Requirements Document USC Annenberg School for Communication CMS Drupal elopment (CDD) Prepared for: Prepared by: Prepared on: August 28, 2009 James Vasquez (javasq@usc.edu) Wendy Chapman (wchapman@usc.edu) Justin Emond (justin@urbaninsight.com) Chris Steins (steins@urbaninsight.com) Version: 3.0 / September 28th, 2009 Reference: Filename: USC-ASC-CDD-REQ 20090828-usc-asc-requirements-document-v3.doc Approvals: James Vasquez USC Annenberg School for Communication Chris Steins Urban Insight, Inc.
1. PROJECT OVERVIEW AND GOALS The USC Annenberg School for Communication (ASC) currently hosts a number of rich media websites to support various academic programs where students gain experience with online media by creating original written, audio and video content. The overall technology goal of this project is to create a standard platform of open, extensible and media rich technologies that the school can use to redeploy existing sites and offer rich media tools for Annenberg can use to redeploy existing sites and promote its mission. The primary goals of this project are: 1. Help faculty, students, centers and programs using online media, delivering knowledge of these applications to students in the classroom; 2. Empower students by offering tools to manage content and rich media with ease; 3. Provide long term e-portfolio's to all students; 4. Centralize user authentication control and provide tools for easier user auditing; 5. Support long term growth by building sites to handle high traffic; 6. Streamline upgrades and maintenance of online assets; 7. Assert less and more control over content; and, 8. Standardize video storage, conversion and streaming. In order to achieve these goals and to create a standardized platform for rich, new media sites Urban Insight will assist the ASC technology team in an initial phase where the Neon Tommy/News21 site will be redeveloped using Drupal and a variety of third party tools. The requirements for this initial project are listed below. While every effort was made to identify features built-in to Drupal, some custom development will inevitably be needed to accommodate every feature request. For a requirement where we expect custom development is required we have estimated the effort to complete the requirement as either Low (less than a day), Medium (about a day) or High (more than a day). 2. FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS CORE SYSTEM R2.1 System interface will run inside of a web browser (Microsoft Internet Explorer version 8 or above or Mozilla Firefox version 3 or above). R2.2 System will use latest stable release of Drupal. R2.3 System will include up to five content types, including story (for all articles/posts), wiki, blog (for individual user blogs) and page (for static content). R2.4 System will automatically generate friendly URLs. R2.5 System will use year/month/title for building story URLs, wiki/title for wiki pages and title/ for page content. R2.6 System will support one-off URL customization for story node paths. Doc Ref: USC-ASC-CDD-REQ Page 2 of 14
R2.7 System will not change existing automatically created URLs when node titles change. R2.8 System will show all published story nodes for date based URLs (example: /2009/06/ would show all stories in June 2009). R2.9 System will paginate all story listing pages with date based URLs. R2.10 System will include a taxonomy for section content categorization, with up to 15 categories, such as "Education", "Local" and "National". Annenberg team will identify content tags before development. R2.11 System will allow users to assign none, one or many taxonomy/section terms to individual story nodes. R2.12 System will include primary navigation for "Front Page", "About Us", "News and Features", "Opinion" and "Arts and Leisure". R2.13 System will include a custom administration navigation menu for authenticated users. R2.14 All pages will include a browser header link to a central RSS feed that includes all content. R2.15 System will use Feedburner for RSS analytics. R2.16 System will include Google Analytics. R2.17 System will track up to 10 additional custom fields (to be identified by the ASC team) in the user profile, including title and USC. R2.18 System will include individual blogs for users. R2.19 System will include discussion forums. R2.20 System will include event calendars. R2.21 System will include a footer on each page. R2.22 System will include primary navigation, an RSS icon link and a copyright notice in the footer. R2.23 System will use Google Mini integrated search. Low R2.24 System will use Network Manager module for multisite management. R2.25 System installation will be configured to support future multisite use. 3. FUNCTION REQUIREMENTS - HOMEPAGE AND STORY WORKFLOW R3.1 Story node will include a custom field for identifying one or more authors of a story. R3.2 System will track user-editable author list separate from Drupal system user list. R3.3 System will auto-suggest author matches from author list. Doc Ref: USC-ASC-CDD-REQ Page 3 of 14
