Impressions

Welcome to the Drupal ‘Hotel California’

Posted by David Compton on July 21st, 2010

You can update Drupal 6 and the contributed modules, but you are never finished. Just like the song version by the Eagles, the next time you check status, there will be a version or contributed module that is already in need of an update. If the site uses a large number of contributed modules, the updating job is never done. This unfortunately means that a developer’s job with a site is never done as well. Clients don’t like Drupal maintenance charges, and developers don’t like maintaining test sites and code bases after the site is launched.

I manage a number of Drupal installations. The only similarity between the sites is the core code, the contributed modules and installed text editors vary from site to site. I have looked at multisite installations, but that seems to not work well on shared servers, and may require some tricky DNS work. Multisite installations appear to work best in site-sub sites configurations.

Most of the Drupal sites I build, the client wants the development to end at launch. I routinely put into the letter of agreement on each Drupal project at least 3 months of initial maintenance for training, etc.
With Drupal, those hours for training and small fixes, often rapidly get eaten up with doing version upgrades and contributed module updates. With three of my most recent installed Drupal sites, I had two version upgrades and more than 26 contributed module updates for security in the first 3 months.

Frankly, I am finding that the best method is to allow one day each month for updates and upgrades. I first do any upgrade and then test it on the test server. This means I have to keep the test server going after site launch and keep the build configurations similar. Then test the module and site to ensure that any changes are stable and work for your site configuration. Be sure to check the error report as problems with the database may be indicated.

There are 17 steps in the upgrade instructions on Drupal – http://drupal.org/node/29161 and 9 steps for modules – http://drupal.org/node/672472 – both of these are certainly the safest methods. It is also the most time consuming. There are some simpler, but riskier methods – http://drupal.org/node/816600 – especially if you are upgrading/updating a number of sites. This method upgrades only the core files that have changes in the date stamp and can be installed on top of your already installed base. I found that it works well and simply.

As I learned a couple of years ago, do not update a theme if you have modified the CSS file, graphics or php templates directly. If you make changes to the CSS use a custom theme file for those changes, give graphics unique names and if you modify a template file rename it. Otherwise those changes will be lost in an upgrade.

The question is should developers continue to upgrade/update after the site is launched? The answer is yes and no. If the upgrade is a security upgrade or update, then make the change. If the update is a bugs and fixes for a module, then make the change if time allows. An additional consideration is whether the optional module is part of the page building such as with CCK, views and panels. Here changes can be catastrophic to your page look, so be extra careful.

If all possible, do not leave a Drupal site without an admin. If you plan to leave, after site building and configuration, then train the client’s personnel in how to perform these tasks.

Like in the song, you can check out (of doing more upgrades and updates) to a site after launch, but you can never leave (the security concerns) behind.

Website costs are relative

Posted by David Compton on June 27th, 2010

Clients often ask me why custom websites are so expensive. My reply is twofold. Too often too much money goes into design as royalties on quality photographs can easily be $750 each. The second major cost driver is added features such as search, analytics, slideshows, galleries and flash animations. When a client wants a number of added features, I switch away from simple Dreamweaver CS site building to application programs that incorporate many features such as search, password login, analytics and content management. These systems are more difficult to configure and may require simpler design, but offer cost reductions in not having integrate separate applications or features.

Most websites seems to be classified by their use such as ecommerce, news, or corporate. From a developer standpoint use or purpose is the most important aspect in deciding the best method or tool for developing the web site. The tool then becomes the major determiner of cost.

A Dreamweaver site consists of content, navigation, coding and design. Dreamweaver is a good tool because it separates the design and content. The design look can thus be constructed and placed into the templates.

A Dreamweaver CS site will always be the cheaper method if the design features are moderate and the amount of content is small and primarily text-based. Dreamweaver offers strong integration of graphic design and flash or flash video with text but the process is manual. Page templates and library items make building a moderate amount of content manageable and efficient. This method is best for basic static sites that do not require frequent updates or changes. Developers often refer to this type of website as online brochures or brochureware. If the company has a good set of brochures that process is relatively inexpensive.

When the client wants a website that can deliver lots of content and with changes made by staff, then a content management system (CMS) application is the best choice. If a client wants to restrict content to certain groups, the choice of a CMS-based system is a given. If only a portion of the site is to be dynamic or restricted then a limited CMS like Coranto can be used. Coranto works well for a dynamic newsroom application on an otherwise static website.

