Tech-Tip

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...

These instructions are now outdated.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...

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...

I get questions all the time from clients about RSS... I am often asked to give them a newsroom area to posts current news and events, but then I am asked to simply turn off the RSS icon. I think that a lot of people must not understand the beauty of what RSS can do.

You can checkout my post titled What is RSS and Why Should I Care?

Don't forget to subscribe to my RSS feed at the right. continue reading...

For CopierCatalog.com, I needed to get a good live chat software. I wanted to make sure that I was available to talk with clients that needed immediate assistance. Both from a sales perspective as well as a support perspective.

I started some research. I first thought about using Skype as my software because I am in Skype all the time. But the problem with that is that in order for someone to chat with me via Skype, they need to have Skype loaded with an account. I wanted this to be easy for them so I didn't want them to have to load anything. Skype should consider making an anonymous web client. continue reading...

I had to create a new document today for a number of people to manage. I had a suggestion from a few people to put it on Google Docs. I am not a huge fan of Google Docs... it is not quite as responsive as I like and I really like local documents so that I can work offline whenever I want. Not too mention, it is not as fully featured as MS  Office Applications or OpenOffice.org Applications.

Nevertheless, it really did make most sense for me to have this particular document online so that I don't have to continue to email the document when I make an update. continue reading...

I mentioned last week that communication management tends to be the hardest part about project management. I have also mentioned in the past that I am a big fan of Mac... but I use a PC as my primary computer for various reasons. One of those reasons is the productivity of Outlook.

Communication management is a bear, so there are companies that have added efficiency tools for Outlook. TechHit.com contacted me and asked me to do a review of their product... they gave me a free license on three of their products so that I can put them through the paces. I told them to be aware that I will give an honest review... even if it is bad. continue reading...

Keep the data on your screen invisible to roving eyes. Not bad if it gets a little to bright to see your display either.

Thanks to Bekathwia for the pic. continue reading...

So, I just bought a new laptop. Given the nature of what I do, I had to get a Windows Vista machine. I wish more of my clients used a Mac so that I could do more development on my Mac.

Maybe one day.

I had it installed with Vista Ultimate because it doesn't make sense to me to intentionally get a version of an operating system that is missing features. I have spent about seven (7) hours getting it all set up. I had to turn off various security features (like User Account Control and prevention of non-digitally signed drivers) and work through installation problems just to get it all to finally work for me.

I then needed to set up my Exchange account and Google IMAP accounts. For those of you who have ever set up Outlook, you know that you can't set up Exchange from within Outlook. If you try, you get this error:

Notice that it indicates that you should go to the Control Panel and open the Mail icon.

So, here are the icons that are around what should be the Mail icon. continue reading...

A few weeks ago, I moved my email services to Google Apps.

My main motivation was I wanted to find a good alternative to an Exchange Server. Since I left corporate America a few months ago, I have missed the synchronization that an Exchange Server provides. I can't justify the costs of one, so I needed an alternative.

Google Apps provides free email hosting for up to 100 email accounts on your domain. You can petition for more without paying extra. The shared calendars are pretty cool, too. Recently, they added IMAP support which allows the users to have their email in their favorite email desktop client sync with the Google Gmail interface... so you can have the best of both.

If you are used to the way that your client handles email in a POP3 or Exchange environment, it takes a little getting used to (for example, you can't hit delete in Outlook, you have to drag and drop to the trash and identifying something as spam or not as spam is a little more complicated). But, once you get used to it, it works really well. One of the things that I really didn't like very much was that I couldn't synchronize my calendar. I still prefer to use Outlook for my email. I do because it is so well used. But, I really like the idea of having a web interface to modify my calendar. continue reading...