union | Jacksonville.com (Jacksonville, FL, USA)
The London Paper (most read newspaper in London, UK)
Mediapart (Paris, France)
Reporte Indigo (Monterrey, Mexico)
Otago Daily Times (Otago, New Zealand)
SavannahNow [Savannah Morning News] (Savannah, GA, USA)
Seattle Times | NWSource.com (Seattle, WA, USA)
Ski Magazine (Victoria, Australia)
Sudpresse (Belgium)
The Trinidad Guardian (Trinidad and Tobago)
Aviation Transport Observer (St. Petersburg, Russia)
Madhyamam (Calicut, India)
The Chronicle Herald (Halifax, NS, Canada)
All About Information (Geneva, Switzerland)
Dailythanthi - Tamil News Magazine (Tamilnadu, India)
*Courtesy - https://groups.drupal.org/node/5100, please visit this link for the full list

12. Related Further Links and Acknowledgements
Related Links
• www.drupal.org
• http://www.acquia.com/
• http://www.lullabot.com/blog/article/beginners-guide-caching-data-drupal-7
• https://drupal.org/project/Nodequeue
• http://jamieonsoftware.com/post/59738699304/memcached-vs-redis
• http://www.creativebloq.com/web-design/drupal-performance-tips-9122837
Courtesy
• https://groups.drupal.org/node/5100
• MS Office Clipart Images
• Images and information from various internet sources
Please note:
Have covered only a handful of possibilities, in terms of the requirements and the solutions
possible using Drupal, it does not cover them all!

13. Thank You!