Chapter Three LLC

PBS Engage

PBS Engage

Website: PBS Engage

Client: PBS

Dates: August 2007 to December 2007

Scope: 280 developer hours

Partners: Flax Media and Fluent Studios

Description: PBS Engage is a “social media” website designed to foster innovative interaction and connections between and among PBS’s viewers and programs. Began as an experiment in 2007, PBS Engage allows users to keep updated and to comment on their favorite PBS shows. The site allows PBS a place to explore and develop new ways for PBS viewers to interact online.

The original, prototyped version of the site was developed by Flax Media and Fluent Studios based out of San Francisco. Chapter Three was brought into the fold as the “Drupal Expert” to transition the prototype into a fully functioning Drupal website, complete with backend content management features. Using Drupal, PBS Engage was able to dramatically simplify the site’s administration and was able to easily build out a number of new features by taking advantage of existing open source Drupal module code.

One of the primary goals of the project, aside from building out and perfecting the core functionality of the original prototype, was to create an elegant, backend content management system that could be used and permissioned to meet PBS’s organizational needs. By drawing upon Drupal’s existing CMS core functionality and access permissioning, Chapter Three was able to create a simple “administrative interface” that is currently used to manage and add to the site’s content.

Features:

  • Drupalizing: The original website was written as a custom “homegrown” solution and Chapter Three was tasked with efficiently mapping and migrating the prototyped site’s functionality to its Drupal equivalents.
  • Elegant Content Management System: To support the needs of PBS’s many editors and site administrators, a customized administrative interface was implemented on top of Drupal’s CMS functionality to allow easy management of the site’s content.
  • XML Feed Integration: PBS uses XML feeds to internally distribute much of their organizational content and PBS Engage had to process and store content from dozens of external XML feeds.
  • Flash Application Integration: As part of its experimental nature, PBS Engage contains a number of customized Flash applications whose source data integrates with and is manageable by Drupal.