Internet and Technology

While contracting for the Tree House Agency last fall, I am very happy to have architected, project managed, and lead the development of the New House Democratic Website (http://dems.gov)

From: http://www.dems.gov/press/house-democratic-caucus-launches-new-website

The site features what Democrats are saying each day, by issue and about major legislation. For the first time, visitors will be able to easily find quotes from Members on the topics and legislation they care about most. The site also features major legislation passed by Democrats and summaries of upcoming bills. In addition, the public can find House Democrats’ official websites, YouTube channels, and Facebook pages using an interactive directory.

The new site allows the caucus to:

1. Aggregate content from congressional members (video, text, feeds, and other forms of media)

2. Share content with the public and reporters in a way that it easy to navigate

3. Provide multiple views for visitors to browse and search content by facets of interest

Of course we built it in Drupal for the public facing website because of its ability to present content to visitors in a variety of ways; with all the social networking tools of today’s websites and Drupal on the administrative end was the clear choice when it came to meeting the administrative and security needs of the Caucus.

Nice post on Smashing Magazine reminding us not to forget the small stuff in the new year: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/01/23/dont-forget-the-small-stuff-this-year/ .  For example, did you change the copyright date on all your clients’ sites?

Here are two interesting client issues I had in after the New Year.

Expired Security Credentials

A client called to ask for help getting access to an old Content Management System they had for about four years.  The site just stopped allowing them to log in. Turned out to be the site was on a Windows Server which authenticated via the Windows User Groups.  After four years, the server reset the user account privileges. 

The lesson: Watch server configs and security accounts in the new year.  They often (correctly) expire after a certain period and this often occurs at the start of a new year.

CCK Date Fields Stopped Working

Here’s one for us Drupal CCK Date field users.

One of my clients has a content type which includes a publication date using a CCK Date field.  Suddenly, they could no longer save changes to nodes in this content type. 

This was the error message:

An illegal choice has been detected. Please contact the site administrator.

Here’s what happened:

The CCK Date field has a setting called, “Years back and forward.” 

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A friend just emailed me the following question:

As a Business to Business Company is it better to have your company blog hosted on the company website or should it be more indirect and hosted on wordpress or something like that. 

I am getting conflicting answers from my people and was wondering if you had any advice.

The following is my response back.  Hope this helps you as well.

In answer to your question about whether a B2B company should have their blog hosted on their website or on something external I'd look at the importance of the following:

1. Branding
2. Maintaining the technology
3. Lock-in
4. Reasons to not be on your main company site

Branding

To me, branding is the most important.  If your blog is a key part of your communications strategy then you should have full control over all the elements that show up on the blog:

This is not to say you can't use a service hosted off your current servers.  Just that the logo, design, content, domain, comments system, auto-emails, and even functionality should all reflect your brand.  I recommend the blog be on your company's main domain.  If it must be hosted somewhere else, then a sub domain can work.  The key is that you do not dilute your brand across multiple domains. 

Additionally there should be no third-party content that could show up on your blog without your direct control, such as advertising automatically shown by the blog network you may be hosted on.

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Totally loving this tool to not only have my info backed up in DropBox but to also have it synced between my Laptop and Desktop.

Right now I have junctions (and thus synced directories, data, and profiles) for:

1. Skype
2. Firefox
3. Chrome
4. Aptana (Eclipse)
5. Topstyle
6. CuteFTP
7. My sticky notes
8. My local web server, sites, and databases
9. Pidgin

My new favorite jquery tool for data table sorting and searching.

Excellent tool with as little or as much configuration as you'd need for most any project. Very slick.

After reading the book version of this article, Big Macs vs. The Naked Chef by Joel Spolsky I wrote down a few thoughts on the difference between knowledge management and creating a procedures/rules book.  

I often examine processes to improve productivity. On my teams I push for documenting solutions to record and share with other team members. However, it’s important to understand that documenting process and procedure alone does not equal the spread of knowledge or an increase in expertise within your team or organization.

As any phone call to Dell tech support will show you, the act of following a tech manual step by step will usually not get your computer fixed. Procedures are nothing without very smart and experienced people working for you to find a solution. It’s also the very smart and experienced who don’t really use a procedures manual.

As Joel Spolsky writes in his “Big Macs vs. The Naked Chef” post:

1. Some things need talent to do really well.

2. It's hard to scale talent.

3. One way people try to scale talent is by having the talent create rules for the untalented to follow.

4. The quality of the resulting product is very low.

So what do we use in our teams and organizations instead of rules and regulations?

1. We hire very smart and experienced people
2. We implement a knowledge management system

Knowledge management helps when you have a team of experts or hire really smart people, instead of just hiring people to follow a rules book.

Knowledge management means that geniuses within your company may apply different and varied solutions instead of a single cookie cutter one, as long as:

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I'm often asked what's involved in migrating a site to Drupal. The following is my typical answer (when responding in writing) .  I hope this helps both clients and Drupal service providers in their next planned migration to Drupal. 

In general migrating a site and upgrading to Drupal involves the same process as any other migration to a modern system.

Things to consider and come to your developers with include:

1. A well defined vision for the new site (ideally agreed upon by all key decision makers)
2. A set of business goals to meet
3. An overall idea of desired traffic levels (which helps dev teams evaluate and plan the Drupal system set-up that will best meet your needs)

The following things are usually identified and developed along the way to building the web site.  Clients generally come to me with some to none of these completed.

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I’m looking for Drupal developers interested in occasional freelance work.

As a (thankfully) busy freelancer myself, I’d like a small pool of good developers to help augment those weeks when the work is more than one developer can do.

I manage all the projects directly and coordinate the work via an online project management and ticketing system.  If you are comfortable working this way, and can use SVN and other repos to code in a distributed environment, please contact me.

Various skill levels and expertise welcome (designers, themers, coders, Drupal lovers).

You may contact me by emailing developers [at] seanbuscay.com.

Please include information about your Drupal experience and your freelance rate. 

I look forward to hearing from you.

Need to send yourself an email quickly, without interrupting your work flow?

Here's a Gmail tip I found on LifeHack.org. It was also published on Web Worker Daily as part of a great article titled, "10 Ways to Pimp Your Gmail."

Here's how:

(Modified slightly from the version on Web Worker)

Quick compose tip:

The Task: Set up a quick compose bookmarklet in Firefox to send an email within Gmail.

From within your Gmail account,

1) Click on "Compose Mail" in Gmail, and then click on the "New window" pop-out button on the right hand side of the compose area to bring it to a new window;

2) Once the new window has opened right-click on any part of the blue space within the opened window. In the drop down menu that opens, select "Bookmark This Page" and save it in your Bookmarks Toolbar folder.

3) Minimize the compose window. On the Firefox bookmark toolbar, right-click on the new bookmarklet you've just created, select Properties and check "Load this bookmark in the sidebar".

Now just click on this bookmarklet at any time when you want to send yourself a new task, or send someone else a quick email.

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