how to build a scalable platform for today's publishers

Site Building

How to Build a Scalable Platform for Today's

Publishers

Presented by Dick Olsson (dixon_)

Agenda

Who am I?

The project I'm working on

Common requirements

Why Drupal is the right tool (high level)

What modules to use (technical level)

Demo

Dick Olsson

A Swede living in Doha, Qatar

Lead Drupal Developer at Al Jazeera

On a leave of absence from NodeOne

Active core contributor

Maintainer of

UUID (http://drupal.org/project/uuid)

Deploy (http://drupal.org/project/deploy)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2011/03/02/how-al-jazeera-successfully-managed-through-the-turmoil/

aljazeera.com

Editors 50 web editors

30 articles published every day

Working in 2 shifts

aljazeera.com

Visitors Average 6 million req/hour

(1,700 req/sec)

Spikes 50 million req/hour

(14,000 req/sec)

Common Requirements

Agile Development

The platform should support the editorial process

Web publishing is constantly evolving

Time to market is crucial

Efficient Workflow

Need to support editors' daily work

Organizations work differently

Sections within organizations work differently

Content Freshness

Time span from clicking publish to first impression

Minutes makes a difference on the social web

Being first is vital

Content Freshness

Drupal site

Static caching

Cache API

Varnish

Content Delivery Network

Scalability

An event can change your business' impact

Shorter cache times when spikes are high

Security

Exposed to constant threats

Trust is important for a publisher's brand

Information leakage can jeopardize people's lives

Why Drupal Is the Right Tool?

Agile Development

Efficient Workflow

Content Freshness

Scalability

Security

Give Me the Modules!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/13403905@N03/2080281038/

Workbench

Suite of modules

Easier content management

Flexible workflows

Better coherence for editors

http://drupal.org/project/workbenchhttp://drupal.org/project/workbench_moderation

Why Workbench?

Unique workflow per content type

Unique workflow per role

Better coherence

Deploy

Framework for pushing content

Automated or manual

Can be used for content staging

Separate editorial and public site

http://drupal.org/project/deploy

Staging site Production site

Secure network Public network

Deployment

Why Deploy?

Separate sites, faster code deployments

Transparent content staging

Editorial site on closed network

Decreased “hit area” on public site

Entity List

Wrapper for listing functionalities

Views, Nodequeue, Solr, EntityFieldQuery, etc.

Unified output with Panels

Transparently switch query backends

Integrates with Cache Tags

http://drupal.org/project/entitylist

Cache Tags

Backported functionality from Drupal 8

Ability to tag cache entries

Ability to tag requests

Invalidate cache entires by tag

http://drupal.org/project/cachetags

cache_set('key', $node, array('node' => 1));

cache_add_request_tags(array('node' => 1));

cache_invalidate(array('node' => 1));

Why Entity List + Cache Tags?

Refactor faster with better separation

Transparently switch query backend

No more stale caches

Longer cache life times

Demo!

Are We Going to Release It?

Yes!

Thank you!

Drupal: dixon_

Twitter: @dickolsson

Blog: senzilla.com 

What did you think?

Locate this session on theDrupalCon Denver website

http://denver2012.drupal.org/program

Click the “Take the Survey” link.

Thank You!