I attended the Nonprofit Technology Conference in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago. As in so many other places these days, both on and offline, a lot of the buzz and talk was centered around The Cloud and Cloud Computing. What is it? What can it do for us? Who uses it? It's easy to get into long discussions about these topics and there are many articles, blog posts and even books covering a wide array of aspects and philosophies of Cloud Computing. I'll try to give a very brief and cursory overview below in an attempt not to cause immediate information overload. If you would like to continue the discussion a bit more in-depth, please feel free to leave a comment or contact me at any time.

What is it?

There are still quite extensive (and sometimes heated...) debates going on regarding how to define The Cloud and services operating from The Cloud. I'm a visual person and I think this video is a good attempt at depicting The Cloud, what it is and where it came from.

• A collection of shared, internet accessible resources or infrastructure evolved from several "as a Service" infrastructure and software delivery models
• Can be tapped into on an as-needed basis (resources can be scaled up or down with little to no effort)
• Pay for the resources you use, and don't pay for what you don't use (utility type metered billing model)
• "Open" philosophy (open meaning access from any device anywhere at a higher level and API access at a lower level)

What can it do for us?

Besides the obvious and immediate cost savings associated with life in The Cloud, it also offers a level of flexibility in a number of areas that is previously unparalleled in the computing world:

• No more long binding hardware/hosting contracts
• Need a staging site for that one new application to show off for an afternoon? No problem, just click a button
• Have a high profile campaign driving a lot of traffic to your web site? Deploy some extra resources for the duration of the campaign effect and terminate them at will as soon as your traffic returns to normal levels
• Need some compelling arguments when presenting and/or defending your web operations budget? How about: no longer will you be spending on what you might need, you are now spending on what you in actuality need and use

So what's the catch? There really is no catch to speak of. The barrier of entry to The Cloud is very low, cost is exclusively operational as opposed to in previous years where the barrier of entry to high level computing resources has been associated with large upfront capital expenditures.

Who uses it?

Chances are you as an individual or maybe in some business capacity, are already taking advantage of what The Cloud has to offer in some way or another without even knowing about it, which is coincidentally one of the major characteristics of The Cloud; the abstraction of the underlying infrastructure, hardware or software platform. I mentioned Google Apps above, here are some other major players using The Cloud and/or providing access to it and services running from it:

• Salesforce.com - provides cloud services
• Amazon.com - provides cloud services and cloud infrastructure (which have evolved from an infrastructure that mainly came about due to its own need for an operating platform for its e-commerce business)
• Razorfish.com - operates from The Cloud

Final words

At Forum One we offer our clients and partners a slice of, and a guided way into, The Cloud and all of the benefits discussed above through our partnership with Rackspace and its Cloud Division. We also have several SaaS offerings (or Cloud Service offerings if you will), our flagship being ProjectSpaces. The Cloud isn't just the future of computing, it is here now and ready for you to put to use!

You can't tell that much about a person from a code sample

But you don't even know it's the person's own code!

But maybe my code is all proprietary or even classified!

OK, so what should I provide?

So...what should I not provide?

Don't indulge your bad habits

Don't be weird

Don't give me the same code sample you used six years ago

CREATE TABLE `system` (

  `filename` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',

  `name` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',

  `type` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',

  `description` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',

  `status` int(11) NOT NULL default '0',

  `throttle` tinyint(4) NOT NULL default '0',

  `bootstrap` int(11) NOT NULL default '0',

  `schema_version` smallint(6) NOT NULL default '-1',

  `weight` int(11) NOT NULL default '0',

  PRIMARY KEY  (`filename`),

  KEY `weight` (`weight`)

)

The value of meta tags

A common myth is that having the right keyword and description meta tags matters the most, but this myth was debunked a long time ago. Meta tags have little weight for actual SEO, and AFAIK meta-keywords are completely ignored by major search engines since they were so easily gamed early. Meta description tags are a bit more useful, and if provided, are used by google as the description of your page.

