Thoughts that Count
Recent Posts
Higher Education’s Equation: Simplify Digital Complexity
Colleges and universities were some of the first organizations to create websites. They are natural content generators with access to great thinkers, cutting edge research and engaged students, not to mention they embody the word community. The web, as a result, was the perfect vehicle for them to communicate all they had to share and connect what they knew with those who were seeking the content that mattered to them.
But as we look at today’s landscape and the evolution of higher education digital strategies, is the compatibility of the web and higher education too much of a good thing... More
Posted on
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
by Barbara Solomon
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
by Barbara Solomon
Selecting a New CMS? Don't Skip the Proof of Concept
Would you buy a house, based only on its curb appeal?
Would you buy a car without test driving it?
Would you even buy a pair of new jeans without trying them on first? (Ok, I've done this. And it goes badly every time).
In all three cases, I hope the answer is no. When making major decisions like buying a new house or car, we invest a considerable amount of time and effort into making sure we make the right choice.
So why are companies selecting a new CMS without test driving the product?
Selecting the Vendor with the Best Demo
The process for selecting a new CMS often seems to be: 1)... More
Posted on
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
by Tom Wentworth
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
by Tom Wentworth
Project QA: With Great Power
This is part 1 of a 3 part series overviewing the Project QA Drupal module:
Introducing Project QA: Part 1 (Introductions)
Project QA: Writing a Submodule
Project QA: With Great Power
You can check out the project page on Drupal.org or even see a live demo over at projectqa.nateofnine.com.
As I developed this module I became more and more excited about what these tools I kept finding could do if I were to... More
Posted on
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
by Nate Swart
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
by Nate Swart
IT führt „Cloud First” auf Erfolgskurs
Wenn ein Unternehmen neue Wege gehen will, stellt sich die Frage: Wohin soll es sich wenden, um die perfekte Kombination an Cloud-Services zu finden und das Projekt effektiv und wirtschaftlich umzusetzen?
Laut Mark Weinstein sollte die IT-Abteilung diesbezüglich der richtige Ansprechpartner sein.
Nach über 30jähriger Tätigkeit für verschiedene große Finanzdienstleister agiert Weinstein in seiner Funktion als „Teilzeit CIO” heute als Berater kleiner und mittelständischer Unternehmen und greift ihnen bei der Optimierung ihres Technikmangements unter die Arme.
Weinstein ist der Meinung, dass IT-... More
Posted on
Monday, January 27, 2014
by Jess Iandiorio
Monday, January 27, 2014
by Jess Iandiorio
Stakeholder Visibility Will Ensure Government IT Success
The recent BBC interview with Bill Crothers about IT suppliers in the public sector was depressingly familiar. In particular, the remark from Sir Francis Maude1 about the government department that was charged £30,000 for changing the text on a web page sent a shudder down my spine. Just to put this into context for a moment, £30,000 is almost three times what someone working for 37 hours a week on minimum wage would earn. These are ludicrous sums of money for what should be very simple processes.
The sad fact is that IT suppliers often charge unreasonable amounts to deliver (sometimes... More
Posted on
Monday, January 27, 2014
by Jim Shaw
Monday, January 27, 2014
by Jim Shaw
Drupal 8 Wins: Avoiding the Dead Hook Blues, Part 3
Drupal 8 Wins: Avoiding the Dead Hook Blues, Part 3 - Today we wrap up this mini series with Larry Garfield, Kris Vanderwater, and me answering the question "Do I need to learn Symfony to develop for Drupal 8?", getting the lowdown on plugins, and doing a wrap-up on the important points from our whole, 3-part conversation.
In August 2013, I spoke with Larry Garfield and Kris Vanderwater in a 90+ minute live Hangout on Air about the origins, details, and implications of the big architectural changes... More
Posted on
Saturday, January 25, 2014
by Jeffrey McGuire
Saturday, January 25, 2014
by Jeffrey McGuire
This (two) weeks in Drupal Core
What's new with Drupal 8?
