Thread by @_fionta

Fionta and ECP talk about caring for a large website. #19ntcsustainweb #19ntc

@EnterpriseNow is a large #Drupal website but session takeaways are for all.

Know your site’s goals and track them. Know your audience and their goals. How do you quantify success? #19ntcsustainweb

Manage technical debt - what is it and when it it ok to have it.

Implement a consistent rhythm of activities.

Anatomy of a large website: extensive content, many content types, complex content interrelationships, integrations with other tools like #Salesforce, complex search reqs, large team of content editors, complex infrastructure/ hosting, multiple devs #19ntcsustainweb

Small sites can have complexity creep, too! Increasing volume of content production, unstructured content, taxonomy gone wild, content workarounds, microsite proliferation, features that don’t keep up, inattention to infrastructure, unsupported themes/modules.

Know your site goals: define audiences, consider personas, define their goals and your org’s goal for them, attach success metrics to each goal, track and report monthly. #19ntcsustainweb

Sample persona for ECP

Persona includes 30,000 foot view, background, habits, skills, likes and dislikes.

Technical debt: doing something quickly without thinking / caring about consequences. paying a perceived lower cost up front but with a greater long-term cost. Can be done knowingly or unknowingly, can be an effective tool at times. #19ntcsustainweb

Ex: not adhering to content structure, using wrong module for the job, running old versions of software, foregoing maintenance m, custom overrides for one content item that makes it look or act differently from the rest, shortcuts with custom code to add functionality in theme...

Technical debt, cont. choosing componemts based on “cool factor” rather than community support.

Mitigating technical debt: starts with clearly understanding the current debt situation, making a plan to align with best practices, and keeping up with preventative maintenance. #technicaldebt

Document what you built and the reasons for making these choices.

When is technical debt ok? Example an event website that has to launch quickly and is a real one off. But come back and address that technical debt soon! #websitebestpractices

Decision log! Document those decisions in one place. The future you will thank you. As will your coworkers! 🙌🏼

Document the “why” as well as the “what”

Implementing consistent rhythms: 1) team communication 2) analytics 3) bug tracking.

Team communication: 26 content publishers at ECP. Group team software - Office365, Chatter, Atlassian Jira / Confluence

Calendar! Schedule releases, updates, bug content pushes in harmony with what’s happening in your org’s space.

ECP uses Office 365 groups - emails to 26 content editors

Rhythmic documentation: software - searchable, taggable, easy to post/edit. Maintain cadence, stay disciplined, it will save you or a colleague one day!! ECP uses Atlassian’s Confluence

Spend time to save time! Think how much time would be lost if I don’t document. I’ll pay for it with time and maybe money in the future.

Rhythmic documentation: software - searchable, taggable, easy to post/edit. Maintain cadence, stay disciplined, it will save you or a colleague one day!! ECP uses Atlassian’s Confluence

Rhythmic documentation: software - searchable, taggable, easy to post/edit. Maintain cadence, stay disciplined, it will save you or a colleague one day!! ECP uses Atlassian’s Confluence

#BugHerd for bugging / tasking issues on websites.

Marie Kondo your site! Content purging speaks joy

Justify removing pages from your website based on page views over a period of time. #19ntcsustainweb

Rhythmic Analytics: Using Google Data Studio - pages report with 10+ views, -10 views, adjust date range. Easier to have a conversation with Analytics to back you up.

Tangent: Values-Based Design - the practice of tying design (and content, marketing, and technology) decisions to their organizational value. Three pillars: research, measurement, experimentation. #valuesbaseddesign

Research: Understand your audiences, goals, and contexts. Tactics: Analytics, heuristic evaluations, surveys, heat and scroll maps, usability tests, competitive analyses, customer/audience interviews #userexperience #userresearch

Measurement: Pick things you can tie back to organizational impact. Primary metrics: donations per user, memberships, event registrations, churn, changes in impact over time.

Measurement: Secondary Metrics: Mailing list signups, engagement, pages per session, adds to cart, views of key pages, social shares.

Measurement: Use analytics, make annotations in your analytics (event, launch, something newsworthy that affects your audience).

Experimentation: Make hypotheses and run tests against a control, use experimentation frameworks like Google Optimize, VWO, Optimizely, avoid simply testing donation button colors - test changes that accounts for audiences and contexts. draft.nu/value #19ntcsustainweb

Choose your own adventure! Who remembers these books?? #19ntcsustainweb

#Drupal7 or #Drupal8 - it's 2017, Drupal is fairly new, but it's considered bleeding-edge and best for straightforward sites. Many common D7 modules haven't been migrated to D8 yet. Your org is redesigning and replatforming, including a content migration. cont...

Do you trying building in #Drupal8 and potentially get a longer overall platform shelf life, or go the safe route and build in #Drupal7, knowing that you may be setting yourself up for another replatform in 2-3 years time?

Informal poll: 40/60 Drupal 7 vs. 8. D8: Spend 30% more upfront, although the cost is spread out over time. Has a longer shelf life but required workarounds that had to be undone as D8 matures. Drupal 7: initial project is on budget, but in 2020 must undertake costly migration

@EnterpriseNow Drupal 8 decision: Cost of a future content migration from 7 to 8 for a large site a year or so later was no appetizing. Deadline was relatively flexible, technical discovery process added clarity. cont.

#Drupal8: Partnership vision (we're in this together!), general excitement around the latest and greatest. Core D8 product was awesome, just needed maturity.

Take the time to do it right or take the time to go back and fix it in the future - after you've lost leads and opportunities. #19ntcsustainweb

Know what you're getting into: know the site's goals, track them, manage technical debt, implement a consistent rhythm of activities. Talk to other orgs, convey problems to be solved, not solutions to be built. #19ntcsustainweb

Presenters: @johnkharrison of @EnterpriseNow, Lisa Godare (#DrupalGrandMaster), Gordon Withers (@_fionta). Session notes: bit.ly/19NTCsustainweb

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