[consulting] consulting Digest, Vol 53, Issue 30

[Sami Khan]

On Thu, 2010-06-24 at 11:06 -0400, Joe Murray wrote:

> Just to echo parts of what Sami and Tim are saying: try to keep the
> level of integration required between the Moodle and Drupal/CiviCRM
> parts of the site to a minimum. Where it is necessary, try to make it
> as thin and standardized as possible, or as loose and distant as
> possible. For example, give Moodle and Drupal/CiviCRM complementary
> but separate branding, so you don't have to replicate changes in both
> environments, especially not simultaneously. It might even be good to
> make one application a subdomain, eg crm.mycongregation.org. Also, you
> might want to try to avoid developing integrated login by using LDAP
> for single sign-on, though of course setting that up for Moodle and
> Drupal / CiviCRM can be its own small kettle of fish. The objective as
> I see it would be to avoid having to maintain middleware code that
> would have to be kept in synch with two or more projects that each has
> its own upgrade cycle.

Agree. The problem is that there is no middle ware. Any such work often
ends up corrupting one of the systems with tons of hacks that are not
easily maintained. Also, it never looks like one app and expending
resources to make it look like one is a waste of time.

> 
> As this is starting to become fairly complex but is really useful for
> your vertical, you might want to make it into a SaaS offering so that
> the setup and maintenance costs (and expertise) can be reduced through
> scale and allocated to more customers.

Agree.