DrupalCamp Ottawa 2014 - Grape Vine Case Study

Grape Vine Case Study: DrupalCamp 2014


CASE STUDYRelaunching Grapevine.ca on Drupal


THE OBLIGATORY “ABOUT ME” SLIDE

● I’m James King (Hi!)● CTO Fenix Solutions Inc

● Since 2001● Drupal since 2009

● Since 1990!● One of Ottawa’s original Internet businesses

Dude, get on with it...

Fenix

Grape Vine


● Perl codebase. Over 10 years old

● Extremely limited administrative functions

● No CMS functions at all

● Extremely expensive media hosting

● Users could not self-manage their own listings

● Over 10,000 unique visitors a month in the busy season

THE “BEFORE”...back when the Spice Girls roamed the earth


● Time● Budget

● Needed CMS● Users/Permissions/Access to Content● Versioning and Workflow● Media Handling

WHY DRUPAL?Or “why not [Insert Framework Here]?”

The Big Ones

The Other Big Ones


● How generic is your requirement?

● Does a contrib module do what you need it to do… I mean, REALLY.

● Does the module have an module.api.inc file? Was it meant to be extended?

● Is the module being maintained? If not, do you have the time/inclination to step in?

● What about the UX?

CUSTOM vs CONTRIBCue the nerdy slap fights


● How business-specific are your requirements?

● Are you SURE there isn’t a contrib module that does what you need?

● Have you figured out a caching strategy?

● Are you going to have to build an admin UI? Are you going to have to integrate with Views?

● Are you prepared for the extra QA/QC?

CUSTOM vs CONTRIBNot the face!


● Originally tried the print module

● 10 years of kruft and bizarre display logic to deal with

● Complex multi-page layout with highly variable content

● Converting HTML to PDF was far too limited

● Not a feature we had planned to spend so much time on

PDF FEATURE SHEETSFinally, some real-world examples!


● Workbench Moderation worked out really well… until we implemented a multi-step sign-up process (CTools Multistep Wizard)

● By design, WBM wants to create a new revision on every node_save.

● Luckily WBM is implemented well. We were able to set properties on node object before save so it would save to current version.

MODERATED CONTENTI should write a blog post about this one


● OpenLayers worked great… until we imported all 4000 listings

● Views caching made it worse. Too many unique result sets, too many points.

● Reasonable performance limited map view to 30 points at a time

● Removed OpenLayers/Views entirely. Talked directly to Google Maps API.

MAPPINGYay OpenLayers! Booooo OpenLayers...


● Originally used the Statistics module

● Switched to GA API, pulls stats per listing

Sample Code: https://gist.github.com/jmk1ng/9442895

GOOGLE ANALYTICSSomething, something, NSA

https://gist.github.com/jmk1ng/9442895


● Realtors® are very keen to mass-solicit Grape Vine clients

● No generic solution to this very specific problem

● Can’t blindly block messages from agents as many are legit and welcome

SPAM!If only it were just penis pills...


● Couldn’t use Feeds or Migrate - data needed massive cleansing

● Needed to limit downtime as much as possible

● 10 years of ad-hoc formatting to support/cleanse

Sample Code: https://gist.github.com/jmk1ng/9536525

CONTENT MIGRATIONLike a matted rescue puppy

https://gist.github.com/jmk1ng/9536525


● Single Linux VPS

● Dual core CPU

● 8GB of RAM

● APC, Memcache (97% hit rate)

● 50GB Disk

● Amazon S3 for Media, New Relic for Monitoring

HOSTING + PERFORMANCEIf at first you don’t succeed, add more RAM


✓ Workbench Moderation✓ Geofield✓ Geocoder✓ Storage API✓ Memcache✓ Views

SUMMING IT UPLess is often more

47 Contrib Modules

7 Custom Modules

● Grape Vine Forms● Grape Vine Listings● Grape Vine Alerts● Grape Vine PDF

● Grape Vine Invoice● Grape Vine Dashboard● Grape Vine Data Export

× Panels× Display Suite× Context× WYSIWYG× Solr (yet)


● Multilingual listings!● Mobile-first, responsive search experience

THE FUTUREFaster, Better, Stronger


[email protected]@jmk1ng

QUESTIONS?Before you ask: boxer-briefs

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]


Technology

DrupalCamp Ottawa 2014 - Grape Vine Case Study