Connect the Dots: Bridging Silos of Information (WPCampus 2019)
•Télécharger en tant que PPTX, PDF•
1 j'aime•116 vues
Institutions often struggle with silos: different offices and departments that work in different buildings and sometimes different campuses; fragmented budgets and grants that are earmarked specifically for one area; and pockets of information that live in different CMSs and are updated at different frequencies. But what good is all that information if we can't connect the dots and present as much or as little as our users need? See https://2019.wpcampus.org/schedule/connect-the-dots-bridging-silos-of-information/ for more details and a video of this presentation, once it becomes available.
Recommandé
Recommandé
Contenu connexe
Tendances
Tendances (20)
Similaire à Connect the Dots: Bridging Silos of Information (WPCampus 2019)
Similaire à Connect the Dots: Bridging Silos of Information (WPCampus 2019) (20)
Dernier
Dernier (20)
Connect the Dots: Bridging Silos of Information (WPCampus 2019)
- 1. Connect the Dots: bridging silos of information Elaine Shannon Director of Web Development St. Mary’s University - San Antonio, TX Slides: stmarytx.edu/silos Code: github.com/eshannon3/wpcampus-samples Questions: post on the conference website
- 2. Who is...
- 3. What we’re talking about today ● Background ● Examples: ○ Directory ○ WP to WP ○ Events ○ Courses ● Tips
- 4. Background ● Institutional site (www.stmarytx.edu) is a WP site ● We have dozens of other sites, such as ○ CourseLeaf catalog ○ EMS room booking and calendar ○ Banner ○ Slate ○ Law school is a separate WP install ○ Alumni is a separate WP MultiSite
- 5. Employee Directory (old versions) GitHub: employee-directory.php
- 6. WordPress: Bio and PhotoDirectory: Banner Info Employee Silos
- 8. How the Directory Works Set up a cron job Pull in the JSON
- 9. Get law “faculty” posts with the REST API
- 10. Get law faculty images from the REST API Get the WWW faculty
- 11. Merge the data
- 12. New Employee Directory stmarytx.edu/employee s
- 13. WordPress-to-WordPress Integrations WWW Posts Law homepage Alumni homepage
- 14. Fetch the feed RSS Integrations Loop through posts GitHub: law-homepage-rss.php
- 15. REST API Pull posts Loop through posts GitHub: law-homepage-rest-api.php
- 16. Post Connector WWW Homepage Bottom of every Post Center for Catholic Studies
- 17. Post Connector Shortcode Add a shortcode GitHub: post-connector.php
- 18. Get the posts Display with images
- 19. Display as a list Send them out into the world
- 20. Ugly Websites
- 21. RSS Feeds
- 22. Still Kind of Ugly GitHub: events-rss.php
- 25. The Data is Pretty, Too https://schema.org
- 26. Build a database table Course Schedule GitHub: schedule-parser.php
- 27. Get 3 semesters
- 28. Parse the database Check whether classes are available online or evenings
- 30. All Programs
- 31. Options
- 32. Tips to connect the dots 1 Focus on users What information are they looking for? What roadblocks are they running into that you might be able to solve by including one site’s data inside of another site?
- 33. Tip 2 1 Focus on users What information are they looking for? What roadblocks are they running into that you might be able to solve by including one site’s data inside of another site? 2 Don’t duplicate Duplicate content is harder to keep up to date. It’s also bad for SEO and can be extra confusing for users if it’s copied but not always up to date everywhere.
- 34. Tip 3 1 Focus on users What information are they looking for? What roadblocks are they running into that you might be able to solve by including one site’s data inside of another site? 2 Don’t duplicate Duplicate content is harder to keep up to date. It’s also bad for SEO and can be extra confusing for users if it’s copied but not always up to date everywhere. 3 Find keys Look for common data - how will you connect one source to another? What key do both systems share that is unique and consistent?
- 35. Tip 4 4 Find APIs APIs are the first choice. RSS feeds are common in older systems; scraping HTML is a last resort.
- 36. Tip 5 4 Find APIs APIs are the first choice. RSS feeds are common in older systems; scraping HTML is a last resort. 5 Make friends The better your relationship with the keepers of systems, the better your odds of getting data in the format you need. Build connections with people to make better connections between systems.