A secondary cost with dynamic sites is the requirement for hosting that supports configuring the server for an application and supports the use of databases. CMS applications such as Drupal, Wordpress, or Joomla are open source and well supported. Good hosting companies for these applications are Webmasters or GoDaddy. Most hosting companies charge $150 to $250 a year for business hosting of a website with database.

Lastly, most companies are poorly supported for photography of their products, services and operations. The cost of using a paid photograph on a site can cover the much of the cost of getting a good commercial photographer to document your products and services.

Public Relations is about “relationships”, duhhhh!

Posted by David Compton on June 15th, 2010

“A little good publicity will take care of that,” or “If we could just get in the newspaper more” or “nobody knows the great things this company does!” We have all heard it. When clients think it is time to turn to public relations for help, it is often because their own spells and voodoo dolls don’t seem to be working.

Dear client…PR is about relationships. Experience has shown me that companies that want publicity also want to improve sales, raise their stock price, reduce the number of product complaints, reduce employee turnover, boost morale and get rid of the CEO’s idiot nephew that is running the PR program.

Make that “so-called PR program.” Just like most companies, public relations programs may have no plan. Rather, the communication program is a collection of products – flashy annual report, lengthy news releases, narrative for analyst teleconference, unseen Facebook fan page or a CEO speech for the chamber. There is nothing that defines, establishes, or builds relationship with a public or group. Imagine if you dare, a relationship with your wife made up entirely of a Hallmark card each month, a couple of text messages each week, and a Facebook page with photos of you and the children. I think you get the picture.

When I go into a company to help with their public relations or media relations programs, the topic of measurement frequently comes up. Most companies have PR measurement programs built on the number of newpaper clips, number of annual reports requested, and/or dollars given to charity, but any reference to real relationships is just plain missing. The discussion with PR staff about their relationship with news media, analysts, local leaders, industry trade publications is depicted as “we called the newspaper about our release so we know they got it”, or “ the CEO doesn’t go to Chamber events because they are so boring”. And when the inevitable crisis arises, the staff analysis is short and sweet – “the newspapers are out to get us.”

If your company does not have a communications plan built on relationships, have fun when the crisis comes.

A Drupal text editor, for crying out loud

Posted by David Compton on May 26th, 2010

You will regret the day you decided your Drupal 6 should have a text editor. Just imagine, a major Content Management System without an editor. I joke right. No, Drupal 6 does not have a simple editor as part of its system. If you want to see a text editor as part of the basic application, then better try Wordpress. I suspect that the lack of a basic text editor is the primary reason that Drupal is not considered by many developers and users.

If you google “Drupal 6” and “text editors, you will see that Drupal users have been asking for a simple text editor in the core for 4 years and no one has answered the call. What a shame.

If you noticed my Mar 15 article, Keeping the “F” in FCKeditor might be best , my conclusion in that post was that installing the new CKeditor in place of FCKeditor unleashes a host of problems if you want to maintain the ability to upload and insert inline graphics. I finally got some time to sit down and tinker with CKeditor and CKfinder and I got it working. But the CKfinder is not open source and requires licensing (money) to use on commercial sites.

Two years ago, Drupal 6 users cries for a text editor raised to a crescendo when the only effective text editors were farmed out through the WYSIWYG API. Since 2008 nothing has really happened or has it? FCKeditor has gone to CKeditor and effectively kills graphic uploads. TinyMCE drifted unsupported for awhile but now is part of WYSIWYG API if you use a bridge module and ICME. I finally got the TinyMCE working with ICME, but be careful there are a number of incompatibles.

Conclusion, the text editor is a mess unlikely to be resolved soon. Drupal 7 does add image handling to the core. But even after four years of users calling for a simple text editor, those calls go unheeded.

Business Case for Public Relations

Posted by David Compton on April 27th, 2010

From the 1940’s when Edward Bernays coined the term “public relations counselor” practitioners have used concepts that support both good causes and bad activities. Bernays demonstrated his skills in campaigns that got woman to smoke tobacco. The ability to misuse communication principles and mass psychology techiques led to efforts by public relations professionals to establish ethical boundaries and codes.

One of the upcoming programs of the Idaho chapter of Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) is going to feature the 2009 CEO and Chair of PRSA Michael Cherenson talking about “The business case for PR.”

So why DO businesses need public relations? Don’t PR people have a pretty sleazy reputation? Don’t they exaggerate, mislead and manipulate people and information? Why would any business want to use PR agencies or people?

