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Day 1 of Portland DrupalCon 2013

mspinosa — Wed, 22 May 2013 05:42:56 +0000

Today Portland DrupalCon kicked off. The platform's continued evolvement is underscored by the constantly growing conference, its adoption into well-known public organizations, and the progress made toward Drupal 8. This year the Drupal Association took special care to enhance the conference experience as the audience has matured significantly over the past four years by adding unconventional options to senior developers. Alternative programs include the Birds of a Feather (BOF) format that was introduced in Denver DrupalCon and greatly improved for Portland. It also featured code sprints for efforts surrounding the Drupal 8 platform.

The State of Drupal 2013

The keynote was presented this year (as usual) by Dries Buytaert the founder of the Drupal platform. The future of the Drupal platform is great but a strong theme for continual innovation was well delivered as Drupal becomes the platform of choice for mid to large-sized coporations and non-profits, and makes a larger foray into the world of ecommerce. The platform has grown so substantially that both NBC and the White House contributed direct case studies to this year's conference, having whole heartedly embraced the Drupal platform.

It's not just the platform that's being adopted either. The White House has delivered major code commits to the Drupal project to enhance performance optimization. One of their most successful projects, "We The People", has successfully helped engage the nation in getting the government to address critical issues through petitions. One moment of unexpected humor from the federal government was revealed in its witty response to a successful petition for answers on why construction of the DeathStar is not yet underway.

The community focus for Drupal now and through 2013 is an area that Unleashed Technologies has been focused on since the latter half of 2012. That focus is on context within web experiences. Context is when the first interactions someone has with a website, whether anonymous or signed in, are targeted to the individual's interests based on known variables, including search terminology that brought them to the page and IP location matching just to name two. This new way of thinking has many names including customer engagement management (CEM) but so far the greatest standard so far in explaining this new phenomenom is web engagement management (WEM).

The Unleashed Team in action at the DrupalCon booth!

Next Level Steps in Integration

Drupal still maintains its supremacy in the marketplace by being the best platform for the integration of disparate systems, resulting in a centralized visitor experience. This capability is continuing to mature and Dries reinforced the importance of constantly polishing our vast integration capabilities with well known systems to ensure that market leadership persists. Our efforts as a community must grow in in order to make our existing integration modules more expansive. During the presentation it was revealed that a nationwide survey showed only 8% of marketers were happy with the integrations that were in place at their organizations today.

Consolidation or Separation?

This was an intriguing topic during the keynote as there are two distinct paths to take with regard to the future of the Drupal platform. Either more is included within the core of Drupal itself or we leverage the incredible capabilities of the platform to have Drupal become the centralized heart beat for best of breed software deployments including CRM, eCommerce, and marketing automation. I actually contest that neither model in its entirety is correct. That the modifier of selection for these paths being defined as an "OR" option is incorrect. That an "AND" method of thinking needs to be adopted for Drupal to maintain its successful industry adoption pattern. Simply put there are some features that should be brought into the core of the platform or perhaps better worded as "extended". Immediately, large investments into eCommerce comes to mind as a good decision for Drupal to develop and it has already been taking place over the last year. CRM should remain off the list as its feature set is natively too large to be effectively deliverd in an "all in one" solution. In the instance of CRM we should be strengthening integration modules as a community to include more on first installation, reducing custom development and bringing client intiatives to fruition faster.

Interesting Insights into Marketing

Earlier it was mentioned that only 8% of marketing professionals were happy with their current system integrations. As a matter of general information the following data was derived from that same survey and a series of supporting surveys.

43% of marketers are primarly concerned with ease of use and content authoring capabilities.
70% of marketing professionals are considering mobile first when addressing existing and new web initiatives.
11% are still holding out by refusing to embrace multi-platform considerations like mobile.

