Danielle:
Well, it's been a few weeks since the 1st of the year, so of course most of us are either dreading or hoping for the question: "How are you doing with your New Year's resolution?" Today, I'm excited to report on one of mine!
Mike:
One of the most common challenges with multiple-site web architectures is determining the right level of interaction between the sites. In particular, one of the most common requirements is for some kind of content sharing. The problem with "content sharing" is that it is usually given as a pretty vague requirement at first. It's like a home storage problem - you could be talking about building a second floor on your house, putting up a shed in the backyard, or buying a storage bin from IKEA. Here, I'll try to distill some of the issues and get you asking the right questions when you encounter the problem of content sharing across multiple websites within a web architecture.
Karen:
In the Town of Lake Clarke Shores, Florida, citizens no longer have to wait to access valuable information about their town hall meetings, thanks to a new web site powered by OpenPublic and built by the team at Big Couch Media Group. Seeing a need for not only a site makeover but an overhaul of the tools that community members needed most, John Studdard and the Big Couch team put OpenPublic to the test, utilizing the responsive design theme and maximizing the available tools for citizen engagement, while also building new functionality for the platform. I sat down with John this week to hear more about the build.
Dave:
We're excited to announce the Alpha 3 release of OpenPublish! This release features app support and a new responsive Omega-based Default Theme amongst other improvements and tools for site builders.
Danielle:
There's nothing like filling a brand new role in an organization. Sure there are the new challenges of uncharted territory, and the opportunity to build a new area of expertise in the company, but the best part is everyone at the office asking "so what do you DO here, again?"
Joshua:
If scope creep at the end of a project is unavoidable, how do you prevent it from affecting killing your budget, torpedoing your launch, and making your developers hate you for dumping an eighty-hour task on them the week before launch?
Karen:
I'm reading a book on financial modeling, where the author says, "if you can model it, you can understand it." Try to move past what a dork I am for reading that book, and I'll explain. Basically, if you can set up the pieces of a business into something measurable and tangible, the valuable pieces become clear. I think a similar concept applies to systems like Drupal: "if you can understand it, you can build on it." Or another way: broad adoption of a concept requires that someone besides developers understand it.
Mike:
One of the hardest jobs in the software business is estimating new projects. It takes a substantial mix of experience, brute force effort, and a little luck. Estimation really is an art that refuses to be mastered, taking constant re-learning in order to improve over time. I'm by no means perfect at it (I doubt anyone really is), but I've certainly learned a lot about it over the years. Here, I'll share some of my experiences.
Karen:
This weekend at DrupalCamp Atlanta, I had the pleasure of presenting with Jay Callicott from Mediacurrent on how to build an App for a Drupal distribution. Ok, so it wasn't really 8 minutes, and it wasn't exactly live - it was more like the cooking show kind of live -- but it did cover all the steps of building an App for a Drupal distribution, start to finish.
Chris:
A developer's perspective on hiring and retaining developers