Last week, in lieu of a This week in Drupal Core, xjm and wechick compiled a phenomenal This YEAR in Drupal Core, so here's a catch up of the last two weeks.
Happy 13th birthday, Drupal!
Drupal 1.0.0 was released on January 15th, 2001. Many software projects from that era are long forgotten by now. That we have stayed relevant and gotten stronger through 13 years of fast and chaotic evolution of the internet is, in my opinion, very impressive. Here's some highlights from the birthday:... More
Posted on
Friday, January 24, 2014
by Angie Byron
Friday, January 24, 2014
by Angie Byron
Keeping Pace with DigitalDisruption.com
Here are some of the past week's highlights from DigitalDisruption.com, Acquia's portal for examining the impact of digital disruption.
Meet Jonathan Stephen, Head of Mobile and Emerging Tech at JetBlue
I had the pleasure of chatting with Jonathan Stephen, the Head of Mobile and Emerging Technologies at JetBlue.
We talked about the shifts and strategies that are coming with brands embracing mobile as well as how JetBlue is leveraging this platform. Mobile is becoming a vital, emerging disruptor to brands and industries on a global... More
Posted on
Friday, January 24, 2014
by Ryan MacInnis
Friday, January 24, 2014
by Ryan MacInnis
Drupal 8: Configuration Management Walk-through
Cross-posted with permission from Drupalize.Me
One thing in Drupal 7 that people have a love-hate relationship with is the Features module. Features gives you the means to export database-stored site settings in code that you can put into version-control and move from server to server. In Drupal 7, when using Features to make a change to your Drupal site configuration settings, you need to update the feature or make sure the settings are in a feature and (re)create them. When deploying, you... More
Posted on
Thursday, January 23, 2014
by Kyle Hofmeyer
Thursday, January 23, 2014
by Kyle Hofmeyer
So schließen Sie die Lücke zwischen Content und Commerce: 5 Strategien
Es ist kein Geheimnis mehr: Hochwertiger Content ist der Schlüssel zu erfolgreichem E-Commerce.
Der reibungslose Übergang von Content Experience zu Purchase Experience kann jedoch nur von den Wenigsten umgesetzt werden. Eine ganzheitliche Herangehensweise verlangt von Händler und Hersteller nicht nur eine tiefere Betrachtung der technischen Seite. Mein kürzlich veröffentlichtes E-Book beleuchtet Schritte in die richtige Richtung: 5 Strategien, um die Lücke zwischen Content und Commerce zu schließen.
Hier eine kurze... More
Posted on
Thursday, January 23, 2014
by Jess Iandiorio
Thursday, January 23, 2014
by Jess Iandiorio
Jenkins, Puppet, Graphite, Logstash and YOU
As mentioned before, devops can be summarized by talking about culture, automation, monitoring metrics and sharing. Although devops is not about tooling, there are a number of open source tools out there that will be able to help you achieve your goals. Some of those tools will also enable better communication between your development and operations teams.
When we talk about Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment we need a number of tools to help us there. We need to be able to build reproducible artifacts which we can... More
Posted on
Thursday, January 23, 2014
by Kris Buytaert
Thursday, January 23, 2014
by Kris Buytaert
Setting the Record Straight on the Total Cost of Adobe AEM vs Drupal
As Drupal begins to compete more often with Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) in enterprise web content management selections, I'm coming across a set of common objections coming from prospects after they speak with Adobe. We’ve been told by multiple customers that Adobe had an “unbiased partner” create a total-cost-of-ownership (TCO) document to compare Adobe AEM vs. Drupal.
The TCO document claims a typical Drupal project costs nearly 70% more than Adobe AEM, with example 3 years costs of approximately $2.4m for Adobe AEM and $4m for Drupal. I’ve read the document, and the total cost of... More
Posted on
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
by Tom Wentworth
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
by Tom Wentworth
Project QA: Writing a submodule
This is part 1 of a 3 part series overviewing the Project QA Drupal module:
Introducing Project QA: Part 1 (Introductions)
Project QA: Writing a submodule
Project QA: With great power
You can check out the project page on Drupal.org or even see a live demo over at projectqa.nateofnine.com.