According to Cherenson in a recent video, a professional public relations counselor brings an ethical code of behavior and practice to a business. Every business needs ethical standards for business practices. Without honest methods of handling information and promotion, a business may lapse into deceptive advertising or predatory practices. PRSA members pledge themselves to a code of ethics whose first principle is to “protect and advance the free flow of accurate and truthful information. “ It is a voluntary pledge, but one that the Public Relations Society of America cultivates in its members.

Idaho Chapter of PRSA members pledge themselves to honest and accurate information programs, to avoid deceptive practices by disclosure of competing interests and to decline representation for clients that require activities contrary to the code. On May 6, Michael Cherenson will be in Boise to discuss the “Business Case of Public Relations” with area public relations counselors and communications professionals. Information on the luncheon is available on the Idaho PRSA website. http://www.prsaidaho.org

Michael Cherenson

Cherenson will also discuss public relations with area CEOs and business leaders at an invitation only breakfast May 6 in Boise. Contact Sydney Sallabanks, 2010 Idaho PRSA president, if you have questions.

Based on his video, Cherenson will outline business and a “passion for relation”, a need for strong writing and verbal skills and ways to cope with the new social media technology.

E-newsletter best practices – 2010

Posted by David Compton on April 8th, 2010

When I wrote my first article on e-newsletters in 2003, I had just completed two email newsletter projects that were as different as night and day. One was an online newsletter that indexed about a dozen articles each day and the other was a bi-weekly email newsletter that carried mainly product information. The technology in 2003 was changing rapidly as the popularity of email was soaring.

In 2003, I identified five best practices as most important for an email newsletter or e-newsletter: 1) permission-based subscribers, 2) strong list management software, 3) welcome letters for new subscribers, 4) distinctive style and 5) the right format. Most of what I said in that old article remains valid today, but some updates are needed for new technology today.

As Michael Katz, e-newsletter on e-newsletters, writes “you should encourage people to steal your newsletter” because that is what will build your reputation and if they give you a link, you are getting the bonus of free advertisement. Michael runs Blue Penguin Development and is one of the best resources around on e-newsletters. His bi-weekly e-newsletter is a gem. http://www.bluepenguindevelopment.com/

So my e-newsletter best practices for 2010 are:

Think digital not analog. Content today, if is generated on a Web site or blog, is in digital format and is ready to be distributed in multiple formats. Produce the content in a way that allows one to morph the content easily into other media or formats. A blog entry about Drupal; that is quickly made into a code example in your weekly e-newsletter; that morphs into a podcast on how to set up restricted areas via Drupal taxonomy. The blog entry allows comments from readers that can refine your own ideas as well as providing topical RSS feeds. You morph the content three more times, once for your Webcast to Drupal programmers and once again as you add another section to your ebook on Drupal Taxonomy for Dummies. Finally, you drop a short tweet on Twitter to let all your followers know about the blog or ebook.
Quality e-newsletters require top vendor support. I have been working with CoolerEmail.com for many years. I have watched as the features of the service have grown exponentially to support customer needs. The e-newsletter manager needs a top-notch list management vendor that is simple to use but strong on maintaining lists. Not even the most technically savvy person can manage a list with a couple of thousand subscribers unless you have the top tools provided by a mainstream vendor.
Know the e-newsletter’s purpose. Good e-newsletters reinforce branding and customer loyalty. E-newsletters are not good at selling products. Showing customers new products that inevitable claim to be better, work easier, save money – just seems self defeating.
Let the reader tailor the e-newsletter to their needs. The New York Times was the first e-newsletter as far as I know to allow the user to subscribe and select the categories of news desired. An alternative is to offer a group of e-newsletters that offer different content categories that match reader preferences.
Offer a link to HTML format. Many corporate email systems reduce an email to txt and attach graphics images as a way to better scan and remove any malicious scripting that might be in the email. This process can pretty much smash a good looking e-newsletter. Best practice is to post a hyperlink back to a Web site copy of the enewsletter.
Keep it short. If you have video or audio components to the newsletter, rather than send those through email servers, it is better to leave those elements on the Web site and use teasers and hyperlinks back to your site for that content.
Set a graphic look and usability style that matches readership. Web pages and emails with large areas of text are hard to read on a monitor and most viewers only scan the headlines. Readers are drawn into stories with interesting graphics or photos. Text base e-newsletters face a real challenge in holding readership. Best practice is to provide hyperlinks back to material on the Web site to provide a better viewer experience. Many vendors offer “smart” email newsletters systems that detect the type of email available to users or offers viewer a style based on their email reader preference. The best vendor systems generate e-newsletters in a CSS style that is “liquid” and adjusts the layout to match the viewer’s email reader window.
Email Subject line should grab attention. Do not use e-newsletter name and issue date as the subject line. The subject line should offer a subject-verb teaser that draws the viewer to open the e-newsletter. Open rates have declined each year since e-newsletters became popular and are now between 10 to 30 percent. According to Michael Katz (E-newsletter on E-newsletters) you should send your newsletter on days that match when your readers are likely to have time to view. The worse days are Tuesday and Wednesday and the best day is Friday according to Katz.
Use statistics. Know what is working and what is not. A good list manager will tell you when readers are not getting the email, when they are not opening the email and what they are viewing in the e-newsletter. Update and clean your e-newsletter list for hard bounces. On the other hand know what is working. If an article shows great popularity (clickthrus), then follow up with similar topics or articles. Good list management software should be able to show you what hyperlinks in an e-newsletter worked.

