Downton Abbey Meets Drupal: Building Websites for Users Like You

Public media outlets tend to have high profiles and limited budgets. They also tend to have established online tools and systems that need to be preserved, upgraded – and occasionally shoehorned – into their new projects. Many have found Drupal to be a platform that balances their needs and their budgets. Using case studies from WETA in Washington, DC, and SCETV in South Carolina, we’ll talk about the tools that are available, as well as the opportunities and challenges that come with using Drupal for this market segment and others like it. We’ll discuss how these organizations have leveraged both the Drupal and public media networks to make their projects successful. You will hear about tools and strategies that will help make projects for any organization with similar needs a success including:

• Ways to manage expectations and budgets on projects.
• How you can engage non-Drupal communities to support a Drupal project.
• Considerations about when to do work with in-house staff vs. hiring outside help.
• Balancing automation with flexibility.
• Staging projects so that legacy systems don’t break your budget (or just plain break) on the first day.

This session will be light on technical detail and heavy on strategy, and will be of particular interest to nonprofit professionals, communications staff, and site managers who have large expectations and limited budgets.