The Which? website is the largest and most complex Rhythmyx implementation in the UK, and I joined the project to redesign the entire site from the ground up. In order to support this new site, Which? wanted to upgrade their Rhythmyx system from version 5.7 to 6.5 and implement the new site in Velocity, while stripping back the number of customisations implemented in Rhythmyx.
During the course of the project, my contract was renewed twice, and the only reason it wasn't renewed for a third time was because my tubewalking project took over; once I'd walked the Tube, they asked me straight back. As part of a small development team of Rhythmyx developers, I did the following:
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I spent the first few months documenting the existing system, which had morphed over the years into the Rhythmyx equivalent of an overgrown garden. I pruned back the number of content types, removing the obsolete ones, and analysed the complex post-processing system, separating the obsolete from the essential.
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The designers of the original CMS had decided to manage JSP code as well as content, which made life very hard for the Java developers, so one of the first pieces of development was to build an 'application de-coupling' system. The Java developers extracted their JSP code from within Rhythmyx and put it under source control, and I built a system to publish page navigation, metadata and content fragments to a database, ready to be picked up by these de-coupled JSPs. This enabled the Java developers to develop their code in a more traditional way, without having to shoehorn it into Rhythmyx.
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Once the HTML templates started to come in from the designers, I sat down and implemented a framework for the new site, consisting of new global templates, a flexible categorisation system, rationalised shared templates and JCR-based publishing. This formed the basis for the new site development, and proved a successful foundation.
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Some of the existing customisations, such as using single items to publish multi-page sections on the website, were written in XSL, so to save time I built new Velocity templates that used the existing XSL to perform similar content transformations as in the old site. These hybrid templates worked a treat.
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I also ensured that Percussion-compatible naming conventions were used throughout the project, leaving a system that is practically self-documenting. Compared to the complex system of old, the new CMS installation is slicker, simpler and more effective.
The new website was launched on time and with the Rhythmyx side of things performing well.