3. Web Developer for
College of Sciences
Graduate Student at
Georgia State University
Twitter - @esembrat
http://ericsembrat.com
GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
Eric Sembrat
4. GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
Game Plan
5. Our plan tonight is simple:
1. The Problem
2. The Research
3. The Plan
4. The Product
5. The Future
6. Questions? Comments?
GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
Game Plan
6. GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
The Problem
7. Scene: College of Sciences: Deans Office.
The original Digital Asset Management
(DAM) system was composed of:
• All assets located on a Shared
Network Drive.
• Stored in various file formats.
• No metadata present.
GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
Setting the Stage
8. Metadata was available in two ways:
• On paper.
• Photo releases, student names.
• With Personnel.
• Memory of events, locations, etc.
It just was not being utilized.
GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
Metadata
9. Files were stored using multiple image
formats:
• .CR2
• .TIF
• .JPG/.PNG
Lossless formats ended up hampering
OS photo preview capabilities.
GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
File Formats
10. GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
Nutshell
Complexity of
Asset Access
No Preset
Standardizations
Haphazard Storage
Specifications
A Mess
11. When I started work at Georgia Tech in
July 2012, I devoted my free time to
planning out a solution to this problem.
The concept was simple:
• Can’t this DAM be managed via
software?
• Can I make the software more flexible
than what the campus offers?
GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
The Goal
12. GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
The Research
13. Before diving into building a system from
the ground up, it would make sense to
look at existing systems.
ResourceSpace showed up as one of the
few open source solutions that were
flexible and feature-complete.
Most software was fairly limited.
GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
Reinvent the Wheel?
14. GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
ResourceSpace
15. However, ResourceSpace wasn’t as slick
as I was hoping for.
The ease of customization and design I
had become accustomed to in Drupal
was non-existent.
Moreover, the plugin community in
ResourceSpace is slim-to-none.
GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
Researching
16. Moreover, limited use-case tests with the
target audience showed that the system,
workflow, upload process, and language
was all unwieldy.
Rather than hacking together changes
that would not be scalable to upgrades, I
thought:
“Why not build this in Drupal?”
GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
Usability
17. GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
The Plan
18. The plan with designing DAM was to
take:
GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
Planning out DAM
Best Features of
ResourceSpace
Drupal’s Flexibility+ = DAM
19. GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
Planning out DAM
Best Features of
ResourceSpace
Multiple File
Uploads
File-Specific
Metadata
Tag-Based
Searching
Batch-File
Meta-tagging
20. GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
Planning out DAM
Drupal’s Flexibility
CAS Views Panels Taxonomy
Content Types Theming
21. GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
The Product
22. GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
Finished Product
23. GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
Finished Product
26. GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
File Fields
• Multiupload Filefield Widget & Multiupload
Imagefield Widget
• Allows multiple photos to be uploaded at once.
• File entity, File entity inline, & File Entity Preview
Multiple
• Allows file previews to appear when editing a
photo album.
• File MIME
• Treats raw photos as Images rather than Files.
28. GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
Photo Processing
Photo Processing:
- ImageMagick
- im_raw
- ImageMagick Advanced
ImageMagick - Basic Photo
Conversions from RAW to
Lossy.
im_raw - Allows raw
ImageMagick commands.
ImageMagick Advanced -
Allows file extension renaming.
29. GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
Taxonomies
Tagging:
- Taxonomy
- Taxonomy display
- Tagadelic
- TagadelicViews
Taxonomy Display - Override
default taxonomy page with
View.
Tagadelic - Tag clouds.
30. GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
Taxonomies
31. GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
The Future
32. DAM has been in place since December
2012, although it has gone through a few
iterations since its initial release.
• Changes to site workflow for tagging.
• Simplifications of views/displays.
• Patches for taxonomy_access,
imagemagick, entity, and
multiupload_filefield_widget.
GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
The Future
33. Access has been opened slightly to allow
select members to download photography
and assist in tagging / identifying.
However, DAM is still very much a CoS-
internal system.
GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
Access
34. DAM also works with video - although it is
restricted to logging and tagging CoS-
uploaded videos on YouTube.
For us, there is no current need for a
video database of raw campus-shot video
files.
GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
Potential for Video
35. One major goal of constructing DAM was
to minimize the maintainability of
custom code.
All of DAM’s features are built using
contributed modules and patches.
Edge-Cases - File Entity Preview Multiple.
GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
Maintainability
36. One future goal for this project will be
transposing the theme to the new
Georgia Tech Adaptive/Responsive
theme.
We have decided to wait on an official GT
adaptive theme, instead of the custom
themes we have set up.
GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
Mobile
37. If there is interest, some features of this
site can be exported for more
widespread-use.
Caveat - Complexity of setup would
require documentation for usage and
server configuration to properly work with
the Drupal Feature/imported design.
GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
Exportability
39. GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat
eric.sembrat@cos.gatech.edu
Contact information is also available on
my personal blog:
http://www.ericsembrat.com