Court Says Keyword Metatags Don't Matter--Standard Process v. Banks

"SEOs and SEMs have known for years that most search engines ignore or give minimal acknowledgement to keyword metatags. Lawyers, on the other hand, have been living in a parallel fantasy universe where keyword metatags single-handedly divert unwaveringly brand-loyal customers to piratical competitors. Even today, many courts still rely on the 1999 Brookfield case and its dreadful keyword metatags-as-a-false-billboard analogy as an accurate and definitive statement of how search engines operate today"

Best Practices

The following practices can help SEO. Some of these should be done automatically by your CMS or platform of choice.

Use a single domain for your site

Use a single domain name for your site. Seemingly less important things such as having a site accessible by way of multiple domains/hosts/URLs (forumone.com vs www.forumone.com e.g) lowers your Google ranking. Redirecting permanently to one domain, ie if you go to projectspaces.com, redirect the link to www.projectspaces.com with a "Permanent Redirect" code so that search engines don't index both urls as separate pages. The Drupal .htaccess file has a sample rewrite rule to customize for this. Visitors can still use either domain name to reach your site (with or without www. for example), but they, and more importantly Google and other search engines, will all end up viewing your site at a single domain. This prevents your search rank from being diffused between both domain names.

If you're using Apache and have mod_rewrite enabled, you can use the following RewriteRule

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.projectspaces.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)   http://projectspaces.com/$1   [R=permanent,L]

Pay attention to titles, title tags, urls

Use descriptive and engaging titles for pages/content as well as using heading tags to mark up titles and subtitles. The title tag should reflect the title of the content a user is viewing. The order of words in title tags matters, for example, instead of "Forum One Website : Events", "Events: Forum One". Words that appear earlier in the title get more weight, and also make your titles easier to scan in search results lisitings. By default, Drupal does a decent job of this since it reuses a node's title for its title tag. Drupal also places the node's title before the site's title in the title tag.

Words in URLs influence your search ranking. Compare the urls the URL node/93 to publication/effectiveness-of-lending-in-latin-america, the latter conveys what is available at that link more readily. If any match a user's search terms, google will highlight them when it shows your search results, for example search for "online community report". By default, Drupal does not alias URLs in this way, but the pathauto module should be installed and configured to create them. If you don't have access the pathauto, contributors can manually create aliases when adding content.

Update:I just noticed Gadgetopia enumerated the benefits of readable URLs recently, beyond SEO.

Make content easy to digest and discover

Another good practice is to use descriptive links to lead users on your site, and to make content easily digestible.

• Use descriptive links to your content (ie, try to avoid click here). If you must instruct users to click on a link, make the instruction context specific, ie "Click to view more publications" or "Click to read about the Annual Conference". since that improves click thru rates.
• Avoiding images for text (ie navigation, headers, titles, etc...), or at least provide descriptive alt tags. This is also a good accessibility practice.
• Don't just use flash, pdf to deliver text, provide content as HTML. Search engines may not be able to index content if its inside flash or requires a plugin to view.

Use Google's Webmaster Tools

Use google's webmaster tools to diagnose how your site is indexed by the search engine. The tool gives a lot of diagnostic information for making improvements to a site's content. It will report problems including duplicate title tags, missing or short description tags, content delivery errors (page not found, server or network timed out) that prevented google from indexing your site. You can also see what external pages in Google's index link to your own pages, and more.

I also recommend reading the more exhaustive Google's SEO Starter Guide. The actual guide is a PDF available at that link, and yes, I find that a bit ironic.

