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A standardized distribution named OpenIvy for higher education-based providers to use in their own digital ecosystem. This distribution will be built on Drupal 8 with Lightning as a main profile supporting all of the necessary custom logic for provider’s business logic.

Roadmap

From a technical perspective, certain steps need to occur in order to move to a new Ivy distribution. These steps are critical to the technical roadmap:

  • CDN Integration
  • Flagship / Example Site
  • Data Channels established
  • Drupal 8.3 release
  • Multiple profiles
  • Base Theme / Theme StarterKit

CDN Integration

The current D8 build utilizes build tools to natively install the UI/UX into each Drupal site. This can become a cumbersome process as much of the CSS/JS that provides a site's brand is put locally into each site build.

Eventually, sites should place their branding assets (CSS/JS) into a CDN that is ingested by Ivy's D8 build. There are multiple reasons for this:

  • Global styling of all sites that utilize the CDN.
  • Fixes for styles can be made easily across the entire network.
  • Less stress on the build and deployment process.

From this CDN, we will need to cache these assets in Drupal locally. When caches clear in Drupal 8, the new styles will be picked up immediately. This will ensure the entire university remains on the same branding updates.

Flagship / Example Site

The current build is stable enough to provide a one-off example (flagship) website. We recommend that Ivy set up a site that educates the site administrators that will be working with the new technology. This site can also expose data to specific channels to display the potential of the new application.

Data Channels established

Each site should be evaluated for which data channels can be provided to the overarching University. This can include events, news, classes, or any other pertinent data that can be housed in Drupal and exposed everywhere.

Drupal 8.3 release

The Drupal 8.3 release will provide native functionality for “sub-profile” functionality. The Ivy distribution should be based off of the Lightning distribution. We believe this is beneficial for a number of reasons:

  • Active support from the Drupal community on issues outside of the education industry.
  • Best practices are automatically put into place for content authors and administrators.
  • Security and performance issues are support by Acquia and the community more actively in Lightning.
  • Easier deployment model and management of data.

Multiple profiles

The Ivy distribution should have numerous profiles that provide different collections of functionality out of box for each potential user. These profiles will provide functionality that’s specifically tailored to:

  • Faculty-based Sites
  • Student-based Sites
  • Global Sites
  • School Specific Sites

These profiles should also stem off of Ivy as a subprofile so that they inherently take on default functionality but customize their configuration for the specific business use case.

Base Theme / Theme StarterKit

The Ivy distribution should have a theme that can be easily configured to a working higher-education site by a site builder with minimal development. Providing a base theme that has a starterkit will allow for users to easily cut and paste new themes into directories and configure their site on a new level.

Code Repository

https://gitlab.com/open-ivy/yale_d8

Resources

Supporting organizations: 
Yale University
Princeton University
Cornell University

Project information

Releases