One of the key challenges when planning a Drupal project is that there are many moving parts. Drupal allows you to quickly and easily build a wide variety of web sites, from simple blog sites to extremely complex sites that integrate with other systems. In order to maximize what Drupal can do for you, you need to plan. This year at Capital Camp and Gov Days, we walked through our planning process for a typical Drupal redesign project. Our session covered: Ways to expedite the planning process with templates. How to define the scope of your project and create a collaborative document to track tasks and ownership of each task. How to provide clear direction to your team during the build process. How to monitor and be accountable for all the moving parts of a Drupal project. We also walked everyone through our sitebuild worksheet where we document our: Content Types Modules Taxonomy Terms Views Blocks Content Migration QA

1. BALANCE INTERACTIVE | 8136 Old Keene Mill Road, Suite A-207, Springfield VA 22152 | T: 703.451.8675 | F: 703.783.0392 | www.balanceinteractive.com
Your Drupal Sitebuild: Plan or
Perish!
July 31, 2014

2. BALANCE INTERACTIVE | 8136 Old Keene Mill Road, Suite A-207, Springfield VA 22152 | T: 703.451.8675 | F: 703.783.0392 | www.balanceinteractive.com
BALANCE INTERACTIVE AN OVERVIEW
Balance Interactive creates exceptional digital experiences that empower
businesses.
Our ultimate objective is to help clients unlock their competitive
advantage by realizing how the intersection between marketing and
technology can foster growth.
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3. BALANCE INTERACTIVE | 8136 Old Keene Mill Road, Suite A-207, Springfield VA 22152 | T: 703.451.8675 | F: 703.783.0392 | www.balanceinteractive.com
Introductions
• Jeannette Modic
Senior Web Developer
@drupaljen
• Jill Handman
Developer
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4. BALANCE INTERACTIVE | 8136 Old Keene Mill Road, Suite A-207, Springfield VA 22152 | T: 703.451.8675 | F: 703.783.0392 | www.balanceinteractive.com
PREBUILD PLANNING
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5. BALANCE INTERACTIVE | 8136 Old Keene Mill Road, Suite A-207, Springfield VA 22152 | T: 703.451.8675 | F: 703.783.0392 | www.balanceinteractive.com
Benefits of our Sitebuild Worksheet
• Accountability
• Tracking Project Progress
• Collaborative
• Delegate small tasks
• Use best practices
• Reusability
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6. BALANCE INTERACTIVE | 8136 Old Keene Mill Road, Suite A-207, Springfield VA 22152 | T: 703.451.8675 | F: 703.783.0392 | www.balanceinteractive.comBALANCE INTERACTIVE | 8136 Old Keene Mill Road, Suite A-207, Springfield VA 22152 | T: 703.451.8675 | F: 703.783.0392 | www.balanceinteractive.com
Prebuild Meeting
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• Purpose: Get everyone in a room and put together the sitebuild worksheet
• Team Members: Project Manager, Lead Developer, Usability Expert, and
Content Strategist
• Use Google Docs, so everyone can see the progress and contribute during
the meeting.
• Content Strategist starts the worksheet with the known content types, so we
aren’t in the meeting FOREVER!

7. BALANCE INTERACTIVE | 8136 Old Keene Mill Road, Suite A-207, Springfield VA 22152 | T: 703.451.8675 | F: 703.783.0392 | www.balanceinteractive.comBALANCE INTERACTIVE | 8136 Old Keene Mill Road, Suite A-207, Springfield VA 22152 | T: 703.451.8675 | F: 703.783.0392 | www.balanceinteractive.com
Support Documents
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• Functional Requirements
• Wireframes
• Design Comps
• Sitemap

8. BALANCE INTERACTIVE | 8136 Old Keene Mill Road, Suite A-207, Springfield VA 22152 | T: 703.451.8675 | F: 703.783.0392 | www.balanceinteractive.comBALANCE INTERACTIVE | 8136 Old Keene Mill Road, Suite A-207, Springfield VA 22152 | T: 703.451.8675 | F: 703.783.0392 | www.balanceinteractive.com
How we break out the worksheet
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• Content Worksheet: Content Inventory, used by content team to map old content to
new content and track migration
• Modules: List of modules we are using – can be used after launch to help track
security and feature updates
• Taxonomy Terms: List of Vocabularies and terms
• Content Types: List of content types and their fields
• Image Presets: All the different image sizes defined in the design
• Views: All the views
• Blocks: All the blocks
• QA Checklist

9. BALANCE INTERACTIVE | 8136 Old Keene Mill Road, Suite A-207, Springfield VA 22152 | T: 703.451.8675 | F: 703.783.0392 | www.balanceinteractive.com
QUESTIONS?
Thanks for coming!
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10. BALANCE INTERACTIVE | 8136 Old Keene Mill Road, Suite A-207, Springfield VA 22152 | T: 703.451.8675 | F: 703.783.0392 | www.balanceinteractive.com
• Follow up blog will be up on balanceinteractive.com by Monday with the
sitebuild worksheet template for you to download.
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