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HOW MY WEBSITE LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE CLOUD EduComm 2010
| Date post: | 03-Dec-2014 |
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Technology |
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HOW MY WEBSITE LEARNED TO STOP
WORRYING AND LOVE THE CLOUD
EduComm 2010
Playing the role of…
Mike RichwalskyDirector of Marketing Services, John Carroll
UniversityNITLE Technology Fellow 2009-10HighEdWebTech.comTw/FB: mrichwalskyHigherEdCloud.com
If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.Stanley Kubrick
What is the cloud?
Use of external infrastructure to solve internal technology issues and needs
Use resources only as you need them Scale up and down quickly and easily Pay only for what you use.
Why the cloud?
Old and busted.
New hotness.
It can cost less to take advantage of external infrastructure than building your own from scratch, especially for short-term projects.
It’s not all or nothing.
The days of custom writing web apps for every single possible scenario are coming to an end. Not because I don’t want to write and support them, but other places and companies can do it way better than I ever could.
10 ways to integrate the cloud
Content Delivery
Content Delivery
Speed and reliability Geo-targeting Bandwidth + access are cheap Asset hosting+CMS
Which elements are cloud served?
Which elements are cloud served?
ImagesCSSjQueryjavascripts
CMS User Assets
On-campus: finite storage Cloud: limitless storage Security for uploaded content Served quickly and efficiently CMS Plugins:
WordPressJoomlaDrupal Module
Forms
Forms
Ugh. Remember FormMail.pl? Ever write custom ASP or PHP? Custom CGI per form does not scale.
I <3 Wufoo
Give access to campus users to do their own forms
Secure out of the box Branded for the institution Conditional processing
I <3 Wufoo
Continuity across all forms Email, Database, Excel output Payment processing Embed in site or Wufoo url
If you build it…
Offices saw a dramatic increase in student response rates and interest when a form was included with an email.
Continuity is niceThe form they filled out to receive info is the
same form they’ll see when they’re on campus.
Backups
Backup to the cloud
Yes, your IT team do backups More is always better Cloud storage + bandwidth is
inexpensive
Backup WordPress Blog/CMS
Backup WordPress Blog/CMS
Backup your web server to S3
Command-line scripts and tools written in a variety of languagesPHP, Python, Ruby, Perl and more
Control to just backup web content and/or MySQL databases
Zipped up, these are small and cheap to move and store
Command line backups
Media Streaming
But we have have YouTube!
Not every video we create is meant for YouTube.
Fundraising, admissions, on-campus only videos
The cloud gives my video super fast availability and speed across the globe.
Case Study: Allegheny College
Case Study, Allegheny College
Need to provide high quality video experience for fundraising effort
Outsourced video hosting to Amazon S3 Site handled initial load+long tail
Total Cost: $9
Development Sandbox
Spin up a server
Test a plugin, piece of code, new version quickly and easily
If it breaks, no problem. Shut it down and start over.
CMS Derby
Total Cost: $1.10
WordPress Drupal Joomla Umbraco Hippo SilverStripe Typo3
In the course of an afternoon, we tried 7 CMS systems
How did we do it?
Started up pre-built Amazon Servers$0.085 per hour
Started up some Rackspace Cloud Servers$0.01 per hour, no pre-built images.
We wanted to see how easy or hard it was to install, setup, customize and break.
Case Study, Pace University Mahara ePortfolio Platform Testing +
Buildout Started Amazon EC2 server to develop
on before launching production environment on campus
Total cost: ~$60 More info: http://bit.ly/anUCxH
TheCloudMarket.com
Rackspace Cloud
http://www.rackspacecloud.com/
DNS
DNS? Seriously?
DNS is not sexy. At all. But…
OpenDNS and Google DNS refresh faster and easier than on-campus DNS, which is helpful if you’re doing testing, pushing site updates, adding domains, etc.
World’s Largest Focus Group
Mechanical Turk
“Mechanical Turk is a marketplace for work.”
What does that mean?
Mechanical Turk
Mechanical Turk
Instant Focus Group
Spend a few dollars to get opinions, research, answers from an audience you can qualify and pay for their work/opinions.
Quicky test a design element, graphic or navigation UI.
HITs are easy to create, via web, API or spreadsheet.
http://mturk.com
Project Management/CRM
Management made easy
Basecamp Wrike Quickbase Zoho
These systems make managing projects across campus and contributors much easier.
Collaboration
“Let’s Use Sharepoint!
”
Google Docs
This has become an integral tool in our web development group.
Share information, best practices, research
Multiple people can have accessIncluding students who do my research
WordPress use in Higher Ed
Encoding & Crunching Lots of Data
We shoot a lot of video
We encode video for multiple audiences, platforms and devices.
Can do on my desktop Mac, but this is time consuming.
Don’t have access to all codecs Look to the cloud!
Encoding.com
Hey!Watch
http://heywatch.com
Why are these interesting? API Pay as you go
Hey!Watch as low as $0.40 for HD with 2 pass encoding for high quality
Multiple codecs, platforms with just a click
Time saves = win.
Security
Your data and services are only as secure as you make them.
If data and processes on your campus are not secure, your cloud data and processes will not be secure.
Quick Cloud Project Checklist
What is the duration of your project? What type of service do you need
Remember the cloud is better at some things than others
Amount of data you need to move in and outYou often pay for both upload and download
Questions?
Twitter: @mrichwalsky Email:
Slides posted at EduComm Site and HighEdWebTech.com
