Technology

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...

These instructions are now outdated.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...

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...

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...

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...

So, Microsoft is really working hard to dispel the attitudes that people have about  Windows Vista. It is fascinating to me that they have to work so hard at it. They have sites dedicated to telling people how good they are like the Mojave Experiment. They did the same with another site but it wouldn't work because of their stupid Silverlight technology. They have even resorted to spam to accomplish the telling.

If it was half as good as Microsoft claimed, they wouldn't have such a hard time getting people to upgrade. The consumer would spread the word for them.

The fact is, you can do so many things with Vista. You can do all that you did before... you just have to do it differently. In many cases, it is much more difficult.

Here are some observations that I made a year ago that still seem to be an issue... even with the much touted SP1. Some are getting better, but still not there. 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...

So, I was doing a little maintenance on LinkedIn and saw this fancy little ad for Microsoft Vista Ultimate.

Of course, I had to click on the ad because I was curious to know what spin Microsoft was going to put on Windows Vista now trying to prove to public at large that Vista is a "stellar" product. Just because I use it, that doesn't mean that I think it is a great product.

Funny thing happened when I clicked through. continue reading...

I find it fascinating how often I.T. is assigned to the task of building a website.

For the uninitiated, this may seem like a logical thing to do. After all, a website is technology and requires programming and stuff, right? Wrong.

A very small part of a website is programming. A very small part of a website is technology.

Oh, it might take a lot of work. It might be a requirement for the site to function properly, but I.T. should really not have a say in what the customer sees... the face or the marketing aspect of the site.

In my opinion, here are the top five components of a website... in order of importance. continue reading...

I have a few servers hosting my client accounts. I spend a bit of time on occasion with technical support. I prefer the live chat option because I can ask a question and easily do other things while waiting for the answer instead of having to worry about listening... I get to communicate in my time.

I find it interesting on their live chat they have  "Real Photo" (look in the bottom right corner of the pictures). I decided to take a screen shot of the last four that I found... notice the names.

Either they are quadruplets or it isn't really a "Real Photo." continue reading...