Weather.com: A Novel Presentation Framework

When Weather.com launched in November, 2014 it became one of (if not) the highest traffic Drupal sites in existence.  However, part of what makes Drupal a successful platform is not only its ability to scale, but the power it puts into the hands of editorial and product teams. The massive amount of flexibility is what draws enterprise organizations to Drupal as a solution. The work described here is an attempt to make the platform even more accessible.

The Presentation Framework built for Weather.com facilitates rapid feature velocity while leveraging the skills of their teams at every level. The front-end teams have the ability to implement extensions of the existing functionality without having to learn Drupal’s APIs, all within a highly structured framework that still enforces a consistent and stable system. Meanwhile, the editorial teams can do the work they need to, creating and modifying not just content, but layouts, all within a single interface.

This will be a fascinating session for both content administrators as well as hard core developers who appreciate elegant solutions to complex problems. Matt Davis and Jason Smith will detail out the architecture of this system, how it was a good compromise for this use case from the burgeoning idea of a truly “headless” system, and how other Drupal professionals can benefit from the lessons we learned during its implementation.