Introduction Need: A dynamic, user controlled website Built in forums, security, and news support Work with existing OpenInsight application Seamless integration on a single off site server Content Management System (CMS) like Drupal is a perfect fit OI and web developers’ perspectives.

Reasons for CMS Highly customizable web pages Add on component support After initial setup, user controllable

CMS Benefits Separates OI from the web Hosted web server handle majority of bandwidth OI web server is a “hidden” server Allows for other web communications

CMS Pitfalls Added communication layer Conforming your website to another’s standard

Communicating with Drupal Using the XML-RPC standard Mutually agreed upon XML-RPC structure Handling incoming requests Updates to Inet_Finalize for transmission of XML-RPC

Security with Drupal Single point of connection from the off site server Updating Inet_Security Working with Drupal’s built in security Using Drupal’s session keys to track a user

Data Integration with Drupal Storing all OI data on the backend server Partial split of data within OI and SQL on the web server Full SQL support on the web server

Why Drupal? Designed with the programmer in mind. – Built from the backend forward, the CMS is very accommodating to programmers. – Huge feature-set with lots of exposed hooks so that you can easily hook into Drupal's framework. – Expansive toolset, JQuery is integrated into Drupal core.

Why Drupal? Good security, with update notification system. Very Modular – Drupal core comes stripped down to a bare minimum, so you can easily tailor it to whatever your needs are. Very good documentation. – The Drupal online community is large and very helpful. All code is well documented with many examples available for just about functionality.

Why Drupal? Role-based permission system. – Easily hook into Drupal's permission system to get very granular control of who is allowed to do what, based on user roles that can be easily created. User registration supports local or external authentication. – Will integrate with LDAP, for example.

Why Drupal? Services layer pre-configured for xml-rpc, but also works with SOAP and others. Very customizable – Well-known templating system, everything is themeable. – Can easily hook into the theme system for custom output. Localization system for multi-lingual sites. – Custom code can easily hook into the localization module to translate content into just about any language.

Why Drupal? Good logging and reporting (Watchdog). – Can hook into Drupal's Watchdog logging engine to log anything. – Can have specific log events ed to a list. Robust web based administration.