R3.4 System will require authors appear in author list. R3.5 System will allow users to add freely defined tags to individual stories. R3.6 System will track an additional long text field for side bar stories. R3.7 System will include top story gallery boxes for the home page and for sections. R3.8 Gallery boxes will include story title, teaser, author, publish date and image thumbnail. R3.9 System will show thumbnail version of first story gallery image on homepage (see next section). R3.10 Story node will include custom drop-down fields for "Show in section gallery box" and "Show in homepage gallery box" which will include a list of the content categorization taxonomy, to indicate whether the story should appear in the gallery box on the section or homepage. R3.11 Gallery boxes will appear if one or more stories are marked for showing in a gallery box. R3.12 Homepage will include a block showing the five most recent, highly rated comments. High R3.13 Homepage will include a blogroll block. R3.14 Homepage will include a block showing the most commented stories. R3.15 Homepage will include a block showing user blog entries selected by editor. R3.16 System will use Panels module for home page, section homepage and node (story) layout. R3.17 System will include up to three different homepage layouts for arranging content columns and gallery box placement. Annenberg team will identify layouts before development. R3.18 System will include a checkbox on story nodes for "Show thumbnail image" on homepage. R3.19 System will include section homepages based on taxonomy (such as "Local"), that will show up to 35 published stories. R3.20 System will include up to three section layout templates for arranging content columns and gallery box placement. Annenberg team will identify layouts before development. Medium Medium R3.21 System will allow users to post comments on story nodes. R3.22 System will support threaded comments. R3.23 System will use automated spam protection and CAPTCHA on comment forms. R3.24 System will allow users to rate comments. R3.25 System will allow users to subscribe for updates on nodes, comments and taxonomy/section changes. R3.26 System will include automatic pingback and trackback handling. Doc Ref: USC-ASC-CDD-REQ Page 4 of 14
R3.27 When listed, stories will include taxonomy/section(s), the title, author(s), publish date and teaser. R3.28 System will allow a user to split a story into a set number of pages. Medium R3.29 System will allow users to select display format for each individual story detail page. R3.30 System will include up to three story detail page layouts. Annenberg team will identify layouts before development. R3.31 Story detail page will show taxonomy/section(s), story title, story body, rich media (see next section), free tags, author, author title, publish date, side bar story, trackback count, comment count and a comments form. R3.32 System story details page will include a series of links to "Share it" with up to 10 sites, including Digg, Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, LinkedIn and StumbleUpon. R3.33 Story detail page will include a block to show the top 10 most recent related stories by taxonomy. R3.34 Story detail page will include a block to show the top 10 most read stories of all time. R3.35 System will automatically capture new revisions when nodes are updated. Medium Medium R3.36 System will store all revisions for nodes. R3.37 System will allow users to rollback nodes to previous revisions. R3.38 System will allow users to compare nodes to previous revisions. R3.39 System will automatically post to a single Twitter account on new story creation. R3.40 System will automatically post a status update to a single Facebook user profile on new story creation. Low R3.41 System will allow users to post to an individual user blog. R3.42 System will allow users to create blogs posts with rich media (see below). 4. FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS RICH MEDIA R4.1 System will support attaching rich media components to story nodes. R4.2 System will include a rich text editor, for using complex formatting in the creation of body text. R4.3 System will include the following complex editing functions: bold, italics, underline, strike-through, bullets, numbered lists, indents, block quotes, images, links, tables and anchors. R4.4 System will allow users to attach video, audio and images to story nodes as file attachments. Doc Ref: USC-ASC-CDD-REQ Page 5 of 14
R4.5 System will include a field for story nodes for attaching MP3 files (for pod casts) that will display in a Flash-based player for visitor listening. R4.6 System will allow users to attach multiple images and captions to a node for display as a single image gallery. R4.7 Image gallery will appear when viewing story node and will include forward and backward buttons to scroll through images. R4.8 Story nodes with only one image in the gallery will appear without the scrolling navigation and as a standalone image w/caption. R4.9 System will automatically create scaled thumbnails from uploaded images. R4.10 System will include a field for story nodes for one-click embedding of video from popular video sharing sites (such as Blip.TV). Medium R4.11 System will integrate with Kaltura video service. R4.12 System will store uploaded video with Kaltura. R4.13 System will use Kaltura Flash player for uploaded video playback. R4.14 System will use Kaltura video editor. R4.15 System will allow user to create custom Google Maps for embedding in story nodes. R4.16 System will allow user to set custom markers, default map position (via latitude and longitude), size and zoom for Google maps. R4.17 System will allow users to create wiki pages. R4.18 System will include an input filter for Mediawiki syntax. R4.19 System will automatically create links to non-existent linked pages in content for easy content creation. R4.20 System will allow a user to attach slideshows created by Soundslides (see technology section near bottom) to story nodes for display. Slideshows