Overhauling Lodel – a major OpenEdition project

In April, OpenEdition Books became the first of OpenEdition’s platforms to migrate to the new version of Lodel, the digital publishing software solution used to diffuse content on OpenEdition Journals, OpenEdition Books and Calenda. Mélanie Carmona (M.C.), manager of the Lodel 2.0 project, and Marie Pellen (M.P.), director of OpenEdition, talk about setting up the project, its various phases, and the next steps involved.

• Overhauling Lodel, a project launched by OpenEdition in 2021 as part of the EquipEx+ COMMONS, is no mean feat. What were the challenges you faced?

M.C./M.P. To give you an idea of the scale of the task, it is worth remembering that work first began on Lodel as an open-source software solution in 2001, with a number of contributors helping to refine it along the way until version 1.0 was released in 2011. The Lodel 2.0 project was therefore initiated to tackle some of the technical debt accumulated over the years, manage the complex task of preparing the data, and pave the way for migrating to a new version of the software, making the transition as smooth as possible for everyone, from internal teams to publishing teams, libraries and users. 

Developing Lodel 2.0 was therefore a key milestone for OpenEdition. In June 2021, we presented the project in this blog post. At the time, our ambition was to transfer all the platforms using version 1.0 of Lodel – Calenda, OpenEdition Books and OpenEdition Journals – to version 2.0 of this content management system (CMS). As the project progressed, we revised our initial ambition by adapting the migration schedule and scope to take account of developments, coordination with other projects, questions raised by the data migration process, and integration into our information system. 

In late 2022, we eventually decided to divide the project up by platform, with a first stage involving the migration of OpenEdition Books in 2024.

This key phase of the project took three years to complete and involved over 40 people, including 13 developers (from OpenEdition and service providers). It was initially funded by the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research’s Department of HSS and the CNRS’s Open Research Data Department, and subsequently by the EquipEx+ COMMONS project. This funding was essential to the project’s success. It enabled us to set up a team, bring in external software developers, and assign more human resources to the project.

• Why start with OpenEdition Books?

M.C./M.P. Created in 2013, the OpenEdition Books platform is more recent than the journals platform and its content is more consistent in terms of data structure. All the websites hosted on the platform were created using Lodel 1.0 and based on the same publishing model, which makes it easier to transfer existing data. That’s why we decided it should be the first platform to migrate. What also helped is that there are much fewer websites hosted on this platform (133 sites compared with 648 on OpenEdition Journals).

For OpenEdition Books, data migration involved: 
– 14,667 books and 133 publishers
– About 1,000 book series
– Over 264,000 documents

• How was work on the project organized within OpenEdition? Which services were involved and what did they do?

M.C./M.P. We asked SensioLabs to assist our teams in this re-engineering project, which bolstered our methodology in terms of developing software as a team. As with the project scope and schedule, we subsequently adapted the methodology to our work environment.

Overhauling Lodel naturally led to all three of our IT-related units (development, data, systems) working together to develop, test and deploy the software before the final transfer of existing data.

Deploying Lodel 2.0 also meant keeping in mind the other services in our information system, which had to adjust and adapt accordingly (OpenEdition Freemium Publishing Workspace, Core and Circé, PDF/ePUB creator).

Our publishing services (Books, Journals and Training services) were also involved every step of the way, to specify user needs, test features and prepare for data migration. They also worked on producing new documentation and training materials to help publishing teams get to grips with the new version of the software.

And let’s not forget the help the Freemium team gave us in supervising the project from start to finish, or the participation of the OpenEdition team as a whole in testing the beta versions before the OpenEdition Books platform went live.

• How does this overhaul benefit the platform?

M.C./M.P. When we were rewriting the new software’s public and administrative interfaces, we were careful to take account of accessibility criteria and all types of browsing devices. Although we didn’t completely redesign the visual elements as part of this project, we did update the code to meet current standards (use of HTML5, ePUB 3) and give the interfaces a more modern look. The outcomes of this work are:
– A responsive layout that adapts to the size of your screen 
– A new font that makes diacritical marks more visible on the whole
– A better layout for notes and diagrams
– A new detailed and dynamic chapter layout

New features have also been added for publishers: more user-friendly publishing forms, a search box in the content list, a deferred publication option, and, above all, improved user account management.

Lodel 2.0 also uses the new enriched TEI Commons Publishing schema to achieve more precise content semanticization, especially for theatre, poetry and linguistics.

From a technical point of view, this new version will be far easier to update than Lodel 1.0. The Symfony framework (widely used by developers) opens the door to future developments from OpenEdition or a contributing community. 

By using the new TEI Commons Publishing schema and harmonizing the publishing model across all websites, it is easier to envisage updating the platform’s data model according to the needs of publishers and readers. 
Under these conditions, we will be able to roll out other EquipEx + Commons deliverables, and also link the Quameo project (winner of the French National Fund for Open Science’s third call for proposals) to Lodel 2.0.

• So what happens next? What are your plans for OpenEdition Journals and Calenda?

M.C./M.P. Now that this first phase is over, we need to focus on two things: making the code open source and migrating the other platforms.

In terms of making the code open source, it is essential that the new version of Lodel be open source, like the earlier versions, so that the software can continue to be used by other open access stakeholders.

As for migrating the other platforms, we need to speed up programming, as we don’t intend to continue maintaining Lodel 1.0 in the future.

The migration of internal services that use Lodel 1.0 is currently underway and should be completed by the end of 2024. The project for migrating OpenEdition Journals will only start in 2025, even though we have been preparing the data for a few months already, by switching to a standard structure and harmonizing the publishing model. This preparatory work will continue as we launch a new phase to develop features specific to the Journals platform. Data migration (over 600 websites and over 300,000 documents) won’t begin until late 2025. The schedule for this second project will be drawn up during the first half of 2025.

As for Calenda, we haven’t yet decided whether to migrate it to Lodel 2.0 or another CMS.

 

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