drupal

Year-end Reflections

This post was originally published on the NTEN Blog on December 24th, 2015. As years go, 2015 was a significant one in my career. The work of a CIO, or IT Director, or whatever title you give the person primarily responsible for IT strategy and implementation, is (ideally) two parts planning and one part doing. So in 2015—my third year at Legal Services Corporation—we did a couple of the big things that we’d been planning in 2013 and 2014. First and foremost, we (and I do mean we—I play my part, but I get things done with an awesome staff and coworkers) rolled out the… Read More »Year-end Reflections

The End Of NPTech (.INFO)

After eight years, I’ve decided to shutter the nptech.info website, which will also disable the @nptechinfo twitter feed that was derived from it.  Obviously, Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus have made RSS aggregation sites like nptech.info obsolete. Further, as Google ranks links from aggregators lower and lower on the optimization scale, it seems like I might be doing more harm than good by aggregating all of the nptech blogs there. It will be better for all if I spend my efforts promoting good posts on social media, rather than automatically populating a ghost town. Long-time Techcafeterians will recall that NPTECH.INFO used to be a pretty… Read More »The End Of NPTech (.INFO)

Adventures In Web Site Migration

I recently took on the project of migrating the Idealware articles and blog from their old homes on Idealware’s prior web site and Google’s Blogger service to our shiny, new, Drupal-based home. This was an interesting data-migration challenge. The Idealware articles were static HTML web pages that needed to be put in Drupal’s content database. And there is no utility that imports Blogger blogs to Drupal. Both projects required research and creativity.

Drupal 101: Look and Feel

I’m wrapping up the Drupal 101 series with some talk about Drupal themes, and some additional info on topics that we’ve already covered. The goal of these posts is to give new Drupal administrators an idea about how Drupal works, and some pointers to the key add-ons and resources in the broad Drupal ecosystem. For reference’ sake, we started with an intro, moved on to Modules, and then covered navigation. So, now that we have a functional web site, what does it look like?

Drupal 101: Navigation

Here’s the third in a series of posts on getting started with Drupal, the popular open source content management system. The short intro and discussion on modules are best read first. Today we’ll look at site structure, and how menus, blocks and taxonomies can make your site navigable for your visitors.

Drupal 101: More on Modules

Last week, I kicked off this series on setting up a basic web site with Drupal, the popular open source Content Management System. This week we’re going to take a closer look at Modules, the Drupal add-ons that can extend your web site’s functionality. One of the great things about Drupal is that it is a popular application with a large developer community working with and around it. So there are about a thousand modules that you can use to extend Drupal, covering everything from document management to payment processing. The good news: there’s probably one that supports the functionality that you want to add to your web site. Bad news: needle in a haystack?

Drupal 101

I’ve been doing a lot of work with the open source content management system Drupal lately, and thought I’d share some thoughts on how to get a new site up and running. Drupal, you might recall, got high ratings in Idealware’s March ’09 report comparing open source content management systems. Despite it’s popularity, there are some detractors who make good points, but I find Drupal to be flexible, powerful and customizable enough to meet a lot of my web development needs.

More RSS Tools: Web Site Integration

Those of you who visit pages besides the blog here at Idealware have noted that my article Using RSS Tools to Feed your Information Needs is up. If you’re new to Really Simple Syndication, my hope is that my guide will help you become more efficient and effective in your use of the web. If you’re an old hand at RSS, then I’m hoping the article will serve as a good tool when trying to impress others of the value of syndication.

Here with the Wind

Techcafeteria landed on it’s third (or fourth, if you count the ibook I developed it on) web host this week. I have hope that this is one that won’t merge with a bigger, awfuller company or forget to tell me that they regularly overload their servers to the point where my web sites go down. I’ve had a run of bad luck. I host seven or eight domains, including a couple of sites for friends, so I like to get a decent reseller’s account.