may contain only JPG images and MP3 audio files. R4.21 System will allow a user to promote a story with only one kind of rich media to home page. R4.22 System will include a Zeitgeist trending summary dashboard that includes automatically updated statistics on popular stories, search keywords, common words (tags), top online chatter (by tallying story trackbacks) and time-based word-frequency trends. R4.23 System will embed video and audio using HTML 5's new VEO and AUDIO tags for Firefox 3.5+, Safari 3.1+ and Google Chrome browsers and degrade to standard FLASH embedding for all others. Low High Medium 5. FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS EDITOR CONTROL PANEL The Editor Control Panel is a custom module that would require custom development effort to build but would be built on top of Panels. Doc Ref: USC-ASC-CDD-REQ Page 6 of 14
R5.1 System will include a custom control panel for editorial control over the site. R5.2 Editor Control Panel (ECP) will store presentation information in custom fields on story nodes. R5.3 ECP will include a tool to set contents of homepage blog roll. R5.4 ECP will allow editors to select story comments for display on homepage. R5.5 ECP will allow a user to set the timeframe for story selection in homepage "Show most commented stories" block for last 24 hours, last week, last month, last 6 months, last year and all time. R5.6 ECP will allow a user to set the timeframe for the story detail "Top 10 related stories" block for the last 24 hours, last week, last month, last 6 months, last year and all time. R5.7 ECP will allow a user to set the number of stories to include in the story detail "Top 10 related stories" block. R5.8 ECP will track one or more storyboards. R5.9 ECP will track storyboards for section homepages for each section on the content taxonomy and storyboards for the homepage. R5.10 ECP will allow a user to arrange stories into a storyboard from a homepage or section pre-defined layout template. R5.11 ECP will include story selection tool for quickly adding stories to the storyboard. R5.12 ECP will allow a user to add a story with the story selection tool will using node or story title. R5.13 ECP story selection tool with auto-suggest matching content based on story title as the user types. R5.14 ECP will allow a user to drag stories added to the storyboard for ordering. R5.15 ECP will allow a user to select whether to show a thumbnail with a story on storyboard. R5.16 ECP will include an automatic story suggestion tool that will populate a section or homepage storyboard with the latest 35 published stories in reverse chronological order. For section storyboards, suggested stories will tagged in the corresponding section taxonomy. R5.17 ECP will allow a user to specify which stories should appear in the homepage and section gallery boxes when the current storyboard layout template includes the gallery box. R5.18 ECP will allow a user to drag stories to order rotation in gallery boxes. R5.19 ECP will allow a user to set which blog entries appear in the homepage blog block. R5.20 ECP will allow a user to save storyboards. R5.21 ECP will allow a user to preview unpublished storyboards. R5.22 ECP will track past storyboards. R5.23 ECP will allow a user to toggle which storyboard is live on the homepage and which is live in each section. R5.24 ECP will allow a user to start a new storyboard by duplicating an existing storyboard. Doc Ref: USC-ASC-CDD-REQ Page 7 of 14
6. FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS MOBILE INTEGRATION Creation of the this module would require custom development. Because the site would need to be up and running in order to develop custom iphone integration, it is assumed that this module would be developed after the January 1, 2010 launch of the site. R6.1 System will allow users to contribute content via SMS. R6.2 System will allow users to contribute content via MMS. R6.3 System will automatically create unpublished nodes from SMS and MMS content. R6.4 System will automatically arrange images included in an MMS into a photo gallery. R6.5 System will automatically add music files submitted in MMS to the image gallery. R6.6 System will use a streamlined theme for showing content to mobile devices. R6.7 System mobile theme will be designed for optimum reading on the iphone, Google Android and Palm Pre default browsers. R6.8 System will include a custom, branded iphone application for reading news content on the iphone, for public use. R6.9 System will include a custom iphone application for contributors to submit stories to the site. R6.10 System will allow contributors to log into the site via the iphone application. R6.11 System will allow contributors to submit text and photos to create news stories via the iphone application. 7. FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS EMAIL NEWSLETTERS We assume that the MailChimp email service will be used for email newsletters. See the "Drupal Technology Integration" section. R7.1 System will allow users to send email newsletters. R7.2 System will support plain text and HTML email newsletters. R7.3 System will support multiple mailing lists. R7.4 System will allow users to create reusable templates for composing and sending email newsletters. R7.5 System will allow users to manage list subscriptions on profile screen. R7.6 System will include a block for anonymous and registered user newsletter sign up. R7.7 System will allow user to sign up for various newsletters on user registration. R7.8 System will automatically prune bounces. R7.9 System will automatically handle unsubscribe requests. Doc Ref: USC-ASC-CDD-REQ Page 8 of 14