- 37. Questions and Feedback ● Questions: 2019.wpcampus.org ● Feedback: 2019.wpcampus.org/feedback/connect-the-dots-bridging-silos- of-information/ ● Catch me Later: ○ Say hi at WPCampus ○ Ping me on Slack - wordcampus.slack.com ○ Email me - eshannon3@stmarytx.edu
Notes de l'éditeur
- Hi / thanks / excited Before we start, links Slides Code - full samples Questions - can ask later
- I have questions for you! Who is an introvert? Who's afraid of public speaking? I relate to the Wizard Forgive me if I stumble / I encourage you to try speaking too
- Overall: getting & displaying info from other websites Why? Better UX Background so you have context for these projects Then, 4 real-world examples Finally, wrap up with tips for bridging your own silos
- Our www is WP - easy to add functionality & style Www's main audience is prospective students Alumni, law, current students have their own sites Dozens of other sites: Banner employees, Slate applications Other WP sites: law, alumni
- First integration has moved back and forth Left: PHP only; right: WP but very custom PHP and cron jobs Moved to managed host: IT set up on separate subdomain Challenge: IT had to update styles & nav
- Another challenge: some employees also data in WP Even on the main site we had 2 silos Directory had Banner; WP had bios and professional photos Nothing to link this data together
- Cool thing my job: autonomy / decided to connect Banner was closed; IT guy who was maintaining directory asked what I needed If I could get export, he wouldn't have to maintain directory Only asking for public information IT friend suggested JSON - new but worked great
- Nutshell: cron job every hour, visitors don't wait for data to load WP cron vs. server cron This cron json_decodes the webservice data Now I have Banner employees
- Remember dir is on main; can get main site employees with get_posts() Law is separate - use REST API All law employees stored in "faculty" cpt REST API only gets 100 post at a time, but tells you how many pages Loop gets the other pages array_merge() combines all the law WP employees
- In REST API, featured images are in separate endpoint; add those Then get www employees - 2 CPTs - with get_posts() At this point: 1 array of Banner employees, separate array of WP Now it's time to combine
- Loop through Banner array, isolate email Inside that loop, loop through WP find matching email Soon remove email address - need unique identifier to link Banner to WP Add matching WordPress data into the Banner array If they don't have WP feat image, add fallback Finally, json_encode() the combined array and include on page in a very roundabout way so it's harder to harvest all employee data
- Here's what looks like today - can see at /employees Top: browse by last name or search by keyword Bottom: combined results Image always WP - cols line up; Banner data; WP bio; rest of Banner data
- Next few examples pulling WP data into other WP sites How many have >1 WP site? We publish news & mag on main site, but law & alumni interested too Don't want to duplicate the content, just share it Left side: original mag article; gold stripe: law home, white stripe alumni
- Many ways to push/pull content Before REST, we used RSS / WP creates auto / can customize Used to use fetch_feed() which parses any RSS feed Regexes: strip out HTML like <h2>s we don't want on alumni homepage Take out "read more" wording Parse content to find first img, display that (rss no feat img)
- REST API makes it easier to get extra data like feat img Now wp_remote_get(); RSS set # posts, REST can request any # Simplified version; full inc img fallback & whether to put period after month Now one more way we've found to link content within a WP site
- Institutional audience not seeking news/mag, but benefits from them Gold section is as close to typical WP home as we get - Posts in rev chron Also built Post Connector: shortcode with options Can show a list of post titles like on left - CCS - or can show images Also @ bottom every post, built-in links to more stories; news/mag
- Here's first part of code Circle shows the shortcode supports 5 attributes: ___ Next, if shortcode was called w/atts, we add those into custom query
- Add post__not_in param so post doesn't link to itself Check images att: if yes, show img overlay version like on www home (and only show posts w feat img)
- If images att was no or not passed, default: show list version like CCS Finally, always return - shortcode that echos will be at top
- Next integration fancier Anyone have an ugly website? Reasons... Our Master Calendar isn't pretty; can't link to specific cal or month Took us awhile to get this integration right / tried in full redesign
- First pull events: RSS feeds only way to get data Our staff could create custom RSS feeds based on criteria Unfortunately - our first attempt ended up pretty ugly and hard to use
- Redesign focused on other pages so this one got left behind Lot going on here, talk you through Even with custom RSS feeds, still had a ton of events, tried accordions "featured events" in sidebar to show high-profile events farther into future Big annual events - links to static pages at top - but got better from here
