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To add a tab to a drupal node or a page you need to use hook_menu. Let us start by creating a skeleton module, you can find more info on how to create a Drupal 6 module here.

Once of you have the basic structure of a module i.e. info file and module file in place, to add a tab on a particular content-type you need to the following:

1. Letting Drupal know about the tab


/**
* Implementation of hook_menu().
*/
function my_module_menu() {

// adding a tab my_tab
/**

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. You may know that this law brought about many, now ubiquitous, images in our daily lives such as sidewalk curb ramps, wheelchair accessible bathrooms in public buildings, push button door openers, and more. According to a US Census Bureau brief, nearly 1 in 5 Americans has a disability of some kind, representing 20% of your prospective customers. If your clientele is international, the total number of customers is even greater.

Customer feedback offers a wealth of information that can help you steer your business toward greater success. By understanding your customers' pain points and relieving or eliminating those, you provide your customer with more incentive to stay with you. You may also need to understand the priorities of their needs. You can use simple survey tools to get this information. Before we talk about the tools you can use, let's talk about designing a simple survey.

• Determine the business questions you want to answer

Last night (7/26/2010) I gave a talk at the Boston WordPress Meetup on how to do website updates. It was well attended (probably 50-60 developers and designers.) It was great fun and was well received. A lot of good questions. I had a lot of help from James Coletti, one of the organizers, and of course Vishesh brought the Architect/Developer perspective.

This is Part Two of a two-part post.

In our previous post, we talked about the initial questions a potential service provider should be asking you to find out more about your company and business. These questions cover your business plan, customers, products and services, competitors, and partners. This next set of questions helps evaluate the best tools that you will find useful while allowing you to focus on solving your business problems.

6. What software or online programs are you using regularly in the business and how closely should the existing and new tools work together? Typically, as business owners add new tools to address growing business needs, they overlook how the new tools will work with the old tools. After several years, owners may have a collection of powerful tools that work great by themselves, but may cause massive headaches when trying to use them together to run the business. The most common problem is that data from one program is not easily accessible or does not transfer well from one program to another. Getting programs to either work off the same set of data or communicate automatically with each other is called program integration. While this work can prove the most expensive, you should compare the short-term cost of integration work against the long-term, ongoing cost of constantly moving data manually between programs, or worse, manually re-entering the information into multiple products. Even a simple data transfer solution that helps prevent data-re-entry errors can save against potential lost sales from bad data.

7. What is working and not working about your current solution(s)? Before jumping into a new solution, the potential technology provider should understand, not only what is not working, in order to address those issues, but also what is working in order to preserve or even enhance those aspects. A worse case scenario is for the new technology to work well, but to break what was previously working fine in other areas. Investments should leap your business forward, and remove any drags on productivity.

8. What are your goals for this new work? Ideally, the answer to this question can also provide some insight into measuring success. If necessary, your potential technology provider can work with you to articulate your goals as measureable in order to determine, not only success of the project to your satisfaction, but also the ongoing value of the new tools. Measurable goals will help you evaluate success and make changes if necessary. Don’t forget to include these new goals in your next business plan review.

9. What is the technology skill level and time availability of the primary operator of the new technology solutions? Dig deep and be realistic when answering this question. There are many tools that provide relatively easy-to-use interfaces, similar to familiar tools like your word processor or spreadsheet program. Some solutions, however, may require additional technical and business understanding beyond the simple point-and-click of navigating a website. Time availability poses the biggest challenge. For example, if you want a website that allows you to post new press releases for your new products, simple tools are available. If you don’t have the time to enter the new press releases to the website, then it’s a nice feature without a return on investment. A good technology provider will help you match the correct solution to the skill level and time availability of the staff person assigned to use it.

Any good service partner should provide you with an estimate that outlines in some detail the work they expect to complete. If you don’t understand the terminology used in the estimate, make sure they explain the work thoroughly.

