CampusDrop: BackdropCMS for Education

Many universities are adopting Backdrop CMS for various reasons, with budget efficiency and flexibility being key factors. As financial and structural considerations become increasingly important, let's explore the features that can make the CampusDrop platform a strong choice for educational institutions (K-12, community colleges, and universities). We'll discuss flexible layouts with Layout Paragraphs, customizable content types, preset views, and display options, among other capabilities designed to meet the unique needs of educational organizations.

We plan to demo how to extend out-of-the-box Article content type to a News content type with more features.

• Roots of the project  - why we are doing this
• Tools that make it work
  • Recipes for easier configuration for web admin (comparing to install profiles)
  • Layout paragraph for better content editor experience (comparing to using beans)
• Basic functionality in modules and theme
  • Authentication
  • Layouts
  • Theme - Stanford Decanter - https://github.com/backdrop-contrib/stanford_decanter
  • Other
• Content management and layout management optimized and simplified for Content Editors using layout paragraphs
• Demo of recipes
  • Extended Editor format - https://irina-campusdrop.pantheonsite.io/admin/structure/recipes
  • Person (work in progress)
  • Department - different relationship architecture for person/department 

We have a fiduciary duty to our university. We take stewardship of funds and resources seriously. With Backdrop on Pantheon, we were able to save nearly half a million dollars!" 

- Zach Chandler, Director, Research IT and Innovation at Stanford University 

That's not a small amount, said Chandler. "It is equivalent to several postdoc salaries, which – quite honestly – the university (and the world) needs more than we need any particular website technology, assuming the alternative is just as viable, which Backdrop is," he added while presenting at the BADcamp session in the fall. 

Notes

• support and governance for CMS, community support
• publishing/approval workflows / roles with different permissions
  • submit information
  • review and approve
  • preview before going live
  • preview changes on a live page
  • email notifications for reviews
• ease of use for labs, etc.
• SSO integration is pre-requirement
• Content syndication is very important feature