When learning and developing web sites with a content management system like Drupal or WordPress it is generally recommended that you install a test version on your personal computer.  This releases you from the complexities of connecting to a remote web server and allows you to focus on learning and/or developing.  The only trick is the process generally requires finding, installing and configuring the web server, using My SQL to set up a database and a database user, download the CMS software, then install and configure it — with plenty of opportunities to go wrong.   Now the stack installer from Acquia gives you basically a quick, scripted install to get you up and running quickly with Drupal.

Read the rest of this entry »

For a good introduction to the community-building power of Drupal this book from Packt Publishing is terrific.

Read the rest of this entry »

A new open source project from FaceBook, HipHop for PHP, could bring big improvements for PHP developers.  From the description on Facebook’s Developers site HipHop for PHP will translate PHP code into C++, reducing cpu usage by as much at 50%.  And for a big site like FaceBook, written in PHP, this is a pretty significant improvement.  The ease of writing in PHP, with the performance benefits of C++ — sounds like a great combination.  There is nothing except an announcement so far, but expect more very soon.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yammer use took off in our workplace late last year, but since everyone has returned from the Christmas break interest seems to have dropped off somewhat.   Maybe something like TeamBox, with its richer toolset, might be more attractive.  Teambox organizes communication around projects.  Users are members of projects, and a project has communication divided into conversations, task lists, pages and files.  The concept seems to have similarities with Google Wave, but at first glance the user interface seems a lot more familiar.  And TeamBox is open source allowing installation on your own server — so you can own the data.  And can customize the app (built with Ruby on Rails).  Now I just need a project to test it with… Read the rest of this entry »

In a recent post and at a session at last weekend’s WordCamp NYC Jim Groom questions how much commercialization belongs in the WordPress community.  A post on the WPMU.ORG blog, holds that WordPress’ future is in premium, purchased plug-ins, a point Jim takes great exception to.  He points out that the strength and quality of WordPress is a direct result of the active, sharing community, and if increased commercialization displaced this shared ethos, then WordPress might well suffer.  And while I agree with Jim, I also wonder if this isn’t an inevitable phase in the growth of WordPress and other active open source projects.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Firefox browser is five years old today (11/9).  Not bad — check out this goofy video.  Over a billion downloads and a sizable share of the browser market — not bad for a little open source project!

Read the rest of this entry »