“I want to update my website myself” is a commonly-heard plea from site owners who’ve realised that the job of keeping the content of their websites up to date is too important a job to be left to web designers. In this article I’m going to explain why you should consider managing your content yourself and what you might look for in a web content management system (CMS).

More about web content management systems

Drupal is a lot easier to localize than it used to be, but it’s still hard work; partly because localization is intrinsically difficult, and partly because of flaws in the design of Drupal’s internationalization approach.

» more about Drupal localization ...

What is split testing? The short answer is that it is a comparison test of different versions of some content (on the web, typically a page). The different versions are compared by first showing them at random to users, then measuring success by some means, for example seeing how many lead to a purchase.

There is a split testing module for Drupal, but I think its scope is far too limited to be useful, as all it does is compare two different themes. If you are trying to test variants of some specific content - for example a call to action - rather than the way it is presented, then this module won’t help. (If you do want to measure one theme against another, of course, then it’s ideal.)

I have a partially developed solution of my own to the problem of testing variants on an individual content node, though there are some issues left to solve. One is to find a good answer to the question of caching, so the site as a whole is cached while the pages under test are either not cached at all, or cached in a way that permits different variants.

If anyone is interested in sponsoring further development, or taking over what I have written so far, please let me know. I’d also be interested in discussing other possible approaches, perhaps by using other tools such as Google Website Optimizer (mine is very Drupal specific - it works by altering the content of the node at load time).

There’s an interesting article by Brian Chappell in the latest Search Marketing Standard about Drupal and SEO. (Unfortunately you can’t read it online, so you’ll have to take my word for it!)

If you are thinking about onsite optimization for a Drupal web site, there’s one module you really must install, SEO Checklist. Although it doesn’t do very much in itself (it really is just a checklist, with some added smarts in that it does check which other modules you have installed against its list of recommendations), it provides an essential baseline.

My experience has been that those who commission and build Drupal sites are not always focussed on SEO, so the science is not quite as advanced as it is with WordPress, for example. There’s a prejudice in some parts of the industry against SEO which I suspect may also be partly responsible for the slight lag in this regard. Still, articles such as the one I mentioned above may help to shift the balance as SEO practitioners become more aware of the many fantastic possibilities that Drupal can offer.

This is simply a wish list of functions I’d like to see in a Drupal contact management module. I may well be turning at least some of these into code if I don’t find someone else has already done it - in either case I’ll write a new post and link back here. Comments are very welcome.

• The ability to manage contacts who aren’t system users (as well as ones that are). Contacts might have only a phone number or snail mail address initially.
• Flexibility in adding custom fields. I anticipate the answer to this will be to use CCK.
• Fexibility in querying. Is there a way to generate views dynamically? I haven’t yet investigated. An interactive query builder would be ideal.
• Ability to raise an action (such as “cold call”) against a set of contacts and record progress.
• Per-contact action log.
• Flexible status indication with colour-coding.

(Yes, I do know about CiviCRM, and I don’t like it. It is so hard to customise it might as well be closed-source proprietary software, in my experience.)

Last week I got the idea for a site where people could post pictures of mysterious things and ask for, or provide, an explanation. So I set to work and within a few hours there it was: Knowthings.co.uk, everyday mysteries.

It’s a good example of how a Drupal site can be built very quickly if the needs are simple. It uses the celju theme with one or two small modifications to fix cross-browser issues.

The whole thing cost very little - £6.56 to register the domain name, plus about 3 hours of my time, plus some hosting space and bandwidth on a package I’d already paid for. If it starts attracting hordes of visitors - which I doubt, to be honest - then I’ll put ads on it and maybe it’ll pay for itself. It was fun to do, anyway.

Have you an idea for a site which could be done as quickly?

A Drupal development project involving lots of media integration: flash, images and movies.

My role involved building the custom theme from artwork and HTML supplied by other team members; writing a couple of modules to integrate media files and another to provide a simple competition facility. I also heavily customised the advanced search facility to suit EFD’s particular needs. As a team member I also took on a consultancy role where necessary, advising others on the best approach to solve various technical problems.

“Alfred did a great job, bringing quality and expertise to the project.”
— Gilles Boisselet, unit9.com

Carried out for unit9 and their client Entertainment Film Distributors.

The Sustain-a-what?!?! application is a quiz intended to amuse while making the user think about the issues surrounding the hot topic of sustainability.

The quiz runs on the Drupal platform so the client can maintain its content for themselves. I wrote a custom module to manage the quiz questions and answers, as well as storing the results and displaying them for users taking the quiz.

“An excellent service from start to finish. There were delays in us being in a position to begin the project but Likemind stayed in touch regularly and were ready to go as soon as we were. The technical specification was immediately understood by them and suggestions were made to improve it with regards to how facebook actually works. Their understanding of the visual as well as the technical was particularly useful to us.

We were very impressed with the service, the level of competence and the end result. Would not hesitate to recommend.”
– Chris Hillier, twelfth man limited

Developed for twelfth man and their client synnwyr busnes.

I’ve worked on a few large site migration jobs now, so I thought I’d share some of my experiences and what I’ve learned along the way.

I recently moved my hobby site Odd Books to Drupal, so that’s the one I’ll use as the prime example.
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Wolf and Water Arts Company is a charity which does art work with various groups. The company wanted a new website to help them manage and present their extensive archives of material related to past and present projects. Their old site was hard to update and hence new content tended to be added belatedly or not at all.

Drupal provided a good match for their needs, with its flexible categorisation and general ease of use. Although the new site has a lot more content, it is more accessible due to the clearer menu structure and other navigation options.

“Likemind were excellent - they took plenty of time to fully understand our requirements, exceeded our expectations & delivered a splendid website on time. Training & follow up was also excellent. I would not hesitate to recommend them to anyone.” - Peter Smith, Wolf + Water.