Jay Collier at Bates ponders the strengths of Drupal and WordPress MU.  In my experience WordPress is quicker to get going with, and for most web sites it can rise to most any challenge.  And it is the king of multi-site installations.  Drupal has a steeper learning curve, but can better support needs such as a work flow-content approval path, or something less traditional, like a content repository system.  In meeting a business need the technology is normally the least important element — what are your goals, who is the audience, what do they need, etc. — those are the important questions.  Once you have those answers you go looking for a technology.  My advice?  Look at WordPress first — if it doesn’t do what you want, in a quick straightforward way, keep looking.  But in my experience that won’t happen very often.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here is another session from WordCamp NYC.  The topic is WordPress-as-content management system, and the story of the transformation of the Harvard Gazette.  They took the paper’s static html site and transformed it to a WordPress powered site in just 3 months.  It is always interesting to see how adaptable WordPress is to fit various needs, and the Gazette implemention is very well done.  both video and audio versions of the session are presented below.  Watch for the discussion about their administrative interface — they have customized the edit-posts panel in a very nice way that divides the listing according to category.  Making it easier for editors to get right to their content.

Read the rest of this entry »

At WordCamp NYC 2009, Ramil Teodosio’s session on WP Intranets was just what I needed for an upcoming project.  In the session he walked us through a project management site he uses for software development in a group/team setting.  He uses categories in some really clever ways along with a couple of plug-ins to build a pretty powerful application.  In his words WordPress has become his “swiss army knife”, a flexible tool that can adapt to many different needs.

Read the rest of this entry »

Chris Anderson argues in a recent Wired article that the reduction of storage cost has created a new tech paradigm.  We no longer need to worry about limiting people’s personal storage of digital stuff — the cost of managing quotas is more expensive than the cost of adding more storage.  And search technologies make mining this information easier than content management hierarchies.   From a technical standpoint this may be true — but is access to everything you’ve ever created really such a good idea for society, business or personal purposes?  Aren’t many things better forgotten once their usefulness has passed?  Maybe the default for social media should be to VANISH.

Read the rest of this entry »

Looking for a quick development reference?  These pages from DZone might have what you are looking for.  I’m starting to look at some Drupal stuff are time away from it, and the Drupal Refcardz has some good information.  Unfortunately no WordPress card, but they do have NetBeans, and a fair amount of Java stuff.

Read the rest of this entry »

It is a rare day when one of my newsfeeds doesn’t have some ‘top 10 WordPress plug-in’ postings.  Amd much of the time I pass them by.  But this one from Computerworld caught my eye, and the Dagon Design Form Mailer plugin will actually help me meet a request from a client.  So if something makes me money I guess it is pretty worthwhile.  And speaking of money remember that when you use plug-ins, even ‘free ones’, for commercial/paid projects you owe a contribution back to the plug-in developer.  Many developer sites offer some type of optional, contribution-type payment.  While writing a basic plug-in isn’t too difficult, it does take quite a bit of extra effort to package it and make it flexible enough for public use.  A little kick-back is more than fair.

Read the rest of this entry »