Blogs

Boy have I been busy working and not updating my blog :( . I've got a lot of interesting tricks to share, but I've not been able to find the time to properly explain it.

A few months ago I met with members of the local Drupal community in the Surrey Drupal Meetup Group, which meets once a month on Thursday evenings. Unfortunately I have a prior commitment most Thursday evenings and can't attend as often as I like. If you're a developer and are just starting in Drupal, or are just curious about CMS's in general, I suggest you find a local group and meet a few people. It's a great learning and social experience. The people who attend are very helpful, and it's good to discuss problems in a collaborative setting. (Something that proprietorships and freelancers don't get to do as often as they should. I've managed to make a few contacts of people looking for help or offering work, which is always good for me. :)

Things have been busy at DigiLynx, and it's difficult to keep up with blog posts when there's so much work to be done!

After years in the industry, I've used a lot of tools for task and project management. None of them ever felt quite right, and I often found myself resorting to whiteboards or even paper to keep track of what needed to be done. At the end of the project, I knew there was a lot of hard work, but it wasn't ever clear exactly how much time tasks had taken.

Today I was asked a good question for which I didn't have a good answer. Andy, one of my wife's co-workers was interested in starting iPhone application development and wanted to know if there were any good books on the subject. I didn't recall which books I had used to learn but I said the language and a somewhat steep learning curve, and that I started out with a relatively simple book, but then quickly moved on to other sources once I'd gotten the hang of things.

I'm proud to say that I've completed the first (public) phase of Simon Fraser University Choir's website. Not only was this a fair amount of tricky Drupal work, but I also did some video editing, Youtube links and social media tie ins for the site.

In one of those "I'm also a client" moments, I'm also a member of the choir and sing Bass. You can see me performing as the lead: "Dr. Horrible" in our "Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog" ensemble.

I've been working with Wordpress today. My wife is setting up a blog for her crafts and it seemed like a good fit. Add to that I've had a meeting recently where I was asked about Wordpress templates. (I'm not posting the blog address here, as my wife hasn't made any posts yet and isn't ready to share).

It's easy to have dynamic content without loading up Adobe Flash.

Take this animation for example. It's Drupal's "Views Slideshow" module which I've been experimenting with this evening. It allows you to take Drupal nodes and display them in a timed slide show. That can be just a series of images like the ones on the right, or it could be your latest line of products, complete with links to more information, meaning that you can keep a website page clear of clutter and convey as much as you need to, but no more.

I just replied to a craigslist posting where someone had already created a website but needed help getting it online. I thought I'd copy what I said here just in case it would help anyone else out.

I can give you an idea of what's required to get a website online. There's a number of steps involved and can be intimidating to someone new to the process.

I'm assuming that if you a website but don't have it published, you have a set of files that needs to be put somewhere that it can be seen online, say http://www.example.com/

I've now had conversations with a couple of people interested in integrating spreadsheets into their websites. Originally I considered crafting a form specialised for each person's needs, something that would work well but take a bit of time for each person and be difficult to edit at a later date. Also people who use websites might be most comfortable with that interface, and it's very easy to create a complex web form that's cumbersome to use.

I have to give a shout out to DigiLynx's website service provider: BareMetal Inc. of Victoria, B.C., and in particular James Fleming on the technical support team.

I first signed up for service with BareMetal years ago when I wanted to register some domains. They took the time to handle my numerous and technical questions politely and expediently. I was up and running in hours and they never emailed me afterwards spamming me for more service. They were the obvious choice for me when I wanted to get my website hosted.

I thought it would be an easy task getting my website quickly spidered by Google. Use Google's own Add your URL to Google link and just wait a day or so and let Google do their magic. It's not as easy as that. Search engines will quite happily take your URL submission and then sit on it for weeks or months not indexing your site.