Need photo albums in Drupal 6

Posted by David Compton on April 1st, 2010

It took me forever to find this album photos module, and I want to help others find this great Drupal module. The name may be backwards, but If you need photo albums in your Drupal 6 site – this is the module – http://drupal.org/project/photos

Albums photo has solid album features to include:

*comment on images
* flash upload (need photos swfu.module)
* flash view image (need dfgallery)
* Multi-image upload, several uploads on one page, or upload and extract from compressed archive (zip file).
* Upload pictures from the cabinet.
* Import pictures from the server cabinet.
* Multiple access control settings; upload, edit, delete.
* Album quantity restrictions; limit the number of albums created.
* A variety of format thumbnails, specify image size.
* Provides image upload field for other content types.

Add to this module the dfgallery module – http://drupal.org/project/dfgallery and you have a very good looking album interface.

album photo module in slideshow mode

The first time you go to upload a group of photos for an album, you will be amazed how simply and easily you can upload photographs. You can set the options to allow upload of as many as 50 photos at a time. All of the options are selectable from the Photos Upload menu under Site Configuration.

One critical need in using albums photo is to make sure the theme you use is compatible with the module. I discovered the problem when I was unable to get the slideshow to work in a test site. The production site had the same modules and configurations, but the show would not work. A change of theme and the slideshow began to work.

Keeping the “F” in FCKeditor might be best

Posted by David Compton on March 15th, 2010

If you have installed FCKeditor as your Drupal 6 editor, you have noticed that the editor is no longer supported and generates RED on your status update page. FCKeditor has been replaced by CKeditor. FCKeditor paired with imagebrowser gives one not only a text editor but an upload system for photograph and images to be placed in the text. So when you remove FCKeditor and upload CKeditor you are in for a little surprise. Imagebrowser works only with FCKeditor.

So one loses the image upload via the editor without imagebrowser and needs to upload CKFinder to replace imagebrowser. Good luck with that project, it is next to impossible to accomplish. But it can be done. Question is should you? CKfinder is a replacement for imagebrowser and gives all the same functionality, but it gives a proprietary plugin of CKSource that requires payment. I won’t editorialize on what a rotten trick that is by CKSource – you be the judge.

If you do intend to install CKFinder, then be prepared to source edit a couple of files. The instructions are NOT in the CKFinder Install.txt NOR in the CKeditor install.txt files in the download. You will find the instructions in the original download of CKeditor readme.txt file. I saw so many forum comments and questions on installing CKFinder that I really should go there and give the folks a clue. If CKSource is going to charge for the plugin, then I decided it was not an Open Source problem for me to waste time on.

This does put me into a quandary as to what should be a replacement editor for FCKeditor. TinyMCE is a good but dated editor that I use on another site but it uses IMCE for image upload. Just not as good as FCKeditor + Imagebrowser. After reviewing a number of blogs, the Drupal forum and Drupal Group forums on the issue, I have decided not to decide. Looks like my best bet is to hold onto FCKeditor and imagebrowser until something better comes along. For now I will just ignore the RED until a quality system like the one in WordPress 2.9 comes along.

