Reviving the Dinosaur: How We Built fieldmuseum.org in Drupal 7

While Drupal 7 was in development, the Field Museum started a discovery process to redesign and rebuild their main web site: http://fieldmuseum.org. Come learn what it means to work in an unstable environment (that is, an ever-stabilizing Drupal 7 Core) while providing a solution that allows for continued growth after deployment.

The Field Museum is a world-class research and learning institution and with it comes a large responsibility of determining a long term web site strategy. At the same time, short-term bumps in the road were encountered like modules not yet ported to Drupal 7 and changes to Core APIs.

Robin Barre from Palantir.net and David Hwang from Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History present the outcome: a site that better promotes the organization’s needs, a framework which can be extended, and contributions back to the Drupal community. Site development is possible in a somewhat risky environment while still coming out ahead.