Category Archives: Web Content Management

Keeping the faith – Drupal 6/7/8/9

I was first introduced to the Drupal web platform back in 2009 by a developer friend who I had worked with closely during the development and marketing of a successful proprietary content management system called Immediacy.

That system was based on Microsoft’s .Net platform and was sold to the UK’s biggest CMS development company at one time – Mediasurface – which in turn was sold to Alterian and then SDL Tridion (which I’ve just noticed has now also been ‘acquired’ recently).

That in itself illustrates the fate of most proprietary software systems – an endless tale of acquisition which is usually about ‘buying’ customers and partner relationships to scale rapidly and improve profitability rather than anything to do with improving the technology itself.

In that respect, the relative stability of the Drupal framework and community since its inception in 2001 is a massive achievement. Those 20 years have seen phenomenal development and disruption in the way information is communicated and used – so any organisation that has succeeded in keeping pace and charting a course for the future should be applauded, particularly as many in the Drupal community volunteer their time and efforts.

The other massive achievement is that it is still entirely ‘open source’ and 100% free to use. That means that essentially all the capabilities of an extremely broad and capable web application framework are at your disposal for absolutely no license costs at all. By way of an example, when Drupal was first launched at the start of this century I was working on an ‘enterprise content management’ project for the one time largest telecoms company in the world and it had a $25 million price tag for the software licensing alone. Today I could easily replicate the scale and functionality of that project for zero dollars of license cost.

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Walking the walk with Drupal Commerce

When a fair chunk of your household income is dependent on an eCommerce solution, any decision to make changes should not be taken lightly. bump_delivery_final1 (2)The online gifts business my wife established in 2008 has grown steadily through the recession of the last 4 years and the eCommerce website I built for it originally has been surprisingly and thankfully very robust. It was built using Joomla with the Virtuemart shopping cart module on a $3/month hosting package from Siteground.  There has only been one small outage on the hosting service during this time and only occasional minor issues with the website itself.  We have very much taken a ‘if it ain’t broke don’t try to fix it’ approach.

However, as the business has grown, ambitions have expanded and the online world evolved in new directions such as mobile and social media, the limitations of the Virtuemart solution, in particular, have become more and more apparent. Also, as eCommerce development is central to what I offer in my fledgling consultancy business – Webwiser, I feel it would be hypocritical for me to recommend a solution to fellow business owners and entrepreneurs that I wouldn’t be prepared to stake my own livelihood on.

I first started experimenting with Drupal Commerce in late 2011 and since then there have been some significant developments … Continue reading →

7th anniversary on WordPress – Not itching yet!

sevenyears

hmm – so I’ve been using WordPress.com for 7 years now. How time flies!

This is definitely the longest I have spent associated with any content technology and clearly I am not alone. This recent post illustrates that of all sites that run on a content management system, 54% of them are on WordPress.

These are the top five reasons why WordPress.com remains the ‘best fit’ for my personal CMS needs …

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Cooperation that sounds fantastic and delivers great results

proms2013It’s many years since I have watched an orchestra in action at a live event and I’d forgotten what a mesmorising and fulfilling experience it can be.

This particular event was the 27th BBC Prom of the 2013 season at the Royal Albert Hall and I was in the west choir area overlooking the Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Peter Oundjian.

During 3 hours of performance that included one of my all time favourite pieces of classical music, Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 3, I watched in awe as the various sections and individual musicians were brought together masterfully by the conductor to create the most fantastic sound.

Having written recently about the impact my new hearing aids have had on the quality of life, this was the next big test. The majority of live events I have attended since wearing hearing aids have been disappointing and I have actively avoided performances where the quality of sound is fundamental to the enjoyment.

So I’m pleased to report that the aids functioned even better with live music than recorded versions and the richness,  depth and subtlety of sound was something I haven’t experienced for probably close to 20 years.

Beyond this musical delight however, watching the orchestra and conductor in action has got me thinking more and more about the topics of cooperation and leadership.

In some new research published this week, it is said that evolution favours cooperation and that being selfish is a short-term strategy that leads to extinction.

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Warning: Physical Memory Dump – WCMS conflicts detected

Image blatantly nicked from Columbia Pictures to illustrate a point

Image blatantly nicked from Columbia Pictures to illustrate a point

There have been times over the last 18 months while working on projects associated with my fledgling consultancy business when the input of new information has conflicted badly with stuff I know from experience, particularly concerning web content management systems.

In some cases a physical memory dump and reboot or a quick zap from an MiB style memory eraser would have been welcome in order to take fresh look at things and experience that buzz of discovering something new and exciting.

In a post titled ‘Ten hopes for the Tens’  back at the end of 2009  I expressed a ‘hope’ that “Web Content Management continues to thrive and prosper and evolve in many exciting new directions”

Four years into the decade I am still trying out new breeds of WCMS on a regular basis and cross referencing them with evaluations and results from previous projects to see if, how and where they could have been a better fit.

Some of the solutions that have come onto my radar over the last 12 months are Apostrophe, Concrete5, Pyro, Weebly and Squarespace and testing them out has raised these main conflicts …

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