(A theme determines the site's basic features, such as colors, number of columns, header and footer areas, location of navigation bars, slide show, and so on.)īelow: A screenshot showing the “backstage” management of ELi’s webpage structure. The tech team then proposed several “themes” from which to choose as starting points. The hosting moves were made to improve site performance and our control over the server-side management of the site.īeginning with the reboot of ELi as a non-profit corporation in May 2014, the ELi management team met with its tech team and discussed what they wanted in terms of changes in site appearance and features. The ELi site was originally created in July 2012 on hosting provider Dotster, then moved in August 2014 to hosting provider LiquidWeb, and finally (we hope) moved at the end of August 2016 to hosting provider A2 Hosting. Drupal is widely used for large, high traffic sites (such as ), and is arguably the best 'free' CMS package, though it is often said that Drupal requires the highest level of technical skill to manage properly. Drupal was chosen over other CMS packages such as Joomla and Wordpress because of its reputation for supporting customization and fine-tuning. Here’s a deeper look behind the scenes, to give you a sense of what we do and why it requires funds to manage:Į (ELi) is a website created using the Drupal content management system (CMS). That you don’t see problems at ELi is the result of that necessary tech management. That’s because at commercial online systems like Facebook-which are using your participation to make a profit-tech managers provide stability and security without you ever realizing it.įor a nonprofit site like ELi, which is highly interactive, maintains sizable archives, and is a fully independent site, we have two tech managers on call to provide stability and security. You might use internet sites like Facebook without ever thinking about stability and security. This caught the attention of the tech team, leading to a search for the problem, and the implementation of more effective ways of keeping bad bots off the site and cleaning up after them.
It turned out that this module was being relentlessly targeted by bots, and now began generating thousands of empty files each day in a temporary directory.
#Drupal development lansing software
Recently a mistaken change to one line of one file on the server side of the site revealed a problem with one part of one module in the main software part of the site.
Actual humans make up only a tiny fraction of the accesses to ELi and indeed of the enormous traffic on the Internet.īelow: Screenshot illustrating that most of the logged activity on the site isn’t an ELi staff person trying to do something ELi-intended.īecause of the reality of today's internet ecosystem, strange things happen sometimes to our system, without warning, requiring immediate tech attention. How often is ELi accessed by a robot or other non-human activity? It's not once a day, or once an hour, or even once a minute it's several times each second, all day long, every day. (ELi has only been successfully hacked once, because of a serious core security hole in the software we are using, and that was quickly detected and fixed.) Robots attempt to hijack our forms to send malicious email, they attempt to hack the site and capture it for use in a bot net, and not a few robots and people wander the net simply trying to destroy whatever they can. Because ELi does not ask readers to subscribe with user logins, our site contains no personal data, but that doesn't mean it isn't under attack just as much as every other website.īelow: A screenshot showing robots hitting ELi’s site over and over. The news repeatedly reports on websites that have been hacked, with information stolen. The Internet is a dangerous place, filled with wandering robots, hooligans and downright villains.
#Drupal development lansing software upgrade
She’s also asked us to explain why ELi really has no choice but to do a very labor-intensive software upgrade in 2018, assuming ELi meets its sustainability goal and continues through 2018. ELi’s Publisher, Alice Dreger, has asked us-the ELi tech management team-to explain why a site like ELi, that looks simple on the surface, in fact requires substantial tech management.
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