Development
DrupalCon Boston 2008 - Session One: From Drupal Newbie to Drupal Ninja
Session: From Drupal Newbie to Drupal Ninja
Time: 9:00am (EST) 03/03/2008
Presenter: Chad Williams (hunmonk)
This presentation was targeted primarily at the Drupal newbie, and was mostly a "tips & tricks" session. Here are my notes from the session:
Website Grabber | Offline Browser
Today, we had a client call us and ask if we can 'save' their website from an aggressive website designer that is holding their site hostage. I told them yes and thought an easy solution would be to find a utility that allowed us to easily clone/grab their website. I must say, I was surprised at the difficulty in finding a free utility to do this.
Ellie's Run for Africa
At CentreSource, we do everything we can to stay connected to the community around us. Recently, a great opportunity arose for us to donate our time to work with Ellie's Run for Africa (ERFA), a 5k Race and Family Fun day that is taking place in Nashville at the end of June, that has an amazing story behind it.
Dangers of a Bad Website
In the early years, some could argue that having a website, albeit bad, was still superior to not having one at all. Websites were not the ‘norm' and having one proved that your firm was unique and cutting edge. Fast forward 10 years and this is no longer the case – every business and organization is expected to have a website. But times are changing again! It is no longer acceptable to simply have a website. Now organizations are at risk to the dangers of a bad website.
sfAmazonS3 - Symfony Plugin for Amazon Simple Storage Service(Amazon S3)
Today, CentreSource has released its first plug-in for Symfony. This plug-in allows you to interact with Amazon S3 directly from Symfony.
Check it out: http://www.symfony-project.com/trac/wiki/sfAmazonS3
Setting Client Expectations through Mock-Up Design
One of CentreSource's strongest areas is custom application development. We've worked with a number of fantastic clients who have asked us to create a variety of applications including ones to handle franchise management, online book trading, and qualitative research.
Innovative Helpdesk/Ticketing System
A friend recently recommended: http://www.cerberusweb.com
It is a very popular (and affordable) email management solution for help desks & sales teams. It is a bit complex, so you'll want to take a moment to review the features and consider ways to synthesize it for your business. It appears that everything is managed through email and you have certain email addresses that customers and prospects use (or that it recognizes).
Extreme Website Makeover
Those of you who read our newsletter know that for this Holiday season, CentreSource had a contest to find the website in the greatest need for a makeover. Companies were able to nominate their websites, which were then filtered by the CentreSource staff down to the 10 Top Worst Websites. Finally, the finalists were asked to launch their own grassroots campaigns and get their family, friends, and coworkers to vote for their site to win the grand prize.
Web Based Time Tracking Nearing Launch - Dekko Time
Check out our latest product, Dekko Time. After 2 long years we have finally reached a beta stage in the development and we are working hard towards a full launch SOON!
All account types are being offered for free during this beta stage. Use the coupon code 'free' on the payment tab when signing up for single and multi-user premium account types. Using this coupon will allow you to bypass the payment step and get your premium account for FREE!
CSS Cross-Browser Tricks
Anyone that has written HTML and CSS has undoubtedly, at one time or another, faced a major headache attempting to acheive crossbrowser display uniformity. It's a problem that's not going to go away anytime soon, so we all just have to live with it for the time being.
I've noticed over the years, that everyone has a different approach to tackling this issue. Some prefer to use multiple stylesheets, one always for IE, the other for everyone else. Some code one stylesheet, but forsake uniformity for subtle, sometimes unnoticable, differences. I myself have used both of these techniques in the past. Not that there is anything wrong with either method; the end goal is to have a webpage that looks roughly the same in all the major browsers (IE 5-6, Firefox, Opera, Safari), and most importantly, without using tables for layout.