it's more than just code

Book review: Drupal 6 Social Networking

Posted Wed, 05/27/2009 - 20:08

Drupal 6: Social Networking book coverRecently I was lucky enough to be sent a copy of a new Drupal book to review: "Drupal 6: Social Networking" by Michael Peacock, a UK-based web developer and author. Having built social networks for ten years, the last five of those using Drupal, and knowing how hard it can be to know which of the many available approaches to use, I was very interested to see what the book had in store for the prospective reader.

I was pleasantly surprised as whilst the book is quite small compared to some other computer books at 280 pages, Michael managed to cover a wide spectrum of topics in a way which I believe is easy for anyone with the will to sit and try things out to master. Throughout the book he builds the "DinoSpace!", a social network for keepers of pet dinosaurs - always a good thing to do as you can build with each chapter and of course adapt to your particular needs.

Below is an overview of the chapters, followed by my conclusion then some sample content from the book to whet your appetite: read more...

HolyMoly! Celebrity gossip site gets Drupal makeover

Posted Tue, 05/26/2009 - 12:39

HolyMoly logoThanks to a recommendation from our friendly local mobile app design experts Ribot, it's been a busy couple of months here at Purkiss HQ re-launching celebrity gossip site HolyMoly.com using our favourite web app platform Drupal.

Our brief for this first phase of development was to move the site over to the Drupal platform, paying special attention to the speed of the site and making sure that all existing URLs are correctly carried over to the new site.

We created a number of custom modules to deal with business-specific issues, including automatically cropping the image depending on the filename, and moving over existing user details along with their encrypted passwords. read more...

To win more business, simply focus on your uniqueness

Posted Sat, 04/18/2009 - 15:41

“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”
- Dr. Seuss

Living in Brighton I get to see and meet a vast array of different characters - it's a place where anything goes and that's one of the reasons why I love it so much. When it comes to creating or building a business though, people seem to forget their individuality and talk in too broad terms.

For example, lately I've had far too many people describing themselves to me as simply a "designer", which is not really a rarity in Brighton. When I ask them what type of design they do, the vast majority say "web" or "web and print". This still does not help. What I need to know so that it sticks in my mind is what makes you different than the rest of the designers, because you are! Dr. Seuss was a very wise man. He also said:

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.” read more...

Setting up SEO-friendly URLs in Drupal 6

Posted Wed, 04/15/2009 - 15:17

We went over many topics at the Drupal 101 Workshop on Thursday April 9th 2009, I will be posting some notes here. For a more complete SEO-friendly setup for your site, download the SEO Checklist module http://drupal.org/project/seo_checklist and follow the instructions

Module requirements

NOTE: If you have downloaded the Acquia Drupal distribution from http://acquia.com/downloads then these are already included, otherwise: read more...