The Dawson Way of Doing Things: A Study of Our Path Using WordPress

The Way
of Doing Things
A STUDY OF OUR PATH USING WORDPRESS
DAWSON COLLEGE
@MYDAWSONCOLLEGE
WWW.DAWSONCOLLEGE.QC.CA
JONATHAN PERLMAN
@JPURPLEMAN
WWW.JPURPLEMAN.CA

Jonathan Perlman
• Canadian, eh! Montreal, Quebec
• Senior web developer at Dawson College
• Teacher at Dawson College’s CTD ( non-credit )
• WordCamp speaker
• Member of WPCampus
@jpurpleman | jpurpleman.ca

Dawson College at a glance
15,000+ 10,000+ 1,000+
• Technical / vocational institution
• Centralized IT & Communications departments for
students, faculty and staff

The Early Years

2002 – Unified website branding

2006 – New home page and header

2006 - Department / program websites

2006 - CMS based sites

2008 Redesign

2008 – Unified website branding

2010 – Blogs & Writing in Disciplines

2013 Redesign

2013 – Long Overdue Redesign
• Editing content wasn't easy for the non-tech
• Multi-lingual support was non-existant
• Technical support was slow to respond /
not reliable
• Support for CMS was dropped

2013 – Identify Platform

2008

2014 – Phase 1

2014 – 7 Month Migration
Import
Audit &
Identify
Import
Selection
Build a
theme
Release
Same Design
Reformat In
WP

Migrating…
• PHP + Curl + Simple Dom
• http://simplehtmldom.
sourceforge.net
• Created posts with
wp_insert_post()
• Set meta value with ID
of old page
• Categories
• Keep
• Revise
• Trash
• Wtf?!?

Looking back
• Successes:
• Multi-site
• We moved quickly
• Community didn't realize we were on a brand new platform
• Downsides:
• Redirect, redirect, redirect – 1900+
• Edit two sites in parallel

2015 – Mobile & Responsive

Tips
• Create new ( unused ) menus in production and
replicate it in development
• Don’t revise content in development and wait to
release it
• Leads to editing dev site and production site in parallel
• Beta periods may invite too much feedback
• Keep them short!
• Produce documentation about the overhaul
• Highlight new features and explain choices

Current Status

Web staff
IT
3
Communications
1
Staff & Faculty
200+

Web sites
• www.dawsoncollege.qc.ca
• Computer Science
• Nursing
• Human Resources
• Registrar's Office
• Student Fees
• athletics.dawsoncollege.qc.ca
• library.dawsoncollege.qc.ca
• maps.dawsoncollege.qc.ca
150
25+

Page views as per Google Analytics
300,000
400,000
500,000
600,000
700,000
800,000
Jun-15 Jul-15 Aug-15 Sep-15 Oct-15 Nov-15 Dec-15 Jan-16 Feb-16 Mar-16 Apr-16 May-16 Jun-16

WordPress infrastructure
Main website visitors

Web server environment
• Virtualized web servers
• 16G of ram
• 4 cores
• Nginx & PHP-FPM

Security Posture
• Fortinet WAF controlling the network
• Nginx rules to block common attacks
• Direct access to files within WordPress core
• xmlrpc.php
• SQL Injection
• Unwanted user-agents
• Login page restricted to Dawson College
network

Database server environment
• Virtualized database servers
• 16G of ram
• 4 cores
• MariaDB
• Every WordPress install has a unique
username and password in wp-config.php

Backups
• Virtual machine backups via Veem
• MySQL Auto Backup
• https://sourceforge.net/projects/automysqlbackup/
• Daily
• Weekly
• Monthly
• Send data off-site

WordPress updates
• Auto-update disabled
• Everything is version controlled
• We never push out X.X
• We always wait for X.X.1
• Reasons for waiting
• Stability
• Bug fixes for the major release

Project Build

Project environments
• Every project has minimum two copies
• Every developer has their own install
• Example: www.dawsoncollege.qc.ca
• Chris, Elisabeth, Jonathan
• Staging
• Production
• Push and pull database content via command
line

Tools
• PHPStorm
• WP Awesome Config
• Git
• WP-CLI
• WP Migrate DB Pro
• Custom bash scripts
• https://github.com/jpurpleman/WordPress-Stuff

WP Awesome Config
• https://gist.github.com/ashfame/1923821

Git
• We track
• Core
• Must-use Plugins
• Plugins
• Themes
• We don't track
• local-config.php
• dev-config.php
• staging-config.php
• production-config.php
• .DS_STORE
• *.log
• .htaccess
• sitemap.xml
• sitemap.xml.gz
• wc-logs/*
• wp-content/blogs.dir/
• wp-content/cache/
• wp-content/upgrade/
• wp-content/uploads/

Committing plugins
123438b Adding plugin: WordPress Importer at version 0.6.2
449e092 Updating plugin: Print Friendly and PDF to version 3.4.6
8d2d7e3 Updating plugin: WP Migrate DB Pro Media Files to version 1.4.4
ce0181e Updating plugin: WP Migrate DB Pro to version 1.6
3a37bd6 Updating plugin: Gravity Forms + Custom Post Types to version 3.1.3
91e2560 Updating plugin: jQuery Responsive Select Menu to version 1.5.0
83af679 Updating plugin: Gravity Forms to version 1.9.19
git-wp-commit-object()
https://github.com/jpurpleman/WordPress-Stuff/blob/master/.bashrc

Themes and
Plugins

Themes
• Underscores
• Canvas by WooCommerce
• Twenty Seventeen
• Twenty Sixteen
• Twenty Fifteen
• https://www.wordpress.org/themes

Tips
• In a multi-site setup
• Create your own parent themes
• Go with as little theme options as possible
• In a single site install
• Child theme as much as possible

Plugins
• Admin Columns
• Advanced Custom
Fields
• CMB2
• Disable Emoji's
• Gravity Forms
• Mapplic
• Next Active Directory
Integration
• Responsive Menu
• SportsPress Pro
• The Events Calendar
• TinyMCE Advanced
• User Switching

Tips
• Find plugins with reputable histories
• Use plugins that are supported and up-to-date
• Most are multi-site friendly but some are not
• Plugins like Advanced Custom Fields are heavy
on the database and hard to maintain

We use
WordPress for…

Primary website

Conference sites

Specialty sites

Research grant projects

Web-based applications

Blogs

Show and tell!

Custom Backend Login

Custom dashboard widgets
Custom dashboard widgets

Admin Additions
• Editor level roles for most users
• Custom post types for content
• Ability to create forms
• Allowed the use of Customizer

Admin Additions
• Added User Guides to the pull down help

Contact blocks with Shortcode UI

SharePoint Management

Looking Forward

Looking forward
• Iterative improvements pushed more
frequently
• More web application development on
WordPress
• Connecting sites and sharing data with
REST API

Thank you!
Questions?
DAWSON COLLEGE
@MYDAWSONCOLLEGE
WWW.DAWSONCOLLEGE.QC.CA
JONATHAN PERLMAN
@JPURPLEMAN
WWW.JPURPLEMAN.CA

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