Posted by: jonathan
on Mar 23, 2012
CNP is proud to announce the recent re-launch of a new website for one of our clients, Truthout.org, a large online news organization. This is the first project CNP has undertaken involving a major migration from Drupal to Joomla!, and it’s been a very exciting process for us! When we first started this migration, we looked long and hard for any technology or process that we could follow to help us accomplish this, but found none. So we had to develop this technology and process from scratch. Here’s a little bit about the challenges and solutions that we found worked best for our migration.
Content Construction
As I’m sure any developer realizes, the content structure and storage in Drupal is radically different than Joomla!, so mapping out each field, what it’s function was, where it appeared, and an equivalent location in Joomla! was crucial. As you can imagine, Joomla!’s default content component (com_content) just wouldn’t cut it. With about 15-20 different fields being brought over for every content piece we used the popular K2 Content Construction Kit to help us adapt in a Joomla! environment. K2’s options like it’s image and media handling, and it’s versatile extrafields options made it much easier to handle content and still preserve good workflow for the editors and staff putting in content. But we didn’t stop there. We’ve created several custom extrafield types in order to answer several specific needs for users.
User Management
One of the major requirements for this site was the ability to have author attribution for multiple authors. This is something that, historically, Joomla! didn’t handle. Fortunately, CNP Integrations has already tackled this problem for another client also using K2. Using custom solutions developed by CNP, K2 sites are able to easily select multiple contributors to an article that are then easily displayed in the article itself. Another factor unique to a site like this was the fact that the contributors must be displayed in order according to the level of their contribution to the article. Here again CNP developed unique capability to adjust the order in which the contributors/authors are displayed. Using this makes it much easier to provide accurate attribution for articles with multiple authors or contributors.
Site Security
One of the major factors in the decision to overhaul the site was it’s security. Before CNP Integrations was contracted, the Truthout site was getting maliciously hacked and taken down about once a week. This, obviously, caused a lot of problems, both for the monetary efforts of the site, and also for the credibility to readers. One of CNP’s top priorities with all our clients is security. With our unique client base of government organizations, businesses that rely on their site for a living, and large organizations like Truthout, keeping our sites secure has been a top priority. To help ensure minimal risk for all of our clients, CNP lays out strict security protocols that start with the basics of keeping every site, and every extension up to date. On top of the basic security measures we implement the Securelive security suite allowing us to take a proactive stance in protecting our site by actively monitoring all traffic, preventing CMS specific attacks, and reporting attacks to law enforcement for further action. Since implementing Securelive on truthout, Truthout.org went from being attacked and taken down every week, to having no successful hacking incidents in several months.
The list of interesting and exciting new features we’ve built into this site can go on for a long time, but I won’t list them all here. If you wan’t to know more about the work we did here, the innovations developed here, or have questions about implementing anything in your site, feel free to get in touch, we’d love to talk with you!
As a Project Manager for many different types of Joomla! sites, Truthout.org is definitely one of the most interesting projects we’ve run across. With it’s unique requirements for security, content, and user management, CNP Integrations was able to employ innovative solutions to help build the site into a successful, and secure portal with the potential to grow in the future. We’re already working closely with Truthout in developing new features to better serve it’s readers. The future definitely looks bright for Truthout, and with Joomla! at it’s core, CNP Integrations is proud to support it!
Posted by: jonathan
on Nov 28, 2011
CNP Integrations has developed a revolutionary new tool that can help you migrate Drupal to Joomla!, giving you the power to migrate your website to a stable, versatile platform that combines the power of an extensible framework, with the ease of use of the Joomla! administrator. With this service provided for any webmaster, you now have the ability to seamlessly magrate, convert, and integrate all of your current data from Drupal, into the award winning Joomla! CMS.
CNP Integrations is now offering this as a service. This service was developed for you after a proprietary Drupal to Joomla! migration and conversation was made for one of our clients. This migration resulted in the successful move from a “hacked” Drupal environment, with many modifications made in order to accomplish the sites goals, to a new Joomla! environment where, along with K2, a more sustainable workflow was implemented, with much less customizations required. This migration successfully ported over 20,000 content pieces, comments for each article, as well as thousands of users for the sites that were migrated. In our research, this has never been done before. We could not find any instances of a successful Drupal to Joomla! migration or conversion documented, nevertheless one of this magnitude
Here’s How Our Drupal to Joomla! Migration Works
CNP Integrations developers have analyzed and mapped the entire database structure for Drupal content nodes, and mapped those to Joomla! Content Component, or the K2 Content Kit for those that demand even more flexibility. From there, our developers can safely migrate all your content directly from your database into a new Joomla! installation. This has already been done for all of Drupals core content options, meaning you won’t lose anything from your existing content, not even comments!
Posted by: cnielsen
on May 6, 2011
Tagged in:
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The Debate
One of the big debates lately regarding comparisons with Joomla! CMS, Drupal and WordPress is; Which works best for Government web sites? Well there is not really a definitive answer since each of these tools has their place and you should carefully consider the dynamics of the client and use of the system to determine this. However, since we have worked with all three systems and overwhelmingly prefer Joomla! as the solution we most often recommend to our customers, I wanted to share a list of Governments around the world that are committed to using the Joomla! CMS solution. http://docs.joomla.org/Government_Websites_Using_Joomla
Posted by: cnielsen
on Feb 21, 2011
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Let me share a few good reasons why I think you should consider using Joomla! CMS for your web development platform. If you want to download a pdf version of this to show your boss or share with a friend click here.
Rapid web site development: Joomla is easy to use and deploy for non-technical users. Easy to install templates with sample content and clear directions can help you get started and on the right track in minutes. Existing site configurations can be easily cloned for backup or replication.
Thousands of extension and integrations: Joomla! CMS offers over 7000 extensions and is supported by one of the largest global development communities. You can focus on developing a great web site and user experience without having to recreate well understood features available elsewhere.
Posted by: cnielsen
on Feb 14, 2011
Tagged in:
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Value Building ,
Training Resources ,
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Joomla Training ,
joomla themes ,
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Business Solutions
Recently we were asked to bid on a new learning management portal since we have had a lot of experience with these types of sites. The client was expecting to do this in Drupal since they had familiarity with that CMS system. Our core team focuses on Joomla! but we brought on a couple new folks that have done a lot with Drupal so I started looking around and reviewing the specs and comparing features etc. and slogging through the forums. We have been working with several LMS systems for Joomla! for several years now so I just took for granted that there were equivalents out there for Drupal but I was vastly mistaken.
It is blatantly obvious to me now that one of the areas where Joomla! CMS really “Shines” in comparison to Drupal or Wordpress is with learning communities, since there are no legitimate comprehensive LMS solutions out there for Drupal like there are for Joomla! CMS.
We have had great luck with three key LMS components for Joomla! CMS:
Forum 
Blog 
Downloads 
Links 
Portfolio 
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