Blog

Open Source Content Management Systems 101

For someone outside of the tech industry, the idea of “open source” can be somewhat opaque, particularly when you are trying to investigate qualitative differences between an open source and closed source Content Management System (CMS). If you Google “open source versus closed source,” the articles that come up tend to be opinion-based, which can make gleaning the “facts”—if that term can be applied here—quite challenging.

E-commerce Payment Processing

Custom E-commerce Payment Processing vs. Third-party Providers

If you have an online sales component to your business, then there are two main ways of managing your e-commerce: either by linking to a third-party site, such as PayPal, to facilitate transactions, or having developers create a custom payment processing system within your website itself.

CSS border-box

The typical CSS "box model" (also known as content-box) will produce something like this:

width + padding + border = total/visible width of box

height + padding + border = total/visible height of box

Lets look at the example div below, with the typical box-sizing: content-box.

div {
 width: 240px;
 height: 240px;
 padding: 20px;
 border: 10px solid #fff;
} 

Exporting Drupal Views to code

Ever been is a situation where you have a crazy complex View and realize you messed it up right AFTER you hit the save button? It's happened to all of us at one point or another. Having the ability to easily revert your View at anytime can be a life saver. This is why we always use the methods below when building larger Views. There are some other substantial benefits to keeping your Views in code. It allows you to commit to your version control system and makes deploying Views from a development environment to a production site a snap. Did I convince you yet?

RFPs - Are They Effective?

In certain circumstances, RFPs (Requests for Proposals) may be unavoidable. Government organizations, for instance, are mandated to use them in an effort to promote fair and open competition. A web design and development firm just starting out may feel responding to RFPs is the only way they can get their foot in the door, and junior developers stand to gain knowledge and experience through the proposal-writing process. However, for the average business owner attempting to acquire creative services, the RFP’s effectiveness is questionable.

The Benefits of a Custom Drupal Website vs. Free Hosted Websites

In this digital age, your company’s success is largely dependent on the efficacy of your online presence. The question is no longer simply: do you need a website? (You do.) It is now a series of questions: What kind of a website do you want? What functionality is required? How will you get the right eyes on your website? And most importantly: What sets your website apart from a sea of competitors?

Custom Drupal Search Block

Recently a client wanted an unusual block. The block contained three social media links (facebook, twitter and youtube) and the search form. The easy solution would be with a static block or block menu and position it with css, but I wanted all the markup in a single block...ok here we go!

Custom Drupal Search Block - Step 1.
First create a custom module. This will require an .info file and .module file. My module is called deckfifty:

My deckfifty.info file contains:

name = deckfifty custom
description = "deckfifty.com custom"
core = 6.x

Drupal Ubercart exporting orders in CSV or XLS (Excel Format)

Often times clients request a listing of detailed information from their Ubercart orders. Typically the standard Ubercart reports doesn't cut the mustard. Having reports in an exportable format like .xls or .csv allows easy importing into other applications. We'll cover how to create a table listing of your ubercart orders and how to export them.

This tutorial covers Drupal 6 modules. You'll need:

Top 50 Drupal Modules

Drupal is our favorite CMS. One of the major reasons we love Drupal so much is the huge community of developers and large number of contributed modules available. If we were in the business of building cars we probably wouldn’t go about designing new tires for it. Instead, we would rely on tire manufacturers who had already done the R&D. The same holds true for websites. When a website requires common functionality such as a blog or forums we use pre-existing modules which offer a framework for us to build from. In our day to day development we use a LOT of modules.