Let’s walk through building a submodule for Project QA, shall we? There’s three main steps to implementing your own extension to projectqa:
Create a fresh module
Create entities to store your data
Implement... More
Posted on
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
by Nate Swart
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
by Nate Swart
Meeting Marketing Challenges with Automation and Drupal
Often marketing's biggest challenges are long sales cycles, complex decision-making processes, and multiple stakeholders. There is increasing pressure on marketing professionals to find the most qualified prospects and build relationships with them before the lead is passed to sales.
What Is Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation allows organizations to consolidate, streamline, and better manage campaigns that were once cumbersome to track and administer. Once implemented, the system enables a chief marketing officer to view a centralized dashboard to measure the ROI of various... More
Posted on
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
by Adam Waid
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
by Adam Waid
Preventing Drupal Headaches! The file field
In our structured Drupal training program, we teach the "right way" to do things. We listen to our support team of client advisors who see all the permutations of "you're doing it wrong" in Drupal, and make sure we're leading learners in the right direction. When there's something particularly essential we use words like "Important" and set off warnings with a little exclamation mark icon. What we don't do is surround particular instruction in skulls and cross-bones and "Ye shall not pass" signs explaining the hells that will... More
Posted on
Monday, January 20, 2014
by Heather James
Monday, January 20, 2014
by Heather James
Keeping Pace with DigitalDisruption.com
Here are some of the past week's highlights from DigitalDisruption.com, Acquia's portal for examining the impact of digital disruption.
Favecast Unites User Recommendations, Video
Recently, I met Alex Zito-Wolf, content manager for FaveCast, at Boston's WebInnoMobile2 event. Favecast is an app that allows users to share positive video recommendations about great places they've discovered. I think of it as the convergence of Foursquare and Yelp, with a splash of video. In this interview, Alex talks about the future of FaveCast and... More
Posted on
Friday, January 17, 2014
by Ryan MacInnis
Friday, January 17, 2014
by Ryan MacInnis
A Helpful Guide to Your First Drupal Sprint
Cross-posted with permission from Genuine Interactive
It’s almost time for your first Drupal Sprint, but you’re not sure what to expect and what you do to be prepared. Here at Genuine, we want all contributors to be prepared for the 2014 Global Drupal 8 Sprint Weekend so we’ve put together answers to some key questions.
If you still have questions, feel free to contact... More
Posted on
Friday, January 17, 2014
by Lilian Ma
Friday, January 17, 2014
by Lilian Ma
DrupalSouth Preview: Technology, Community, a Superhero, and a Homecoming
Sheep ... and the Lord of the Rings movies. That's what typically comes to the minds of most people when they think of New Zealand. Sheep outnumber Kiwi's (the local term for human New Zealanders) roughly seven to one: 4+ million humans, 28+ million sheep. When I was growing up there as a kid, there were more than 50 million sheep, though ...
As Acquia’s open source evangelist, I feel honoured to have been asked to keynote the biggest Drupal event in the Australasian region and I will do my part to make DrupalSouth an... More
Posted on
Thursday, January 16, 2014
by Jeffrey McGuire
Thursday, January 16, 2014
by Jeffrey McGuire
Webinarreihe: Digital Experiences und das Unternehmen von heute
Ich hatte kürzlich das Vergnügen die neue Acquia GmbH auf zwei Seminaren in Hamburg und München vorzustellen zu dürfen. Ich habe, neben Rednern von anderen digitalen Unternehmen, über Innovation und das Unternehmen von heute gesprochen. Dank der sehr positiven Resonanz, haben wir Teile der Seminare nun in eine kleine Serie von “Webinaren” umwandeln können und laden Sie herzlich zur ersten Folge ein!