   1:<?php
   2:/**
   3: * Tests is the logged in user is a buddy of the specified uid
   4: * @param integer user id
   5: */
   6:function user_is_buddy($uid)
   7:{
   8:    static $is_buddy;
   9:    static $user_buddies;
  10:    global $user; // logged in user
  11:
  12:    if (!isset($is_buddy[$uid]) && $user)
  13:    {
  14:        if (!isset($user_buddies))
  15:        {
  16:            // hold the authenticated user's buddies and
  17:            // minimize queries
  18:            $user_buddies = array_keys(buddylist_get_buddies($user->uid, 'uid'));
  19:        }
  20:
  21:        // users are there own buddies
  22:        if ($uid == $user->uid)
  23:        {
  24:            $is_buddy[$uid] = true;
  25:        }
  26:        else if(user_access('administer buddylist'))
  27:        {
  28:            $is_buddy[$uid] = true;
  29:        }
  30:        else if (!empty($uid))
  31:        {
  32:            $is_buddy[$uid]= in_array($uid, $user_buddies);
  33:        }
  34:        else
  35:        {
  36:            $is_buddy[$uid] = false;
  37:        }
  38:    }
  39:
  40:    return $is_buddy[$uid];
  41:}
  42:
  43:// implementation of hook_panels_pane_content_alter
  44:// http://groups.drupal.org/node/7678
  45:function planet_connect_panels_pane_content_alter($content, $pane, $args, $context)
  46:{
  47:    // user profile customizations
  48:    if ('user' == arg(0) && $profile_uid = (int) arg(1))
  49:    {
  50:        // don't display profile about stuff to non buddies, EVER
  51:        // delta is diff for every user
  52:        $is_buddy = user_is_buddy($profile_uid);
  53:        if(!empty($content))
  54:        {
  55:            if ('About You' == $content->subject && false == $is_buddy)
  56:            {
  57:                $content->content = null;
  58:            }
  59:            // don't display activity stuff to non buddies, EVER
  60:            // delta is diff for every user
  61:            if ('Recent Updates' == $content->subject && false == $is_buddy)
  62:            {
  63:                $content->content = null;
  64:            }
  65:            // don't display activity stuff to non buddies, EVER
  66:            // delta is diff for every user
  67:            if ('My Groups' == $content->subject && false == $is_buddy)
  68:            {
  69:                $content->content = null;
  70:            }
  71:
  72:            // our list of restricted block deltas
  73:            $restricted_blocks = array(
  74:                'blogs_user_id',
  75:                'resources_user_id',
  76:                'projects_user_id',
  77:                'favorites_user_id',
  78:                'interests_user_id'
  79:            );
  80:
  81:            // don't display blogs to non-buddies
  82:            if (in_array($content->delta, $restricted_blocks) && false == $is_buddy)
  83:            {
  84:                $content->content = '';
  85:            }
  86:
  87:        }
  88:    }
  89:
  90:    return $content;
  91:}

   1:<?php
   2:function forumone_block($op = 'list', $delta = 0, $edit = array())
   3:{
   4:    switch ($op) {
   5:        case 'list':
   6:            $blocks[0]['info'] = t("OG: Show a profile's group membership.");
   7:
   8:            return $blocks;
   9:        break;
  10:
  11:        case 'view':
  12:            switch ($delta)
  13:            {
  14:                case 0:
  15:                    $block['subject'] = t('My Groups');
  16:                    $block['content'] = forumone_users_og();
  17:                break;
  18:            }
  19:            return $block;
  20:        break;
  21:    }
  22:}

The forumone_users_og function takes advantage of the fact that a user's group memberships is a property of the object returned by user_load(). This block assumes that the uid comes from the url of the current page.

   1:<?php
   2:function forumone_users_og()
   3:{
   4:    // should be the profile the current user is looking at
   5:    $uid = (int) arg(1);
   6:    if ($uid)
   7:    {
   8:        $usernode = user_load(array('uid' => $uid));
   9:
  10:        if (isset($usernode->og_groups))
  11:        {
  12:            foreach ($usernode->og_groups as $ogid => $og)
  13:            {
  14:                $items[$og->nid]['data'] = l($og['title'], 'node/' . $og['nid']);
  15:            }
  16:            return theme('item_list', $items);
  17:        }
  18:    }
  19:}
  20:

This underground data center has greenhouses, waterfalls, German submarine engines, simulated daylight and can withstand a hit from a hydrogen bomb. It looks like the secret HQ of a James Bond villain.

You'll forgive me for not being in favor of making our code lower quality to cater to a dying browser that has already resulted in the waste of hundreds of thousands of hours. If you use @import, you cannot effectively Save-As a page because the imported stylesheets don't come with it. Frankly I've yet to hit the 30 stylesheet mark myself so I've not encountered this problem.

