September 2008
What is your priority?
Sometimes, it is a difficult thing to decide to determine what the most important thing you should be doing right now. Setting priorities is a critical thing in order to get things done.
What is your method for setting priorities and getting things done?
You’d think with all the technology that encompasses my life, that I would use Outlook tasks or electronic reminders. If you thought that, you’d be wrong.
I use a simple notebook to list all of my tasks. I simply write down my tasks that I need to do for any given day so that I have all of my tasks in one place. continue reading...
Why I Moved from Wordpress to Drupal -Top Ten List
Followers of this blog will know that I have an affinity to Drupal. I have been developing almost exclusively in that platform for about a year now. 
Prior to that, I did almost all of my work in WordPress.
Last week, I finally converted my blog (this masterpiece that you are reading from now) to Drupal. I thought that I would share some reasons why I made the switch.
First, let me share why I originally chose Wordpress.
It was easy.
That’s it. That is the only reason why I chose Wordpress when I started blogging. It was easy to use. It was easy to set up. For a blogging platform that you want to set up in a couple of minutes, there is no easier way to go.
I don’t, however, think that Wordpress is the best solution for bloggers who want power, and I especially don’t think that Wordpress is really the best way to go for people who want fully featured websites.
If you only want a simple blog AND never want more AND want to do it yourself, then stick with Wordpress. If you are going to hire someone to build it for you, you might as well have it done in Drupal because it is so much better.
Here are my top ten reasons why I think Drupal is a better choice than Wordpress for Websites as well as blogs. continue reading...
Does Your Name Say What You Do?
I have had some interesting conversations with some members of my business organization about the name of my company. 
We are getting ready to do some rebranding of our business and expand some of our services (I’ll announce that as soon as we are complete) and it sparked a great conversation on what the name of a company should be.
There were a few that I work with that felt that the name of a company should reflect very specifically what you do for your business. I really struggled with this concept. Although I think that a name shouldn’t distract from what you do, I think that if you build your business right, your brand will help others to see what it is that you do.
Your name, in my opinion, doesn’t define you. Your name, in my opinion, doesn’t define your brand. continue reading...
New Version of Windows Live Writer
In my quest to integrate Drupal with Windows Live Writer, I had a chance to have a call with some members of the development team from Microsoft. So, first, here’s a shout out to Becky, Brandon and Joe of the Writer team. We spent almost an hour talking about Live Writer and what we might be able to accomplish in the future for Drupal integration.
First, let me say, the goal of the Writer team is to make a product that is great for the end-user. They want it to be easy to use and as feature rich as possible. Because the goal is to provide a tool that integrates on as many blogging platforms as possible, there are inherently some challenges and we had an opportunity to talk about some of the key components they have implemented to make integration more readily available.
Because of our conversation, I think we’ll be able to have some better integration with the Drupal Blog API module for Windows Live Writer… hopefully we’ll be able to get those released very soon. continue reading...
Subscription Feed Will Be Changing
In a day or two, I'll be moving this blog to Drupal... I am very excited. I have wanted to do this for a while and I am finally getting around to it.
If you are subscribed via RSS, you may not be subscribed to the right feed. I'll be using Feedburner exclusively for my feed management. continue reading...
Do Business Leaders Need to Know HTML?
I was doing some research on the web tonight ('cuz that is what I do). I found a website whose internet marketing indicates that she teaches people how to use HTML. Her goal is to teach people how to use HTML because HTML is so important for the average person to know.
Her site says,
I get so frustrated when I read about some software package that claims you don't have to learn HTML. HTML is the foundation of website building. The more you understand the basics, the more productive and effective you are going to be in your Internet business. continue reading...
More on Windows Live Writer and Drupal 6
These instructions are now outdated. I have moved the latest version of these instructions to our development site on Tribute Media. Please check them out there.
I posted a couple of days ago on Windows Live Writer for Drupal 6. You can follow the instructions there to set up your WLW instance on your Windows machine. We just released beta 4 of the WLW Blog API, so I thought that I would share a couple of configuration items.
First, let me share with you the goal of the Blog API.
When we are building websites, we always add a lot of content for our clients. We will often write 40 - 50 pages of content for our clients. We'll have custom URL aliases depending on how the organization of the site is to be and we add all the keywords.
On Drupal 6, we use FCK Editor and it works really well. It still has some problems with MS Word content (even though is has a paste from Word function). FCK Editor just doesn't offer enough simplicity for loading content for development and especially not enough simplicity for teaching the novice how to post a blog or a page. Using FCK editor just takes a long time. Especially if we need to load a number of images.
The problem we found with WLW was that it wouldn't load keywords, menus or URL aliases. So, we fixed that.
Excerpt Field
After you have installed the WLW Blog API Module, you need to go to /admin/settings/wlw_blogapi and you will see the settings at the left. Your blog types are the content types that you can manage through the Blog API (of course, your permissions need to be set for the user). continue reading...
The Top 10 Things I have Learned
This is my 500th blog post. I guess you could say that I am a bit prolific in my writing.... or, I am just a bit long winded.
The best advantage for this blog is an opportunity for me to learn new things. I get the opportunity to research and formulate ideas as I write. I feel a little withdrawn from learning when I don't write.
I thought that I would share the top ten things that I have learned during the course of writing this blog (I guess you can call it my best of...)
These are in no particular order. continue reading...
Windows Live Writer and Drupal 6
These instructions are now outdated. I have moved the latest version of these instructions to our development site on Tribute Media. Please check them out there.
Using Drupal as a blogging platform is pretty powerful. The challenge is that many blogging tools, like Windows Live Writer, don't seem to support it very well. It was okay with support on Drupal 5, but then it got broken. A few people have found some ways to hack the Drupal core, but that is not reasonable.
So, we built a WLW Module for Drupal 6. It is in beta right now, but we have some cool things we are doing on it. If you have some features you want to see, let us know now while we are developing. If you run Drupal (or if I have built a site for you... which is done in Drupal), you can use this module to manage your blogging.
You'll need to go to http://drupal.org/project/wlw_blogapi and download the latest version of the module. After you install it, you'll need to make sure that your permissions are set right for your user to access it and you'll need to make sure that the content types that you want to manage are set on www.example.com/admin/settings/blogapi. continue reading...
Recharger World Expo
Almost two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go to Las Vegas for Recharger Magazine's World Expo. It spawned a post about one positive experience and one negative experience there.
The show was geared toward toner rechargers and print resellers. My take away was the opportunity for resellers and customers alike in manage print services.
I had the opportunity to write an article on the show. BERTL posted the article on their site. I also decided to repost at OfficeProductNews.net. continue reading...
