TechCafeteria -

Short term plan for Techcafeteria

Look around here to see links to web sites that I've built and managed: Articles, work samples and presentations I've developed; and, as it grows, thoughts and links to interesting technology.

Long term goals

Techcafeteria will grow from a resume site into something less personal and more useful. My goal, as always, is to build something that will be unique and functional enough to warrant it's existence and, possibly, your participation. You can always email me at psc at techcafeteria.com, and please do so if you:

• want to stay apprised of developments with Techcafeteria
• Are looking for assistance with any sort of technology project (broad skills for hire!)
• or have business goals of your own in the non-profit technology sector and want to investigate collaborating.

About this website

Techcafeteria was initially designed as a Ruby on Rails application, which I will someday complete. But the need to get a business site up prompted me to grab the graphics and stylesheet from that project, open up TextWrangler, my favorite Mac editor, and quickly develop this site the old-fashioned way. As such, it's a hodgepodge:

• HTML 4 code, strung together with PHP to automate things and process forms, makes the foundation.
• The widely used Magpie RSS PHP library supports the RSS pull of my blog to the front page. I am trying to figure out how I port my blog from it's home on krazy.com to Techcafeteria.
• Javascript code, some borrowed (with attribution in the source), some hand-written does the ajax tab menu on the Services page, and I used Google's Custom Search to build in the search engine (which is kind of obvious).
• NPTech.info, the adjunct site, runs on Drupal 5, the CivicSpace variant. Hats off to our friends at CSOD.
• The "join" function ties directly to my SugarCRM installation. I'm looking for more ways to interact with that as well.

What's next?

My blog runs on WordPress, and I'll probably install it here and then port over the content, eventually shutting down the heppy lend blog (which seems sad). I'm developing an e-commerce demo in the OSCommerce version of Joomla that I'll put up soon. I also have more documents to add to the sample area, including the e-commerce business plan that I wrote for Goodwill.

I am toying with adding a second RSS aggregator to pull in more straight technology info. And I will eventually incorporate authentication, tagging, forums and the like to build the community potential. And then I'll look back at that Ruby on Rails application and some other things that I think might eventually differentiate Techcafeteria from the million web sites like it. Stay tuned!