Teil 1 - Am 28. Januar, 2014, werde ich aus meinen Erfahrungen mit Acquias internationalen Enterprise-Kundenstamm und Implementierungs-Partnernetzwerk über “Digital Experiences - innovative... More
Posted on
Thursday, January 16, 2014
by Jeffrey McGuire
Thursday, January 16, 2014
by Jeffrey McGuire
Drupal 8 Wins: Avoiding the Dead Hook Blues, Part 2
Drupal 8 Wins: Avoiding the Dead Hook Blues, Part 2 - In today's conversation, Larry Garfield, Kris Vanderwater, and I go over the Go PHP 5 project as the first seeds of cooperation between different PHP projects, how the Symfony2 framework became part of Drupal 8, why we aren't building Drupal 8 on Symfony full-stack, CMI, abstraction in Drupal, and the future of Features in Drupal 8.
In August 2013, I spoke with Larry Garfield and... More
Posted on
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
by Jeffrey McGuire
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
by Jeffrey McGuire
From content management to digital experience management
Cross-posted with permission from buytaert.net
Happy 13th birthday Drupal! It’s hard to believe so much has happened with Drupal when it really just started as a little hobby project. I'm super proud of what we accomplished. After all these years, it continues to be a passion and labor of love to grow, maintain and sustain the larger community.
A birthday presents us with a great time to look back and reflect. Though there are many things... More
Posted on
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
by Dries Buytaert
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
by Dries Buytaert
10 Ways Acquia Cloud Hooks can help you sleep at night
Cross-posted with permission from iKOS.com
If you are working on a project with multiple developers, it's likely the topic of Continuous Integration has come up. Whilst not the academic definition, I find a useful way to describe this is the ability to completely destroy and rebuild your site without losing anything.
When you start researching this topic, you will hear about tools such as Jenkins, Puppet, Chef and various hosted services that offer similar... More
Posted on
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
by Richard Jones
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
by Richard Jones
Global Companies Can’t Afford Not to Integrate Their Content Workflow
There’s a new truth when it comes to content: Integrate or drown. As more companies go global, social and mobile, the amount of web content they must deal with multiplies exponentially. In order to stay productive (and sane), marketers and others who deal with content must streamline their workflow. Given the volume of both consumer and business apps used in the enterprise today, the only way to streamline is to integrate.
Streamlined workflows don’t happen naturally. In fact, the world seems to conspire against them. From social media channels to mobile apps, cloud storage to CRM, every new... More
Posted on
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
by Calvin Scharffs
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
by Calvin Scharffs
This YEAR in Drupal Core (2013)
Co-authored by xjm and webchick
Welcome! For Drupal's 13th birthday, in addition to Give Drupal a Birthday Present: Tackle a D8 Issue!, we wanted to celebrate the occasion with a retrospective of the year 2013 as it relates to Drupal core development!
Here are some stats to get us started:
1,120 unique Drupal 8 patch contributors during 2013, bringing the total number of contributors for the release to over 1,800!
4,175 Drupal 8 core patches committed (... More
Posted on
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
by Angie Byron
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
by Angie Byron
2014 Global Drupal 8 Sprint Weekend
Cross-posted with permission from Genuine Interactive
Come and be a part of the 2014 Global Drupal 8 Sprint Weekend at Genuine on Saturday, Jan. 25!
Drupal 8 has been making great headway in the last few months and we’re aiming to push it further! Join us from 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. to contribute to the Drupal community and help prepare Drupal 8 for beta release. Genuine and co-sponsor, Acquia, welcomes anyone who has built a site in Drupal, including non-programmers.
We’ll kick... More
Posted on
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
by Lilian Ma
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
by Lilian Ma
Pages
Blog Series
Posted on Thursday, February 27, 2014
by Moshe Weitzman
by Moshe Weitzman
Posted on Wednesday, February 26, 2014
by Peter Wolanin
by Peter Wolanin
Posted on Monday, February 24, 2014
by Jesse Beach
by Jesse Beach
Posted on Thursday, February 13, 2014
by Cameron Tod
by Cameron Tod
Posted on Wednesday, February 12, 2014
by Joe Shindelar
by Joe Shindelar