by Bob | Dec 10, 2008 | Local Tech Notes
Once again we have found ourselves working to save some web sites abandoned by their developer. What’s going on out there? Bad code, bad business practices, bad choices, really bad communication. Is it time to turn web development in to a real profession with standards and certification like doctors and lawyers and contractors? I don’t know. I certainly don’t know what the mechanisms are for creating such a system. And I certainly don’t mind helping people clean up after the mess they made (clients are always somewhat at fault in these fiascos one way or another).
But maybe there’s a market out there for salvaging sinking web projects after all. I half facetiously mentioned this in an earlier post. One commenter suggested that there is no guarantee the fixer would do nothing more than make matters worse. Of course, that’s true of any profession.
Sometimes these salvage projects have more to do with hosting services than development so that stretches into another service that may need some regulation or certification. How do you know if a company is trustworthy until things start to go really wrong? And most site owners do not have enough technical understanding to discern a quality service at a good value from one that is not.
On a whim I registered webemts.com (for web emergency medical technicians) and stuck Drupal on there. No content yet. But it’s a whim. I’d love to hear what anyone else thinks of this idea.
by Bob | Oct 10, 2008 | Local Tech Notes
Back in the 70s I lived in Berkeley and had a great time. It’s surprising how little things have changed, at least as far as I’ve wandered from my motel on University Ave. Of course, back then there were no cell phone stores or Macintosh stores. And lots of the restaurants have changed. But the streets themselves feel much the same, the buildings look familiar. I haven’t been down Telegraph yet, though, and back then it was a hippie/radical artery. Maybe tomorrow I’ll have time to take a tour.
I’m here for what I hope will be a fun weekend for BADCamp (Bay Area Drupal Camp) – 2 days of workshops on a hugely popular open source content management framework that we have been using more and more for our projects. I have a feeling I may be by far the oldest person at this thing. From what I can tell from interactions with the Drupal community, most of the people involved weren’t even born when I used to hang here. But it’s a good, positive thing to focus on while the economy melts down around me.
by Bob | Feb 25, 2008 | Local Tech Notes, Open Source Web Development
It’s been a long road, but a couple weeks ago we got the OK to launch the new Adventure’s Edge web site. We’re pretty proud of this project because of the various tools we either built or incorporated in to the site.
We’re quite proud of the design. It’s simple and straightforward, but with the Flash on the home page and some dynamic tools, it’s a vast improvement over their old site.
We used our own in-house content management system for most of the site. But we integrated WordPress in to the design as a blogging tool. Not only has the design been integrated, but we also made recent blog post titles availabe on the home page and on the various department pages.
We also built a tool to highlight all the brands they sell, and when they get their new online store up and running, the brand names will link directly to the store categories for those manufacturers.
BTW, Adventure’s Edge is now under new ownership with some new people helping to run the show and they seem very enthusiastic about making the site useful and effective for their customers.