R7.10 System will automatically send email with as much spam prevention as possible. R7.11 System will capture various email statistics for user review. 8. FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS SEO OPTIMIZATION R8.1 System will include automatic Google sitemap integration. R8.2 System will include custom home page meta tag descriptions. R8.3 System will integrate with Google Webmaster tools. R8.4 System will redirect all requests without "www." to the same path including the "www.". R8.5 System will automatically generate friendly URLs for all content types. R8.6 System will include user-customizable meta keyword fields for all nodes. R8.7 System will include an optimized robots.txt file for search engines. 9. FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS PERMISSIONS AND ROLES R9.1 System will include roles for student contributors, student editors and site administrators. R9.2 System will only allow student editors and site administrators to set "Promote to homepage", "Show on homepage", "Show thumbnail image" and "Show in section gallery" fields on story nodes. R9.3 System will only allow student editors and site administrators to publish page node content. R9.4 System will limit access to layout management tool, user management, views and blocks to site editors and site administrators. R9.5 System will limit access to editorial control panel to editors and site administrators. R9.6 System will limit access to all other Drupal administrative functions to site administrators. R9.7 System will not allow public user registration. R9.8 System will allow anonymous and registered users to place and rate comments on story nodes. R9.9 System will allow anonymous and registered users to subscribe for alerts on new content, taxonomy and comments. R9.10 System will require user login to post to discussion forums, but forums will be displayed to the anonymous users. Doc Ref: USC-ASC-CDD-REQ Page 9 of 14
10. FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS CONTENT MIGRATION R10.1 System will be populated with existing content from Neon Tommy site. High R10.2 Content migration will include text, images, video and audio from site. High R10.3 Content migration will include up to 250 stories, 100 videos and 100 audio files. High R10.4 System will migrate existing site user accounts (but not passwords). High R10.5 System will include HTTP redirects for old content URLs to matching new content URLs. High 11. AUTHENTICATION REQUIREMENTS R11.1 System will authenticate using native Drupal authentication. 12. TECHNOLOGY REQUIREMENTS Urban Insight assumes that the server hardware and all software licenses will be provided by USC ASC, and the ASC IT staff will install and configure all necessary software required for application functionality. R12.1 System will run on server class hardware. R12.2 System will be built using the LAMP platform: Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. R12.3 ASC IT staff will provide a stage server with an identical setup and configuration to production hardware for testing and feature review. R12.4 ASC IT staff will implement a backup strategy to backup system data and files daily. R12.5 ASC IT staff will implement a MySQL backup strategy to backup MySQL data daily. R12.6 ASC IT staff will provide Google Mini. R12.7 Server configuration will support multisite configuration (access to Apache vhost configuration, support for multiple databases and root SSH access). 13. SECURITY REQUIREMENTS (RECOMMENDATIONS) The following requirements are recommendations for the ASC IT staff based on our shared goal of providing a highly secure application. Doc Ref: USC-ASC-CDD-REQ Page 10 of 14
R13.1 A minimum number of local machine accounts will be established, and only for system administration purposes. R13.2 A hardware firewall will restrict access to the system by IP and port. R13.3 A software firewall will restrict access to the system by IP and port. R13.4 Default firewall policies will be to deny all access, enabling only specific access as needed. R13.5 Remote access (via SSH) will be restricted by IP address to specific hosts, and will connect via a non-standard port. R13.6 Physical server hardware will be located in a secured location. R13.7 Operating system security logging will be enabled. R13.8 ASC IT staff will review server security log and application log at least monthly, and preferably weekly. R13.9 ASC IT staff will regularly apply all security patches for major systems components (OS, Apache, MySQL, PHP, SSH). R13.10 UI will develop a weekly security and system health evaluation checklist to proactively monitor the system. 14. DRUPAL TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION In order to achieve the desired rich media feature set for the site we have identified a variety of modules, third-party tools and custom development that will be required to meet the above outlined requirements. Feature Drupal Modules Third Party Tool User Experience Audio (MP3) MP3 Player User stays in Drupal section and story layout Panels User stays in Drupal Email newsletters MailChimp MailChimp (paid) Newsletter sign up in Drupal site; composing, sending, statistics and bounces are handled in MailChimp. Embedded video Embedded Media User uploads (or finds) video to public site; 1-click embed in Drupal Hosted video Kaltura Kaltura User stays in Drupal for most actions Image editing PicNik (webbased; paid) Edit image outside of Drupal (in browser) and upload using Drupal Doc Ref: USC-ASC-CDD-REQ Page 11 of 14
