Filed under Drupal

Anybody who has spent more than 15 minutes of research on the Drupal content management system (CMS), can see that the modules and the community developing them are incredibly valuable to the systems success.  Every week, new modules get pumped into drupal.org, constantly solving, improving and securing all the most common (e.g. Views Module) to the most specific (e.g Video Chat Module) web development challenges.

For designers and developers this sometimes poses a problem.  One who is classically trained in design, frontend development, or backend development has been conditioned to solve problems using the most intuitive and optimized work-flow with which they’ve had previous experience.  This results in conversations that start with statements like “LinkedIn uses this really cool UI pattern in their sign up process…”.  From there, they begin building from the ground up with subject to the constraints of time and budget.

With modular architecture, these proven rules don’t always apply because you’re not starting from scratch.  Your starting point is a series of cogs that, when combined right, create a desired outcome at a fraction of the cost.  Yet, when not combined properly, a Drupal site becomes “clunky”. The spirit of the functionality may be there, but its implementation is only as good as the architecture that the specific, individual module creator originally envisioned.

This poses a problem for Interaction designers because we are focused on what users remember from their experience with content, not necessarily the means to access it.  If that experience feels like a series of unrelated cogs instead of a unified vision, that negatively affects a user’s ability to both find information and the perceived value of the brand.

This can result in a very large ecosystem of developers that create well-constructed systems of cogs, instead of fully-realized content- and user-centric visions.  This is not unique to Drupal, as this problem is found in almost every CMS platform.  Developers and designers are empowering their clients to dream their wildest dreams, but in the process, brands and users are losing as the conversations about what role a website serves gets lost in a disconnected litany of functionality. Fully functional “templates,” available for free or purchase, offer one solution to overcoming this problem.

To use an analogy, it’s like restricting yourself to only using certain types of LEGO pieces.  When I play LEGOs with my nephews, they pick out all the coolest pieces they can find and slap them on the set they’re making. They’ll say, “Uncle John, check out this ship I just made!” followed by a systematic counting of laser guns they stuck all over it.

You can think about modules in the same way you think about these cool LEGO pieces.  On top of the Drupal core are certain pieces that have been designed to meet a lot of your building needs.  When one of our clients is looking for us to build a website, it’s easy to want to put together all the coolest pieces that we have found along the way.  It’s also easy to get wrapped up in the cool factor of each piece and market it that way.  Ultimately, we lose track and vision for what the website should communicate and how effectively it achieves it’s business goals.

Finesse of a Drupal website is tied directly to the steering wheel of the team producing it, and that often comes down to the modules they choose to utilize to achieve those results. Here at Duo, we stick to a core set of proven modules with the support of our friends over at Acquia.  It creates an environment where we can be more disciplined with our site architecture because we know what the final output and experience will be from each tool.

By limiting our core tool set, we allow ourselves to focus more on the quality of the implementation, keep a certain level of discipline, and most importantly from an Interaction Design perspective, focus on the content.  Instead of letting the conversation move to the means, let’s instead keep the conversation on the content and the types of users trying to access it.

In the month of June Duo Consulting sent me out for 6 days of speaking at 5 events across 4 states!

The month kicked off with the Web Content Conference which is chronicled in a previous blog.

From there I went to the SouthEast LinuxFest where I had the privilege to address a good sized crowd of Linux lovers. This was an opportunity for me to do a whole new topic, “How Drupal is Expanding the Role of OpenSource in Government, Private Industry and Beyond.” The presentation started off with a brief boasting about how the community and the software has grown exponentially in the last few years. 600% growth in DrupalCon attendance from 2008 to 2010 and a 35% growth in contributed modules (defined) from 2009 to 2010 were among the impressive numbers I demonstrated.

I then spent some time showing off the Drupal-based WhiteHouse.gov site and its many interactive features. I explained how these features were in keeping with the recent Open Government Initiative (defined). After showing off more government, entertainment, and other sites I closed with some Q & A which showed that the room’s interest level in Drupal was high.

The following day was a Drupal Camp using the same facilities as the LinuxFest. This was an awesome opportunity for the LinuxFest attendees to sit in front of Drupal Ninjas and learn from the pros. I polled the audiences a few times and it was clear that many of the attendees were at their first-ever Drupal event. We attracted people from SC, NC, and Georgia, and beyond. One thing I have certainly noticed is that Linux users love Drupal, but the sites they build are rather bland and often void of any of the cool functionality that Drupal affords. Hopefully the DrupalCamp has sparked some creativity!