Closing Thoughts on Day 1 Keynote

The future is bright with Drupal 8 being tentatively released for beta in the 4th quarter of 2013 and hopes of a client-ready system in the early part of 2014. Bold moves have been made to once again revolutionize the Drupal 8 platform that I will be covering in greater detail in a blog post later this week. Content Management has moved far past its traditional definition of general content control and has branched into several critical areas where necessary tools must be available for any organization to meet with success. I can't imagine any CMS platform that didn't have capabilities in offering some level of tools for areas like SEO, CRM, Analytics, Mobile, Social, Personalization and Marketing Automation.

Drupal stands on the forefront of revolutionizing the web landscape with its upcoming version release, empowering the mid and enterprise market with built-in tools currently unrivaled in the web engagement management space. Here is to the next level of a better, faster, and more personal web.

Using Mobile to Gain a Competitive Edge

jherson — Fri, 17 May 2013 21:33:18 +0000

It seems that everyone's talking about mobile technology these days, but surprisingly not everyone is using it yet to help their business. A recent study by Constant Contact and published by eMarketer shows that only one-third of small business respondents have optimized their website for mobile devices. The majority of small businesses who incorporate mobile marketing into their planning do so for social media engagement or email marketing, with more than 70% reporting that they are implementing those sorts of programs.

This leaves a large opportunity for small business, particularly with a local client base, to cater to an audience who is increasingly using mobile to browse and shop. When only one-third of respondents has optimized their website for mobile and only one-third of those businesses has mobile optimized payment processing, there is a lot of room to grow and a lot of room for an online business, no matter how big, to gain an edge against its competitors in the ever-expanding mobile market. Even if you haven't heard directly from your customers that they'd prefer mobile (47% of respondents in that survey said as much for their reason for not implementing mobile solutions), 20% of internet users are now mobile-only and that number is continuing to grow. No matter what your industry is, mobile device use is growing rapidly among just about every age group, across industries and geographies. Optimizing your website for mobile devices enables you to reach customers in ways that likely more than 60% of your competitors cannot. As mobile use continues to grow, if you don't make the move to optimize your site soon, you'll be catching up to your competitors instead of leading them.

Colin's Weekly Roundup - 5/9/2013

codell — Thu, 09 May 2013 12:32:18 +0000

It's been a little more than a week, so I've given you a little extra to keep you well stocked with web design, development and IT resources.

Looking Forward to DrupalCon 2013

jherson — Thu, 02 May 2013 21:44:35 +0000

In less than three weeks, Portland DrupalCon will be underway. This year, Unleashed Technologies is proud to be a Gold Sponsor of DrupalCon and very much looking forward to learning about what's next for Drupal and meeting members of the community. There are some great things to look forward to at DrupalCon this year, including:

Educational sessions about exciting new Drupal developments. We're especially interested in the work being done with Panopoly, the continued growth of responsive design in the web design world, and the many new developments in store for Drupal 8.
The Blue Drop Award winners will be announced on Wednesday night of the event. The finalists are voted on by the community and the awards recognize those that were deemed the best in Drupal. We're excited to be finalists in three different Blue Drop categories. Vote before May 5th to select a winner.
Unleashed Technologies' happy hour! Help us kick a keg of Portland's finest brew in booth 101 on Wednesday, May 22 from 4 - 6. While you're there, see a demo of what we can do for your publication or learn how we can give you enterprise-class content control, simplify nonprofit member management, or turbo charge your site with Drupal performance hosting.

If you're in Portland for DrupalCon this month, be sure to drop by booth 101. Looking forward to seeing everyone there!

Improving Site Search Results with Microdata

mcurtin — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 02:42:06 +0000

One of the biggest question clients ask is how to improve their site’s visibility on search engines. The concern is even greater with online storeowners. Products from their store appearing high in the search results lead to an increase in visitors and sales. Millions of online users are searching for products, topics and interests utilizing the most popular search engines including Google, Yahoo, and Bing. These search engines depend on proper markup and formatted content on sites in order to direct users to the best results. There are several things companies can do to improve their ranking or position in search results for free. One major aspect to consider is your site schema or markup and how a search engine understands it.

