DITA and Drupal: The “Dynamic Duo”… …of content-rich, collaboratively produced publishing solutions Anna van Raaphorst Johnson, Content Specialist Richard H. (Dick) Johnson, Technology Specialist Authors of the DITAinformationcenter™ and DITA Open Toolkit User Guide VR Communications, Inc. January 11, 2012

Our objective Meet the “structured/unstructured” information challenge January 20122DITA/Drupal: Dynamic Duo

What is structured/unstructured? Structured information –Definitive, “official” –Comprehensive in scope –Formally architected and tagged –Usually produced by professional writers –Tightly controlled –Small group of contributors Unstructured information –Produced by (serious) amateurs or SMEs –Large group of contributors –Limited in scope –Informally collected –Loosely controlled January 20123DITA/Drupal: Dynamic Duo

Structured/unstructured challenges January 2012DITA/Drupal: Dynamic Duo4 Unstructured information Structured Pros Controlled Accurate Essential Professional Structured information Structured Cons Lacks “real-world” credibility Information silo Difficult, expensive Unstructured Pros Has popular “in-the-trenches” look and feel Easy, cheap Ubiquitous Unstructured Cons Uncontrolled, unreliable Lacks professional polish TOO ubiquitous Solution: Collaboration! Mashup!

Our New Year’s predictions Both structured and unstructured information will continue to grow The number of content standards, tools, and platforms will also grow It would be impossible (and undesirable) to try to convert all potentially valuable unstructured content to a structured format Our solution is not a magic bullet, but it is a workable, extensible, cheap, and exciting opportunity within and beyond technical documentation January 20125DITA/Drupal: Dynamic Duo

Our solution Structured/unstructured “mashup”: Collocated Accessible Posted to a popular and function-rich web CMS Searchable Appears to users as an “organized collection” Metadata (tagging) plays a significant role January 20126DITA/Drupal: Dynamic Duo

Our model websites Characteristics –Contain both structured (mostly DITA-based) and unstructured information –Rich-text sites: Content is mostly text rather than pictures Sites – (WordPress) – (Drupal) – (Drupal) January 20127DITA/Drupal: Dynamic Duo

DEMO January 2012DITA/Drupal: Dynamic Duo8

HOW WE DID IT January 2012DITA/Drupal: Dynamic Duo9

How we built our model sites 1.Created content in DITA 1.2 using XMLSpy and oXygen 2.Published to the XHTML output type using the DITA Open Toolkit 3.Posted to WordPress using a Python script (no plug-in required) 4.Also posted to Drupal 7 using a Python script that makes use of the APIs in Bulkpub, a contributed module that provides the required web services January DITA/Drupal: Dynamic Duo

Key DITA/Drupal features DITA –Hierarchical format –Keyword metadata –XHTML styling (no significant conflicts with CSS in Drupal) Drupal 7 –Tagging based on DITA keywords –Search (across both structured and unstructured content) –Views (e.g. query-by-tag) –Themes (many are free) –CSS styling (easy to modify) –Book feature (hierarchical model) –Native editor for unstructured content (e.g. blogging) –Blogging clients (e.g. Firefox, Word) for laptop, phone, tablet January DITA/Drupal: Dynamic Duo

WordPress vs. Drupal (1) Common characteristics –Both are open-source projects with a large developer and user community –Both can be used to create a mashup on a single website –Both can be customized using theming and configuration –Both can be instrumented so you can see which pages are being viewed and who your users are –Both platforms support remote blogging using XML- RPC January DITA/Drupal: Dynamic Duo

WordPress vs. Drupal (2) WordPress –Easy to learn and maintain –Mostly a blogging platform –Only two built-in content types (page and post); not straightforward to define new types –For us, CSS styling was problematic January DITA/Drupal: Dynamic Duo

WordPress vs. Drupal (3) Drupal –Powerful and popular –Steeper learning curve, but once you learn it, more extensible and customizable –Easy to define custom content types and taxonomies for tags; good home for DITA content with topic metadata –Drupal styling with default Drupal 7 Bartik theme works well with DITA XHTML content –Once the DITA structured content has been published, easy to build views (see our Query-by-tag views) –At the moment, Drupal is our favorite for DITA-based content January DITA/Drupal: Dynamic Duo

BENEFITS January 2012DITA/Drupal: Dynamic Duo15

Key solution benefits (1) “Best of both worlds” –Structured collection is tightly controlled, single- sourced, easily branded through theming, and was created using the most up-to-date and sophisticated tools –Unstructured information collection can be created and updated independently from the formally published documents, but are tagged with the same metadata January DITA/Drupal: Dynamic Duo

Key solution benefits (2) Information contributors can choose their favorite authoring and publishing tools Powerful delivery platform is popular with users of all experience- and skill-levels Cost is extremely reasonable Solution is extensible, open-ended (Almost any hierarchical content can be posted or linked on the Drupal information platform—e.g. help files from MadCap Flare, Eclipse help, HTML Help, genealogy database, community history, personal diary, legacy blogs, family stories) January DITA/Drupal: Dynamic Duo

Would our solution benefit your organization? Content solution is not complete without BOTH structured and unstructured information Need for a web-based, interactive solution that includes capabilities like multi-person blogs and comments Need or desire to keep development of structured and unstructured content solutions separate The content for structured/unstructured solutions is produced and assembled by multiple organizations that use different tools and operational procedures Need for a branding/styling solution that avoids the complexities of XSLT Need to avoid the high cost and extreme complexity of turnkey or highly customized solutions January DITA/Drupal: Dynamic Duo

For more information January 2012DITA/Drupal: Dynamic Duo19