The following week I landed at our nation’s capital to help organize the first [hopefully, annual] Drupal LibraryCamp. We chose the DC area because the American Library Association Annual Conference was being held there the following day. We had 16+ people join us in the Arlington Central Library as we enjoyed presentations from experts in the field of how Drupal is serving libraries across the country. After lunch Cary Gordon and I took the group through a crash course on Drupal as a community and a Drupal primer. What I really enjoyed most about the event was seeing the people connect. I’m not in any way associated with the Library world of Drupal, but I did get to see these dedicated individuals sharing their stories and growing their skills and understanding. Much appreciation was shared for Duo Consulting who sponsored my involvement in organizing and attending the event.

Two time zones away to the West, DrupalCamp Colorado was calling me. Oddly enough, this camp was the same weekend as the Chicago DrupalCamp. Since other Duo folks were attending the Chicago event,  Duo elected to dispatch me to the mountains! Luscious scenery aside, DrupalCamp Colorado was a win on many levels. I gave my usual Advanced CCK+VIEWS session where I was honored to have over 33% of the camp attendees join me! I had lower expectations for my second day session. I wasn’t sure how many would show up for “Getting Street Creds / How to be an active Drupal Citizen!” But sure enough, I had 30ish people listening to me rant about how to be a Drupal Zealot.

I broke down the Drupal Community Involvement model into three alliterations as I encouraged the group to be Visible, Valuable and Volunteer. Some took my Twitter advice before I had even finished. They started tweeting about being at the camp and listening to my session! Many came up afterwards very thankful that they now knew that they could be valuable members of the Drupal Community. Being the first time I’d given this session, I was way stoked at the results! I look forward to giving this presentation in Dallas in August for the hybrid OpenCamp and DrupalCamp Dallas.

Sonny & Doug kick off the Drupal Workshop at Web Content Conference

Delivering Drupal, in a BIG way! Some attendees of the 4th annual Web Content Conference took advantage of an amazing, educational opportunity via a POWERHOUSE team of Drupal experts. The session titled, “A Drupal Immersion for Non-Profits and Small Businesses,” was a well attended, high octane experience for all.

Sonny and I started off with a brief overview of Drupal. Sonny discussed Drupal basics, the meaning of OpenSource software, and Drupal as a business tool and business model. I gave Drupal it’s human touch as I waxed poetic about Drupal as a community of people. I mentioned how often we get together in large groups and stressed how important it is to us to educate each other.

After that Jeff Eaton took the stage to WOW the audience with an impressive showing of well built and often famous Drupal sites. Whitehouse.gov received top billing as did the New York State Senate site and Sony and Warner Brothers. Jeff also showed off some impressive magazine and newspaper sites. We were all Inspired!

Next came Ryan Szrama to show off the ecommerce side of Drupal. Ryan revealed functionality that will be available as Drupal Commerce becomes a reality when Drupal7 is released within a few months. Emanuel London armed the audience with a powerful tool that he stated is underused. He showed how the CiviCRM system integrates with Drupal to expose tremendously powerful and useful features. Lastly Josh Ward took us through an SEO trip making sure that the attendees knew that any site built in Drupal CAN be Search Engine Optimized easily. Josh stressed that Drupal has the technology and the tools but that it does take effort on the part of the stakeholders to use the tools to get the best results for their site.

I spoke with many of the attendees at lunch to get a sense of what they received from the small army of Drupalers on the stage. What I heard was that the people enjoyed the very well rounded expose of Drupal. Everyone heard a few things they already knew but they heard far more that they had never heard before. The SEO portion was the most common source of new information for the attendees. Jeff’s stellar list of Drupal sites shocked some people who had no idea that the music industry was in love with Drupal. I got a lot of questions about CiviCRM.It’s clear to me that some more training is needed on that topic.And lastly, few of the people that I spoke with had need for Drupal to act as an Ecommerce platform. The few that did express the need  said that adding payment processing would be a future addition to their projects and that Drupal-Commerce looked like it would satisfy their needs completely.