HTML Formatting Doesn’t Cut It

Good HTML formatting helps control how browsers actually render content on a page, but a little more is needed in order to tell a search engine crawling the site exactly what the content represents. Additional vocabulary and microdata is needed to provide Google, Bing and other more detail. A search engine will have a limited understanding of page content, but microdata clarifies the exact topic of the content. Below is an example:

Typical HTML Example

<div>
<h1>Thriller</h1>
<div class="artist-name">Michael Jackson</div>
<div class="label">Epic Records</div>
<div class="genre">Pop</div>
</div>

HTML with Microdata

<div itemscope itemtype ="http://schema.org/MusicRecording">
<h1 itemprop="name">Thriller</h1>
<div itemprop="performer" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person" class="artist-name">Michael Jackson</div>
<div itemprop="genre" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/MusicRecording" class="genre">Pop</div>
</div>

References and Tools

The “itemscope” and “itemtype” elements are only a few markups elements and tags that can be integrated into a site to help control how a site is crawled. Every person, product, book, movie, business, and place has a specific identifier. Every one of these things has four base properties, including a name, description, URL, and image. The amount of variables can be overwhelming and complex. Have no fear! There are tools out there to help web developers with this markup integration.

Schema.org – This website serves as the main guide for learning the proper way for integrating this additional markup into a site. Not only is there considerable documentation available, but the site does a great job explaining the reasoning for schemas and how search engines utilize them.
Google WebMaster Tools – Google provides answers regarding rich snippets, including microdata and microformats. The goal of Google WebMaster Tools is to ensure that your site is doing everything possible to be properly crawled by Google and other search engines. Two links of value include answers to frequently asked questions regarding schema.org and the structured data testing tool. The structured data test allows you to enter a sample URL and see how Google is pulling the page content.

Schema.org and Google WebMaster Tools both provide great resources for structuring your data to be crawled correctly.

Impact on Social Sharing

The microdata found on a webpage can also impact the way this data is pulled when shared on a social media site. There is additional data that can be included into the page, like Facebook Open Graph, that provides the social site more information on the actual content and the correct fields to display in a shared post. After investing the time in writing valuable content, additional markup is a great way to ensure that your content is pulled into Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Google+ the correct way. SEOMoz has a great article about social snippets and stuructioning data correctly for social sharing. While social snippets help social sites, the additional micordata found on schema.org is needed for search engines.

As search engines change their search algorithms and the way they crawl site data, the micodata and other formatting required will also expand. It is important for sites to grow and change with search engines to ensure that their data is indexed properly and found by the end user. The end goal is a unified standard that websites and search engines will follow, which will allow users to find the exact content and products they are looking for. To discuss additional web topics or concerns, feel free to contact out team.

Colin's Weekly Roundup - 4/19/2013

codell — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 14:10:52 +0000

Here is this week's installment of web design, development and system admin links that I found useful and hope you will, too.

Design / CSS

Pure CSS3 breadcrumb navigation – the pixel perfect way

Recreating the Reeder two-tone horizontal rule in pure CSS

Useful site to demonstrate responsive design to clients

Frontend / JavaScript

jQuery 2.0 released; drops support for IE 6-8

Single page apps in depth

jQuery.Shapeshift v2.0 – Column grid system with drag and drop

Backend / General Development

Why “Maybe” is better than null

There is no right way to develop software

The best QBASIC game you’ve ever seen

System Administration / Security

Microsoft tells Windows 7 users to uninstall faulty security update

Brute force attack on WordPress and Joomla powered sites

Don’t copy-paste from website to terminal

Humor

xkcd: Authorization

Rickroll your terminal

Miscellaneous

Netflix plans its move from Microsoft Silverlight to HTML5 video

CISPA has passed the House, 288-127

What to Consider Before Developing a Website

mcurtin — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 14:20:45 +0000

The steady increase in traffic on the web has led to more companies to invest time and money into their online presence. Whether the goal is to build the site from scratch or make an upgrade, there is a lot of planning that goes into the initiative. Before anything is built or coded, several questions need to be answered that determine the actual scope of the project.