Be clear about your business priorities so that you can help the potential partner focus on the most important parts of the solution first. And don’t be afraid to ask for a step-wise approach to completing the work, especially if you need to distribute the cost over a period of time.
As a final step, you should determine if the potential technology partner takes the time to explain everything in terms that make sense to you and your business. If the company or its representatives try to construct a wall between what you do and what they do, then you may wonder how well the new solution will reflect the image you want to project, and your ability to effectively leverage the new tools. If you want to ensure a better partnership, listen for questions like these before you agree to sign any agreement.

This is Part One of a two-part post.

You’ve created a list of questions preparing for your interview with a potential technology provider for your business. You expect to cover the basics, like rates, references, and availability. But asking questions of the potential team only covers half the picture. In a good partnership, both sides ask questions–and working with a technology company to create any part of your business, especially something so central as your website or your product, must function as a partnership.

What you bring to the table is a clear vision for the future of your business, knowledge of your industry, understanding of your customers, and goals for the engagement with the technology service provider.

The technology team or individual brings a complementary set of expertise: knowledge of technologies, tools, and trends, expertise in design and usability techniques, and, most importantly, how to tie your business goals with your technology expectation to address your customer needs within a tenable budget.

But if you’re hiring someone to be more expert than you, how can you determine whether this new partner will fill the need you face and hopefully exceed your expectations? Additionally, how can you ensure that they will take your business as seriously as you do?

The best way to evaluate the knowledge of the technology experts is to listen to the questions they ask you. If they aren’t asking questions, then they may have difficulty ensuring your new website will work as hard as you do for your business. Here are some of the questions you should hear:

1. Do you have a business plan? If your answer to this question is “no,” the replacement question, “What are your business goals?” may fill in some of this same information. Typically a business plan can give your potential partner a good sense of your business goals and objectives, can cover any research you’ve done on competitive analysis, and outline a marketing plan. Reviewing the major parts of a business plan can cover this information more efficiently. If the plan is out of date, working with a technology provider may help you refresh it.

2. Who are your customers? If you answer “everyone” to this question, then you haven’t done the hard work necessary to identify the customer profile of the people most likely to walk through your door, whether a physical door of a brick and mortar facility or the virtual entrance provided by your website. Identifying your customers and prioritizing them (by definition, you can only have one primary customer profile) will help in all aspects of your business, from website design, to marketing, to pricing, to ongoing customer relationship management.

3. What are your products and services? You may find the answer surprising as you may provide more “hidden” services than you thought. For example, business owners often overlook helping customers choose their product as a specific service and instead group these types of tasks under a more unspecified “provide good customer service.” A good technology partner will help you articulate these tasks and draw a good picture of the business to customer interaction. All these specific services can then translate to the functionality of the new technology. For example, helping a customer choose the correct product can come in the form of a Frequently Asked Questions section, or possibly a series of blogs. For more ambitious solutions, such decision support can integrate into the purchase process as customers navigate an e-commerce site.

4. Who are your competitors? In this age of global economies, your competitors may be down the street, in the next town, across the country, or operating out of someone’s kitchen a half a world away. Understanding how these various competitors vie for the mindshare, and ultimately the dollars, of your potential customers should factor into your business strategy for reaching and retaining your customers. Understanding your competitors gives you a better idea of how to position yourself, your business, your products, and your services. An evaluation of what works and doesn’t work for them can give you and your technology partner lots of ideas about your own strategy, not only for the new tools, but possibly for other parts of your business like product placement in a retail space or promotions.

5. Who are your providers and partners? How your tools manage the influx and export of data from and to your suppliers and partners should reflect how you work with these sources. Ideally, the tools should simplify this data process and reduce errors. In a few cases your suppliers and partners may also have technologies they use that you may need to consider in your new solutions.  For example, you may be able to link your inventory system directly into an order system from a supplier. For example, if your inventory gets low, your inventory tool could notify you, and an acknowledgement from you could trigger an automatic re-order notification to your supplier. In some cases, suppliers or partner may require a certain level of technology integration. Your potential service provider can help you understand these requirements or opportunities as part of your planned solution.

Those are some brief looks at five of the questions prospective technology service providers should be asking you. In our next blog, we will cover the remaining four questions.