Tanya Black.com

It’s been a while.  Pardon my ineptitude.  The second edition of ‘The Paperdoll’ went out today.  If you’re not yet signed up to the newsletter, you can grab your copy here. (Right click and select ’save as’ as it’s a PDF file).

This month’s edition features:

The Barnum Effect: How our self perceptions affect our decisions and the commonalities of what we perceive based on how it is presented.

Drupal: An Open Source Content Management system (article below)

Mastermind Groups: Are the still relevant?

DRUPAL

This month I’ve been learning the art of Drupal.

Most of my regular readers will be familiar with my great obession with Open Source software.  For those who aren’t, I’ll give you a brief description of what Open Source is:

Wikipedia describes Open Source as : an approach to the design, development, and distribution of software, offering practical accessibility to a software’s source code.

Distributed under the GPL License Agreement, Open Source offers the benefits of being ‘free’ to the end user, and the flexibility of further development from either yourself if you are so inclined or by use of modules and additions supplied by the supporting community.

Open Source is gaining momentum and its strengths lie in the supporting communities that embrace these software alternatives.

I find the strength of these communities gives Open Source software an advantage over commercial software.  Bugs are reported quickly and solutions offered by the community.  The platforms are more flexible as the community embraces the software and tailors it specifically to meet their requirements.  Many of these members then share their work with others and the support forums and documentation provides the end user with the ability to rapidly learn and apply systems that may have otherwise been very difficutly to achieve on their own.

I’ve tried several Open Source platforms and many of them have surpassed expectations.
Wordpress -  a blogging platform with a strong community and many additional modules.
Zen Cart- a flexible Shopping Cart
Audacity – Desktop Software for Audio
Joomla – a Content Management System with a strong community and modules available
Mambo- similar to Joomla

The problems I have encountered to date have been in finding the exact combination and solution to offer all the functionality I require whilst still being easy to maintain.

My existing website is run on a Wordpress blog and a Zencart and my mailing list through phplist.

The stylesheets were configured manually to provide a seamless integration.  This is a lot of work for what I wanted to achieve so I have been trialling other solutions and have finally discovered the wonders of Drupal.

Drupal is a Content Management System that is in a complete league of its own.  Joomla and Mambo are often seen as the two front-runners in CMS platforms but I found they were very confusing and had a lot of ‘stuff’ that I just didn’t need and this also caused confusion for the end user.

Drupal is more flexible in that it is a modular platform that allows role specific applictions and allows you to configure what different ‘roles’ see. 

For example, I can create an admin panel for the administrator (the website owner), where they can update their blog and items etc, without having to see what the ‘master’ user sees – ie: site development menus.

Guests can view different content to ‘authenticated users’ or registered users.

The users have a single login and don’t have to duplicate across platforms. Drupal has a passionate community and the documentation and help systems are some of the best I’ve seen.

The other advantage is the Search Engine modules.  Drupal allows clean URL’s (ie, keyword rich), and allows you to specify your own URL path using the ‘paths’ module.

You can build virtually any site adding only the modules that you need for your site. 

Some of the functions available with the modules are:

Shopping Cart
Blog
Newsletter
Integrated RSS Feeds
Polls
Surveys
Social Networking
Forums

The downside is that there is a learning curve.  You will need to know some html and a little about CSS if you want to build your own themes. 

There are also a few concepts and terminology to get your head around but once you’ve learned them, the flexibility and trade off for you time are well worth it.

I’m in the process of completing my first Drupal site which will be up shortly, and will then be followed by integrating my own site across to the Drupal platform.

Further information is available at : http://www.drupal.org or by doing a Google search which will give you endless free tutorials.

I love free stuff!

…now on a personal note…If you’re after a bit of mood lifting motivation, I’ve uploaded the video of my eldest son learning to ride his bike last week. He didn’t get upset once when he fell off.  He just dusted himself off and had another go…

Enjoy

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: All work on this site is the original material of Tanya Black and www.tanyablack.com. Tanya gives her permission for this work to be quoted or distributed in either part or its entirety on the condition of this citation being quoted in full

An entertaining guidebook for managing the crossroads we all face at some point in our lives. ‘It’s Your Life’ draws on business principles to help you decide what you want, why you want it and how to get it and is presented as a series of fun short stories to illustrate the concepts.
Tanya frequently updates her blog and publishes a monthly e-zine “The Paper Doll”. Tanya’s book can be purchased here.