A new website can be a large undertaking and there are a variety of directions to go regarding content, aesthetics and functionality. Here are just a few factors to consider before moving forward:

Hosting & Technology – The platform being used for the site is very important to consider and will impact the hosting provider and server environment that you choose. A content management or ecommerce platform, like Drupal and Magento, is PHP-based and database driven. A store containing thousands of products and account holders or a site constantly being updated with fresh content will require a more robust hosting environment. Discussions on the use of HTML5 or JavaScript tools will also increase the need for a dependable host.
Design & Layout – How will the new website carry the established brand? Will the theme reflect a more corporate or playful message? How will users navigate the site? There are several design decisions that need to be made before any coding can begin. These decisions will impact the elements that will appear on each page and where they will appear. Planning for the design and layout of a site typically starts with sketches and wireframes and leads to design compositions.
Screen Resolution & Cross-Browser Compatibility – With the emergence of smart phones and tablets, the screen resolution of a site visitor is becoming more and more inconsistent. Websites now must allow users to navigate easily from both their desktop computer and phones. Companies need to decide whether to utilize a responsive design or create a separate theme for smaller screens. It is also important for a site to function properly in all browsers. Before beginning a new web project, the team must evaluate their target audience and the browsers these visitors use. Quality assurance testing will ensure that the new site works across all platforms and needs to be factored into the project hours.
Site Security – Before launching a new website, security and the protection of user information is important to consider. Depending on the functionality of the site, security could be a low or high priority. For ecommerce site that allow users to create accounts and make purchases, security needs to be a priority. A SSL certificate and creditable payment processor provide customer assurance that all site data and transactions are safe and secure. For particular web projects, site security needs to be included in the planning and budget.

The infographic below, created by Pixaal, details 26 key factors to account for while planning and developing a new website. While many of these topics are very basic, accounting for all of these will lead to a successful site deployment. At Unleashed Technologies, we understand that each project comes with different priorities and challenges. Contact us today to discuss your plans for a new website. Whether it is an upgrade or a new initiative, we would be happy to help.

To Pin this infographic on Pinterest, click here. Full size image courtesy of Bit Rebels.

Vote for the Best Drupal Sites of 2013

jherson — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 15:16:58 +0000

Unleashed Technologies is proud to announce that three of its sites launched in the past year have been named finalists for the annual Drupal Blue Drop Awards! In three distinct categories, these sites have some of the latest in Drupal innovation, web design and development prowess. Here are the sites that are in contention:

The Woodhouse Day Spa - A finalist in the Best B2C Website category, this website was a combined effort, utilizing the Drupal development skills of Unleashed Technologies and web design of Bates Creative. Unleashed Technologies developed an enterprise platform that easily scales to accommodate The Woodhouse Day Spa’s explosive growth, as they take the company from 30 to more than 200 franchises. The Woodhouse Day Spa can now instantly create franchise sites that are consistent in branding and content, yet managed and updated by the franchisee. All sites for The Woodhouse Day Spa are fully integrated into spa management systems to provide a seamless experience to visitors. The Drupal platform developed for The Woodhouse Day Spa brings usability and control to its franchisees in order to increase engagement and improve ROI. Vote for The Woodhouse Day Spa now!
ELECTRICAL CONTRACTOR Magazine - ECMag.com is one of The ELECTRICAL CONTRACTOR magazine website formerly required a large amount of work for low value tasks, but with the automation of key processes through this web platform its staff can now perform less work to drive a much higher value. "As we develop the capabilities that the flexible Drupal platform gives us, we're finding that we're able to do so many things that we couldn't before. We can't wait to figure out all that we can do," said publisher, John Maisel. Another result of a superior partnership between Bates Creative and Unleashed Technologies, ECMag.com is very deserving to win Best Media Website. Vote now!
United States Naval Institute - The United States Naval Institute (USNI) website, built on Drupal, has served to further its mission and bring it to a position of technological leadership among military nonprofits. With a responsive design, business process automation, and high performance availability, USNI.org delivers tremendous value to the organization and its members. Vote for USNI today.

