Blogs

Just got back from a fabulous weekend Drupal Camp in NH, hosted by the NH Drupal User Group and spearheaded by Jake Strawn of Development Geeks and Michelle Lauer of Lullabot. Despite the dire snow warnings, the camp went on as scheduled (hearty New England stock!) including the after party mixer.

I couldn't get to everything, but I'll provide a brief overview of some of my favorite sessions and sessions that were well liked by other attendees.

If you want the secrets of how to get the best search engine optimization from your Drupal site, who best to learn from than Ben Finklea, author of Drupal 6 Search Engine Optimization and CEO of Volacci, a Drupal SEO company. He was the featured speaker at a recent Acquia webinar titled "Ten Tips to Improve Traffic and Conversions on a Drupal Site." I'll summarize the talk here.

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 do to the following:

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.

At a recent panel, I was asked "How much should a website cost?" The quick--although unsatisfying--answer is "it depends." We describe four different pricing levels to potential clients. Note that we are not necessarily endorsing any of the solutions mentioned below. This blog simply lays out some of the options. Your actual budget mileage may vary. Note that these prices are based on a US market with US salaries. To determine your specific needs, you may need to speak with a web design firm (like us!)

This blog breaks down price ranges into the following categories:

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.

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.