The old saying goes, “Always leave the audience wanting more.” Well, we accomplished that. Many attendees would have loved to spend hours going in to the backend of Drupal and showing off the admin screens and configuring settings etc. A Site-Building workshop is what they’re asking for. And this makes sense too. Some of these small institutions, nonprofits, clubs, associations, etc. are not going to hire a firm for $50K to build the site. They want to hire someone to train them how to build their own. I explained to one person that I have done just this very thing and that, with the exception of a few custom modules, the client was able to build the project herself. I even heard a phrase for this kind of business model. I heard it called “Product Management.” I wonder if we’ll see more and more of this as time goes on. I think we will.

Pick up your SF DrupalCon Sticker at our exhibit

Like so many shops who use Drupal, we are gearing up for what will be an awesome DrupalCon in San Francisco next week. We’re sending 4 people this year including Drupal Trainer – Doug Vann [me], CTO Fred Salchli, Director of Developers – Tony Rizzo, and Director of Internet Marketing – Sonny Cohen. Our sponsorship of the event provides us a table in the exhibitor area where we will be handing out hip stickers that we designed especially for DrupalCon and you can preview it here.

Sonny and I return from San Francisco and 10 days later find ourselves presenting at the 2010 CMSexpo. Last year Sonny was an attendee of my Drupal KickStart session at the CMSexpo. This year he brings his marketing prowess and salesmanship to the stage to reinforce how Drupal is a solutions provider. Together we will give the audience a very well rounded understanding of the technical and practical aspects of the role that Drupal plays in business and technology.

While the rest of May affords a breather, June picks up the slack with 4 events! The WebContent Conference is back for 2010. Two days of multi-track sessions are designed to help organizations increase the effective utilization of the web for their missions and goals. Whether you’re large or small, non-profit or for profit, Chicago based or elsewhere this event is a concentrated dose of practical wisdom from nationally known experts in their fields. Visit the WebContent2010 website to see the phenomenal speaker and topic list. As the website boldly states, “With a solid content strategy and the right platform, you’ll always deliver the right information, to the right people, at the right time.”

From there things start going South; as in South Carolina. The SouthEast LinuxFest is building on the wildly popular event they pulled off last year. A bigger venue, more speakers, and something new. This year the organizers have asked me to put on a DrupalCamp right on top of their event. On Sunday the 13th we will have two of their large meeting rooms and 6 sessions in each room. When I made this public I received an instant flood of emails of people wanting to present a session. It will be good for the Linux and Drupal communities to hang out with each other and celebrate free and open source software.

Eleven days later we move slightly up the East-coast to Washington DC for LibraryCamp-DC. It is no coincidence that we’re doing this the day before the giant national event held yearly by the American Library Association. Duo Consulting is proud to say that we built the ALA website some time ago. We have also built a number of local library sites and continue to work on others. We see the library market as a very special group who has large communication needs and often restrained budgets. We’re happy to be able to utilize Drupal with it’s low-cost implementation and rapid deployment to satisfy the needs of this very important group. We are sponsoring the camp by sending me out to speak. I’m also helping to organize the event details.

Rounded out the first half of the year we have the 2010 Chicago DrupalCamp. Playing off of last year’s HUGE success, the organizers have found a larger venue with a more central location. The details have not been announced yet, but the anticipation is high with many very excited to have the event back in to the summer months. A side note, this years Chicago DrupalCamp is, in some ways, a precursor to the 2011 DrupalCon Chicago! The same event organizers are also planning what is likely to be the largest Drupal event ever for the Spring of 2011.

While San Francisco is raising the bar for DrupalCon attendance (2674 signed up – so far!), it is widely speculated that Chicago’s Midwest location will provide an easy go-to location for people all over North America. Even some Europeans have commented that a flight to Chicago is more appealing than a flight to the West-coast. Will the record be broken? We shall see! One thing’s for sure. You will see Duo Consulting there!

An old project in the Drupal community has begun to  shine again. Years ago the Drupal community enjoyed a regular offering of live broadcasts coupled with the lively interaction among people in the Dojo chat room. For reasons far too complicated to get into here, the Dojo quietly slipped away. But, thanks to the tireless efforts of Gus Austin, it is now rejuvenated.

Today, Duo Consulting sponsored the 5th Drupal-Dojo session. I took to the “airwaves” and did a very detailed presentation on the DEMO module. Video available here In short, the DEMO module allows the administrator of a Drupal site to create backups on the database then reload those backups at any time. The backups are stored within the Drupal files and an easy to use administration page shows all available backups.