Voting is easy, simply register at http://www.bluedropawards.org/ (they only ask a few questions, promise) and fill out your ballot. Please consider voting for the websites outlined above as you make your selection.

Colin's Weekly Roundup - 4/12/2013

codell — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:41:22 +0000

I'm always on the lookout for exciting ideas and new technologies to broaden my knowledge of web development and design. Each week, I'll be posting links to articles on development, design and other miscellanious information that I find interesting. What follows are the highlights of the links I've recently discovered. I hope you find them as useful as I did.

Design / CSS

Serif vs. sans

Jetstrap: Build mockups and interfaces with Bootstrap in the browser

Designing a modern email

Media queries are a hack

$100 reward to anyone who can render a $1 bill on a webpage at actual size

Frontend / JavaScript

jQuery best practices

Explicit vs. clever

jQuery 2.0 beta 3 released

Backend / General Development

Magento: How to override any core functionality

phpDaemon: Async framework for network apps implemented in PHP using libevent

Git Koans

Git: combine and organize messy commits using interactive rebase

PHP’s comparison operators are weird

System Administration / Security

Shodan: The scariest search engine on the Internet

Firefox 23 will block non-SSL content on SSL pages by default

Windows XP support ends a year from… now!

ZFS on Linux is ready for wide scale deployment

Humor

xkcd: Adobe updates

How to tell HTML from HTML5

It’s always the firewall

Miscellaneous

Webinar on April 25^th: Quality Assurance for PHP Projects

CISPA passes committee, will head to the House floor for a vote

Chrome will officially leave WebKit for Blink in 10 weeks

Google releases their Inactive Account Manager

IE 10 almost doubles its users thanks to Windows 7 release: proving once more that automatic upgrades are effective

The First Level of Super Mario Bros. is Easy with Lexicographic Orderings and Time Travel... after that it gets a little tricky.

3 Trends to Watch in Mobile Commerce

jherson — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 16:44:28 +0000

The number of people using smartphones to shop and make purchases continues to grow. In fact, a recent study showed that 38 million Americans admitted they shop online while *ahem* otherwise indisposed, and 9 million claim to have shopped during business meetings. With all of this mobile commerce taking place, here are some of the trends you should watch for when designing your site and delivering content to your customers:

1. Shoppers are bringing the online instore.

With the number of Wi-Fi spots worldwide climbing steadily toward one million and mobile internet users continuing to grow, shoppers are accessing more and more information from their smartphones in-store when making a purchase. A recent study from eMarketer showed that this information includes not only price comparisons, but also product reviews, in-store coupons and social media feedback. If you have a physical and online store, make sure you are providing an intuitive mobile interface as well as offering in-store as well as online discounts from your site. If you don't have a physical location, be sure that your products are reviewed and featured on the major marketplaces to keep them top of mind when these consumers are comparison shopping.

2. Sites Over Apps

More and more shoppers are expressing a preference for accessing a store via its URL in a browser than by using a native app. This is yet another reason to ensure your site's mobile shopping experience is as fine tuned and user-friendly as your desktop site. Whether you choose a responsive design or a mobile site, having an intuitive, secure, and streamlined mobile site design and checkout process rather than forcing customers to install and use an app will undoubtedly increase traffic and revenue.

3. Payment Solutions and Mobile Wallets

PayPal is already a behemoth in the ecommerce world. As mobile commerce continues to grow, the need for an easy and secure way to complete purchases - without having to type in credit card, billing and shipping information from a tiny device - will be key. Allowing customers to use payment services and mobile or digital wallets that are backed by large companies with highly secure connections to purchase your online products will ensure that when the decision is made to purchase, it can be quickly and securely completed anytime, anywhere.

These are just a few of the many aspects of eCommerce that are changing as consumers grow more and more willing to shop and make purchases online. For your next website redesign or new development, be sure that you are accounting for this growing market. Your sales will thank you.