- Analytics helpful! GA showed most clicking back to full calendar Heatmaps showed nobody scrolling to see rest of accordion RSS wasn't cutting it - no way to tell how much data would come through Called vendor - API available! (paid) New way to extract data, but didn't contain everything - like tags Soon found a way to lay out calendar as - calendar
- Current version! Buttons at top replaced accordions Month selection dropdown to show past/future quickly Fair amount of code; check to see query string for which cal/month, call API, tell it date range, calculate first day of month For each day, see if any events; gray highlights are featured, prominent but not separate Also have mobile styling - days alternate colors, easier to scroll
- Always think about structure of data - not just how it looks on screens One way: use Schema.org - vocabulary designed by search engines Basically: wrap each item in single tag, like event here in div Add "itemtype" attribute that links to the specific type of Schema Each Schema has different properties, communicated by "itemprop" atts Events have atts like start date, event status (scheduled or canceled) Benefit: in Google results we have extra event sitelinks (free)
- This time, targeted course schedule in Banner Programs: major, minor, cert As we worked on program pages, thought showing some sample classes could give prospects idea of schedule and whether this is major for them Remember IT friend? Built course schedule webservice too Hopefully you can see just enough here to tell this plugin creates db table to hold the courses
- 2 crons - labor-intensive, 2 jobs prevents timeout 1 pass: save Banner courses to db 2: parse and apply the data This is 1st: checks current month, determines which semesters to get courses for (7: this year summer, this year fall, next year spring) This time webservice contains XML, use cURL & simplexml_load_string Data includes catalog prefix, like AC for accounting; level; course number; name; days/times; which semester; flags for online or evening
- 20 min later, 2nd cron Query to get all posts that have meta key called "course prefix" Next goes through Banner courses in db, checks upcoming semesters to see if any are offered online or evenings Finally, loop through posts: if online or evening, gets postmeta
- Now we have data, what can we do? … 2 things 1st mentioned earlier: show few classes on program pages Math program page: little section shows course names and links Gives visitors idea of days/times and class names for what they'll learn (BTW, this schedule tells me this is not the right program for me!)
- 2nd thing can do: make easier to find nontraditional Popular page "all degrees & programs" see every academic program Cool feature: search by interest, where we've added keywords; search "math" you'll see accounting, physics, engineering science, etc. Some students are also looking for specific schedule not just topic
- Doesn't it make sense to make it easy for people to find options? Added section with buttons for online & evening Became hot spot in heatmaps and lists became popular pages Sad part: lot of online classes aren't offered to all, remedial Even evening classes don't usually add up to full degree So, looked like more online & evening than we really had; didn't want to get prospects excited only to find out they still needed day classes
- Like to share some overall tips from these experiments 1: focus on users - don't connect for sake of connecting Mine through analytics, find top search terms, look at page nav paths If don't have analytics set up to see >1 site at once, either work on setting up or do real-world user testing to see what info people look for & where
- 2: don't duplicate content May be true that visitors to 3 different sites need same info Won't be doing anyone favors if you copy throughout the web Once you copy, hard to keep track of every page in every CMS Don't want to advertise outdated info
- 3: find keys To include info from one site on another, need reliable way to associate data Employee directory: email address Course schedule 2 keys: course prefix & level Whatever connecting, need to know you can rely on data in both systems to stay consistent Easier to use something that already exists than retrain someone in a different system to start adding keys
- 4: find APIs APIs usually fastest & easiest way to access data Use REST API, check with vendors If no API, or it doesn't have enough functionality, can use RSS Last resort: scraping - force connection if you really need to
- Last but not least, 5: make friends If you have good relationship w someone in dept that's the keeper of the system, makes it easier to find a way to connect data Make friends in IT, admissions, all other offices who hold data that's important to your users Don't make it one-way street: offer to share your data, your analytics Forge relationships not just by asking for help, but offering freely
- Remember ask Qs on conf site Also ask you take a min to submit feedback on conf site Helps organizers know which sessions were most helpful Helps speakers like me know what we need to work on