At Duo Consulting I instituted a practice whereby developers would create backups each morning before they started working on the site. We would even create one in the middle of the day if we were about to do some rather heavy rework on content-types or major restructuring of VIEWS configurations. This way if we got unexpected results, we could either retrace our steps OR just revert back to the state of the site as it was before we made the dramatic changes. Pretty handy huh?

The Dojo sessions are weekly and open to any who want to present. This is actually a great opportunity for some of the “Silent Soldiers” to stand out and be heard. Landing a chance to present at a DrupalCamp or DrupalCon can be difficult and, for some, standing in front of an often huge audience can cause nerves to the point of nausea. The Drupal-Dojo is the chance to make a name for yourself and get some promotion for either the individual or the company for which they work.

The plan is to invite as many sponsoring organizations as possible to join the Drupal-Dojo initiative. Acknowledgment on the Dojo site at  as well as in tweets, and blogs will be among the many methods of exposure that the sponsors will receive. Those with an interest in sponsoring the Drupal-Dojo can contact Gus Austin (signin required to contact Gus).

So far, I’m already involved in a number of capacities to assist the Drupal-Dojo. Wrangling sponsors and presenters and being an all purpose Dojo-Evangelist are among my main duties. The Drupal-Dojo CoffeeTalks, ad-hoc Podcasts, are another one of my duties. Here we get some Drupalers together on a conference call and run through a short list of topics. New modules released, upcoming or recent events, and other news worthy items are discussed. This is going to be loads of fun! I look very forward to participating in this and presenting other sessions for the Drupal-Dojo.

The first session at the Chicago Drupal SpringJam was essentially a walk-through of the new Drupal 7 (the whole day was focused on Drupal 7). There are lots of changes to the user interface  of the administration — it’s been cleaned up a lot, and they’ve tried to put things in more logical groups. Although I’m not sure I’m a buyer of all the changes. For example, “People” says bios to me, not user management. But then maybe I’ve been looking at too many law firm sites. There are also lots of additions to the Drupal core (CCK, etc). Functionality that was in modules is now incorporated into core.

For my money, the most interesting part of the talk was in the Q&A section, when the conversation came around to the database layer.  They’ve clearly spent some real intellectual energy in trying to make that more of a focus, which is all to the good.

And now the bad news: so far, Drupal 7 is consistently slower than 6. It’s more memory intensive and definitely needs beefier environments.  Perhaps in compensation, 7 has lots of additional caching options, so we’ll definitely plan on using them moving forward. When the Duo Consulting crew goes to San Francisco DrupalCon, we’ll have to  dig into these options.

And when is Drupal 7 coming out? “When it’s ready.” Which means, when they’ve got the critical issues list down to zero — right now it’s at 137.  And as the speaker admitted, now they’re starting to hit the hard ones. My gut tells me (and it’s only my gut, nothing more) that we’re looking at Q4 for this.

Oh, and on a more important note: the UIC Pavilion was advertising that Slayer and Megadeth performing there Aug 20!

We recently completed a website for Leonard, Street & Deinard which is built on the Drupal content management system (CMS).  At launch the site includes some effective functionality which was enabled largely due to the CMS.  Although Drupal-based sites are propagating rapidly on the Internet, to our knowledge, this site is one of the first enterprise law firm Drupal websites.  BigLaw, it seems has Drupal constipation. In fact, based on our own experience, do-it-the-way-they-did-it-yesterday (because it is safe) law firms continue to build new sites on proprietary content management systems for twice the price and half the functionality that is available to them.

Not surprisingly, the innovation in law websites comes from the entrepreneurial companies – both law firms and the professionals whose clients are law firms. In particular, we recently learned of Simplicity Law, a Littleton, Colorado based law firm with a differentiated set of services focused on small business. Their creative business model is represented by a forward looking site built on Drupal.

Most important for the Simplicity Law site is the effortless content presentation.  For example, a page featuring small business law articles includes a “most popular” list generated by Drupal’s ability to incorporate visitor behavior. Content is “tagged” for organization by the site administrator and access by the site visitor. And, bless their souls, site visitors are invited to add their comments to the articles presented. You can call this Web 2.0. I just think it is a site that initiates the client relationship by inviting engagement. You know, client centric.  BigLaw are you listening? No. I don’t think so.