Drupal 6 video options perplexing

Posted by David Compton on March 2nd, 2010

Video on a Web site never seems to be easy. So many formats, so many options and so many requirements for upload, encoding and displaying. In Drupal 6, the options and complexity are even more perplexing. Since Drupal is designed to be a community builder, most modules aim in the direction of user contributed content. So when it comes to video supplied from a number of different sources and devices, it can get very complicated and confusing fast. Part of the problem seems to be the differing approaches that module developers have taken toward handling video. Some look for simple solutions that handle the embedding of a video file in a page or node, some want complete manipulation video fomat with wide variety of codecs and some want to use external vendors like YouTube to handle it all.

Previously my approach with most Web sites I have developed, is to find an application like Gallery2 that handles both images and video well and then try to integrate the site and application. The method puts limits on the users as to encode formats, but gives me maximum control. It is, however, not a very good solution for a broad group of users. In the Smoky Canyon site, I integrated Gallery 1 using a wrapper built from a page template. Since I and only a few other users were involved, it worked fine. For a later site, I used Coppermine since it offered more options especially with video feeds. I noticed that there is now better way to integrate these two. But these solutions are not very good for Drupal 6 and require a good amount of work for the developer.

Kirk designs has a great roundup of video for Drupal 6 that summarizes all the options. For my new site I wanted to test the three main module choices, but ran into difficulties with three main modules Video module, Drupal 6 video module is perhaps the best, but it has the limitation of needing the FFMpeg installed on your hosting server to handle transcoding. Video module also has a long list of requirements for proper configuration and playing the video. Loading the FFMpeg on a wampserver2 for testing proved so “simple- – NOT’ that I abandoned that project halfway through. The module does have complete details on setting up the module and configuring it to play .FLV files.

The second module is Flashvideo. You can see how this module is installed, configured and used in a 30-minute video. It also points out the advanced help files that will be needed in learning how to use the tags needs to embed the files. Again this system jumps out of the simple category when you look at what is need to build a test server and load the FFMpeg binary. This module also requires use of a SWF player and placing that player in the proper area for use on the site.

The last method is the Embedded Media Field. This method takes out all the complexity of building a video upload, file conversion and page display parts of the video system by moving those functions to a third party such as YouTube. The problem here is users must first upload the third-party service, get the proper tags and then add them to the Drupal page.

These are the main methods of getting video or streaming video on you Drupal pages. Good luck.

WordPress is Impressive

Posted by David Compton on February 15th, 2010

WordPress is certainly a polished Content Management System and application. One cannot help but be impressed when one goes to update to a newer version. Since I had automatically installed the application on Webmasters servers using their script, I had version 2.7 initially installed. With just a click of the link to update and a couple of parameters for the Webmaster server, I was able to update to 2.9.1 without having to do any FTP. I merely gave the program the information for the FTP and it did the rest. For a developer who is used to having to wrestle with poor documentation and all kinds of CHMOD changes to install an update, the whole process just floored me.

But there is more. I decided I needed a plugin for doing slideshows. I was able using the Plugin menu in WordPress 2.9.1 to search for the plugin, download and install it, and then activate it all from the admin Plugin menu. That is truly impressive!!

Overall, I am truly impressed with WordPress. With just a little bit of work, I was able to install 2.9.1 Wordpress on a WAMP test server. Here the process was a little more difficult as I had to do the 5-minute installation and set up the database. WordPress uses a “secret” word set up to provide added security. So it was not as simple as setting up a Drupal site connnection, but the documentation was excellent and worked.

The only trick I noticed with setting up WordPress on the Webmasters server was that the graphics did not work immediately. I had to fool the server by doing a CHMOD on the content section to 777 and then back to 775 toavoid the prohibited message on the graphics.

I was also IMpressed with how nicely WordPress handles graphics and photos (Media). You can upload a graphic by just clicking on the add an image link above the post box and a Lightbox2 style upload box appears with a browse button to let you find the graphic and upload it. It then automatically opens a dialogue to handle the caption and other data. Smart! Getting graphics and images set up correctly in Drupal is a major difficulty.

Working with the WordPress theme is almost exactly like Drupal 6. Most of the color scheme is in the images and most of the layout is in page includes. Unlike Drupal, there is one main style sheet that has most of the style. I modified the Harmony theme to change colors and the style sheet was clearly annotated for the page sections. Although I use the Web developer bar on Firefox for CSS, it most mostly not necessary with WordPress. I found that since the style sheet was so clearly annotated, I could find most items without having to use the “View Style Information” option in the Developers bar. WordPress 2.9.1 is IMpressive.

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