Presented during DrupalCon Denver 2012, on the Site Building track. http://denver2012.drupal.org/program/sessions/how-build-scalable-platform-todays-publishers

2. Site Building
How to Build a Scalable
Platform for Today's
Publishers
Presented by Dick Olsson (dixon_)

3. 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

4. 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)

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

6. aljazeera.com
Editors

50 web editors

30 articles published every day

Working in 2 shifts

7. aljazeera.com
Visitors

Average 6 million req/hour

(1,700 req/sec)

Spikes 50 million req/hour

(14,000 req/sec)

8. Common Requirements

9. Agile Development

The platform should support the editorial
process

Web publishing is constantly evolving

Time to market is crucial

10. Efficient Workflow

Need to support editors' daily work

Organizations work differently

Sections within organizations work
differently

11. Content Freshness

Time span from clicking publish to first
impression

Minutes makes a difference on the
social web

Being first is vital

12. Content Freshness
Content Delivery Network
Varnish
Cache API
Static caching
Drupal site

13. Scalability

An event can change your business'
impact

Shorter cache times when spikes are
high

14. Security

Exposed to constant threats

Trust is important for a publisher's brand

Information leakage can jeopardize
people's lives

15. Why Drupal Is the Right Tool?
Agile Development
Efficient Workflow
Content Freshness
Scalability
Security

16. Give Me the Modules!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13403905@N03/2080281038/

17. Workbench

Suite of modules

Easier content management

Flexible workflows

Better coherence for editors
http://drupal.org/project/workbench
http://drupal.org/project/workbench_moderation

21. Why Workbench?

Unique workflow per content type

Unique workflow per role

Better coherence

22. Deploy

Framework for pushing content

Automated or manual

Can be used for content staging

Separate editorial and public site
http://drupal.org/project/deploy

23. Deployment
Staging site Production site
Secure network Public network

25. Why Deploy?

Separate sites, faster code deployments

Transparent content staging

Editorial site on closed network

Decreased “hit area” on public site

26. 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

27. 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

31. cache_set('key', $node, array('node' => 1));
cache_add_request_tags(array('node' => 1));
cache_invalidate(array('node' => 1));

32. Why Entity List + Cache Tags?

Refactor faster with better separation

Transparently switch query backend

No more stale caches

Longer cache life times

33. Demo!

34. Are We Going to Release It?
Yes!

35. Thank you!
Drupal: dixon_
Twitter: @dickolsson
Blog: senzilla.com

36. What did you think?
Locate this session on the
DrupalCon Denver website
http://denver2012.drupal.org/program
Click the “Take the Survey” link.
Thank You!