I was discussing this site with one of my strategic partners in the LiftOff Law consortium, John Hellerman of Hellerman Baretz Communications. I was excited when John told me his firm’s new website was also built on Drupal CMS.  And indeed it was good to note his site features integrated social media and social forwarding capabilities. Additionally, one of my favorite practices Hellerman Baretz embraces is featuring (like, to the home page) recent posts headline from their blog. What I also especially liked was the seamless integration of the blog into the site.  Unlike some BigLaw firms who hold their blogs out at arm’s length (because they might bite? … or smell?) or call them not-so-clever things like “blawgs” (ha, ha, ha, uh, not funny) or simply bury them in a link from an attorney bio, the Hellerman Baretz blog is just another way of presenting content. The blog is prominently accessible through the site’s top level navigation as “Knowledge” Knowledge. How accurate. And useful.

It’s great to see this kind of website execution from professional services firm like Leonard Street & Deinard, Simplicity Law and Hellerman Baretz. We’re not claiming Drupal CMS is the Holy Grail. And we also know some of the things we and others try aren’t as effective as we thought they might be. But at least we try, revise and try again. In doing so we endeavor to share a common plane with our entrepreneurial law firm clients who are also evolving their client services to serve their market.

Doug Vann addresses Chicago SpringJam attendees

The doors of the Innovation Center at the University of Illinois were open from 9 AM to midnight on Saturday, June 27th. Over 100 Drupalers showed up for 3 awesome meals and 15 hours of their favorite content management system. The main attraction was showing off Drupal 7 but two separate rooms were utilized for workshops. In one workshop Matthew Lechleider & Sean Charles took a group of Drupal beginners and walked them through the build of a not-so-simple site. The other workshop had Hans Riemenschneider & Bob Snodgrass taking beginners through Drupal in the context of how designers interact with Drupal.

The introduction to Drupal 7 was given by Larry Garfield. Most people in the room had never seen a Drupal 7 site before and thats fair since it isn’t scheduled to release until some time in June of 2010. The version available at the time of the Spring Jam was Drupal 7 Alpha3. Larry was unapologetic as some pages threw up errors and some processes returned unexpected results. We were looking under the hood of an engine that was still being manufactured. In spite of these bumps, many of the changes from Drupal 6.x to 7 were laid out in a real and practical way.

The rest of the day was filled with specific topics in Drupal 7. Brandon Morrison delivered the session on Themeing in Drupal 7 session. I explained how CCK has become FIELDS and how the VIEWS interface has changed, Larry took the stage again to go into detail about the new Drupal Application Program Interface. After that, Ruben Rodriguez gave an overview of what the shape of E-Commerce transactions will be like in Drupal 7.

One of my favorite speakers was Katherine Lynch from Drexel University. She is an accessibility expert who has a real passion and skill for explaining how to ensure that web pages and web experiences can reach anyone regardless of any disability. Brandon returned to round out the evening with an in-depth look at image handling in Drupal 7.

After all was said and done, I walked away with one major conclusion. Drupal 7 has made dramatic advances in many areas. This also means that I will need to make considerable effort to take advantage of these improvements. To help me and other developers there are a large number of Drupal 7 books coming out very soon. We can also expect that podcasts, screencasts and videos will be popping up everywhere as more and more people find their way in Drupal 7.

Last night, at the ITT Rice Center for Professional Development in Wheaton, Illinois, I had the pleasure of addressing over two dozen people who knew nothing about Drupal. OK, two of them knew a little.  But by and large this crowd was getting their first look at Drupal.

The Uniforum-Chicago audience was already in the right mindset since their very purpose is to advance Open System technologies. Many great questions were raised; showing me that people were very interested in how Drupal works, what it does, and what they might want to do with it.

Since I had two hours, I really took my time and waxed poetic about Drupal as a community as well as Drupal as a Web Application. I’ve NEVER had that much time to just lay it all down and get into details. I loved the questions that came at me. Some of them derailed the topic of the moment, but that was fine. It satisfied the shared curiosities of others in the room.

It was only at the end that I removed the curtain to show the backend of Drupal’s awesomeness.  The 5 minutes I spent on the VIEWS User Interface did blow some minds, but those of us who know Drupal know that getting your mind blown will happen regularly as you dig in!