If, like me, you are forced to work in the real world and not some idyllic fantasy land where you get a completely standards compliant browser AND a pony, you can adapt my solution below. This solution is ideal if you do not want to, or cannot, patch or hack away at Drupal's core.

In your theme, instead of using drupal_get_styles(), we'll use our own function. Find where the styles markup is defined or echo'd to the browser and replace it with a call to a new function:

   1:$styles = my_group_css();

Before that function is called, you'll need to define it with the following php code:

   1:<?php
   2:// Max limit of stylesheets in IE bug: see http://drupal.org/node/228818
   3:function my_group_css()
   4:{
   5:    // despite the name, this returns an array of all stylesheets
   6:    $styles = drupal_add_css();
   7:    $output = '';
   8:    foreach ($styles as $media => $css)
   9:    {
  10:        $css = array_merge($css['module'], $css['theme']);
  11:        $groups = array_chunk(array_keys($css), 30, true);
  12:
  13:        foreach ($groups as $grp)
  14:        {
  15:            $output .= '<style type="text/css" media="' . $media . '">';
  16:            foreach ($grp as $url)
  17:            {
  18:                $output .= '@import "' . base_path() . $url . '";' . "\n";
  19:            }
  20:            $output .= '</style>';
  21:        }
  22:    }
  23:
  24:    return $output;
  25:}
  26:
  27:

Our new offerings are part of a strategy to bring cloud benefits to all businesses with simple, cost-effective products that everyone can use, backed by the best customer support that only Rackspace can deliver

We already had a module to customize the site, and we added the hook and a helper function to it. First we needed a way to test if the logged in user was the buddy of the profile being viewed.

   1:<?php
   2:/**
   3: * Tests is the logged in user is a buddy of the specified uid
   4: * @param integer user id
   5: */
   6:function user_is_buddy($uid)
   7:{
   8:    static $is_buddy;
   9:    static $user_buddies;
  10:    global $user; // logged in user
  11:
  12:
  13:    if (!isset($is_buddy[$uid]))
  14:    {
  15:        if (!isset($user_buddies))
  16:        {
  17:            $user_buddies = array_keys(buddylist_get_buddies($user->uid, 'uid'));
  18:        }
  19:
  20:        // users are their own buddies
  21:        if ($uid == $user->uid)
  22:        {
  23:            $is_buddy[$uid] = true;
  24:        }
  25:        else if (!empty($uid))
  26:        {
  27:            $is_buddy[$uid]= in_array($uid, $user_buddies);
  28:        }
  29:        else
  30:        {
  31:            $is_buddy[$uid] = false;
  32:        }
  33:    }
  34:
  35:    return $is_buddy[$uid];
  36:}
  37:
  38:

In our implementation of the alter content hook, we simply remove the content we do not want to display if our is_buddy test fails by setting it to null. If content is empty, then the pane does not display at all. For most panes, the delta attribute should be sufficient to identify it, but some panes, like node fields and node field groups, have different deltas per user, so we had to rely on the subject property instead.

   1:<?php
   2:// implementation of hook_panels_pane_content_alter
   3:// http://groups.drupal.org/node/7678
   4:function my_module_panels_pane_content_alter($content, $pane, $args, $context)
   5:{
   6:    // user profile customizations
   7:    if ('user' == arg(0) && $profile_uid = (int) arg(1))
   8:    {
   9:        // don't display profile about stuff to non buddies, EVER
  10:        // delta is diff for every user
  11:        $is_buddy = user_is_buddy($profile_uid);
  12:        if ('About You' == $content->subject && false == $is_buddy)
  13:        {
  14:            $content->content = null;
  15:        }
  16:
  17:        // don't display blog posts to non-buddies
  18:        if ('blogs_user_id'== $content->delta && false == $is_buddy)
  19:        {
  20:            $content->content = '';
  21:        }
  22:    }
  23:
  24:    return $content;
  25:}