Image gallery development User stays in Drupal Maps integration GMap, Location User stays in Drupal: User builds map code which is then cut and pasted into node Mobile integration (SMS content submission) development SMS Gateway (paid) User stays in Drupal Mobile integration (browser optimization) Mobile Mobile optimized theme/version returned to mobile browsers. Mobile integration (iphone) development iphone SDK User uses separate iphone applications to read and contribute news. Multimedia slideshows development Soundslides (desktop for Win/Mac; paid) User creates slideshow using desktop software and then attaches and embeds media in Drupal RSS Analytics Feedburner Feedburner (free) RSS analytics viewable in Google Analytics Storyboards Panels, custom development User stays in Drupal Wikis Book, wikitools, freelinking, Prepopulate User stays in Drupal Zeitgeist dashboard development User stays in Drupal 15. PROJECT RISKS Any technology development project entails certain risks. During the requirements gathering process Urban Insight asked various stakeholders about what risks they could foresee in rolling out Drupal as a core technology component for support of academic programs. This risk analysis section is a summary of those findings. Urban Insight has worked to formulate a strategy to help mitigate these risks from the outset of the project. By recognizing the risks from the start of the project the project team can act to control these risks during the development process and operations and thus reduce their impact on the quality of the system. Risk: The University funding and hiring freeze creates budget constrains for the project. Doc Ref: USC-ASC-CDD-REQ Page 12 of 14
By design Drupal is very modular. It is possible to build out the core system and key, critical and internal components first and roll out additional functionality in later phases, as funding permits. Risk: Scope creep and a lack of project focus creates delays in development and deployment. Scope creep can best be mitigated by conducting robust requirements gathering and creating a specific, thorough and detailed outline of all project requirements prior to development. While additional modifications identified after development has started can be worked into the project, they are best left to a follow-up phase after launch. In addition, Urban Insight suggests using the Basecamp project management tool which helps streamline communication from stakeholders, track key schedule milestones and assign action items and follow-ups to stakeholders. Risk: The complexity of the rich media in the project makes it difficult to meet the University's requirement that all academic assets can be rebuilt seven days after a disaster. Urban Insight suggests working with the USC ASC IT team to create a disaster recovery plan that would outline all of the steps needs to be taken to bring the system back up following physical damage to the server hardware. From this checklist we can identify additional recommendations for system enhancements and backup solutions to ensure a fast recovery time. Also, Urban Insight suggests that UI and USC ASC IT team conducts a twice annual disaster recovery test where a failure is simulated and the team attempts to follow the checklist to rebuild the system on backup hardware. Risk: The system is hard to use and thus a frustration to students. Good usability is critical to the success and buy-in of any kind of technology online or off. Urban Insight suggests running a series of usability tests prior to launch with real USC ASC students. Each tester will be given a list of tasks to complete related to common editorial processes, such as posting a story, embedding a slideshow, adding a pod cast, etc. We would watch each student attempt to complete the checklist and identify any common challenges encountered by users. At the conclusion of the test Urban Insight would prepare a list of recommended system changes addressing the issues identified in the usability test. Risk: Missing the launch date will impact usage over a semester. Because of the semester nature of courses at USC, a missed launch date could delay the project by up to 4 to 5 months. Urban Insight suggests close monitoring of the project schedule to identify as quickly as possible if a critical pathway item has not been delivered and thus holding up development. 16. MEASURING SUCCESS WITH METRICS Since the USC Annenberg school plans to roll-out a standardized new media platform for several web-based assets one site a time, it's important at key milestones during this process to stop and assess the impact of the platform. This offers the possibility of adjusting and fine-tuning the platform before the next roll-out to ensure that Annenberg's academic needs and goals are best being met. With this in mind, the Urban Insight team asked key stakeholders to identify specific metrics that could be used to determine the success of the project. Doc Ref: USC-ASC-CDD-REQ Page 13 of 14
The metrics are: News21 fully functional by January 1, 2010 ADN fully functional by January 1, 2010 Complete testing of all platform/cms components by May 1, 2010 RSS readership (analytics) Site traffic (analytics) Number of inbound links from major news outlets Technorati rating Number of inbound links in Google index Percent of published articles with track backs Urban Insight recommends assessing these metrics after the launch of each individual site. Doc Ref: USC-ASC-CDD-REQ Page 14 of 14