Content Management Systems

Consulting

Submitted by dthoma7 on Thu, 2010-08-26 14:25

For several years now I have been consulting with a wide variety of clients to help them improve their processes and systems. If you bring me in, note that I am trained as a socio-technical systems analyst and make a couple of core assumptions:

1) Every system exists in its present form for some reason (nothing is totally irrational, there is probably someone with some power and control who wants things to be as they are)

The Web 3.0 Platform. What does it need?

Submitted by dthoma7 on Thu, 2010-08-19 05:46

Last year for a presentation at Drupalcamp Atlanta I conducted some research on the social media software space and how Drupal fits. Since as a business professor I have access to Gartner and Forrester as well as a variety of other marketing research resources, I used those. I also surveyed former clients and students now using social media. Since I have been installing and using such softwares for 15 years, I have a history of working with SharePoint, Documentum, LotusNotes, MicroStrategy, Drupal, Moodle, E107, and several others. I attempted to be objective. Here are the results.

First, there are three core capabilities I think social software really needs. After I go through these and present charts of my findings, I will present three charts comparing several solutions at the bundle level for blog publishing, social media, and content management.

Drupal Design Favorites

Submitted by dthoma7 on Fri, 2009-04-24 15:01

http://www.webmonkey.com/cheat-sheets/This site is maintained using the Drupal content management system, the system that provides the best overall power and activity among Open Source solutions. In building and updating this site over the past 8 years, I have seen Drupal evolve from a very simple solution into the robust framework for collaboration that it is today. I am taking this space to list out some of my top code favorites for use with Drupal.

Modules:

Tutorials

Themes

Nice packaged themes at Adaptive Themes.
To generate themes from PSD files PSD to CSS is not bad as a jump start.
Or, a better but more expensive way is to use Artisteer.
Or, code one yourself! http://drupal.org/node/587366
Nice cheat sheets: http://www.webmonkey.com/cheat-sheets/

As a general design tip, we should design for a general audience by designing at an 8th grade reading level or below. Here is a nice discussion of this need for the medical community.

Here is a print out of the $user variable for username: .
stdClass Object ( [uid] => 0 [hostname] => 38.107.191.92 [roles] => Array ( [1] => anonymous user ) [session] => [cache] => 0 )

Open Source Tools

Submitted by dthoma7 on Thu, 2008-10-16 14:56

I frequently try out and contribute to a variety of open-source online community-type tools including Mambo, Tiki-wiki, Drupal (a commercial version of Drupal = Acquia ), and Moodle. I have several currently installed and use some of them for testing out comparative features.

Several guides on the Web provide discussions of the various tools available. Wikipedia provides one of my favorite general lists here.

Digital Archives Make Massive Content Available

Submitted by dthoma7 on Mon, 2008-09-22 14:21

When I first published this article, I noted that there is a massive movement in content acquisition and management. Old uncopywrited materials are being scanned and placed into digital media. In some cases they are being opened up to the public.

Here is a nice story on NPR that brings a piece of this movement into perspective.