The Next Step

People procrastinate because there is a tendency to get positive reinforcement for it from very early on in their lives. Academia is especially bad with this. The go-getters tend to be the ones doing extra work due to typos in assignments or late-in-the-game assignment changes, much to the procrastinators’ relative benefit. Sometimes assignments are canceled altogether or, in the case of one of my CS courses in college, are proven impossible by whoever tries it first.

What, then, is the incentive to work on these things sooner than we absolutely have to? No wonder everybody in the CS program learned to put their assignments off until the night before it was due. You can see the results of this in the business world where such behaviors really can hurt, but have been ingrained to such an extent (16+ years of education) so as to be hard for people to un-learn. Educators have to find a way to encourage proactive behavior or at the very least not reward procrastination.

Lately I’ve been asked to research open source CMS options for a number of different reasons. I work for a consulting company that specializes in web site redesigns and CMS implementations. We’ve got a long and storied history with .NET-based solutions such as Sharepoint and Sitecore, but not so much history with less Microsoft-y solutions. I’ve spent a lot of time lately researching non-Microsoft systems and I want to share some of my thoughts. Here, I’ll discuss the three systems I’ve spent the most time on: Alfresco, Drupal, and Plone. I examine them particularly with regard to managing a fairly large, mostly static site for clients generally in higher education. There is a desire to have some kinds of social functionality available, but any such content would need to be under very tight control. With that in mind, I set out to figure out which one would be the most attractive to this type of client. Today: Alfresco.

Alfresco talks big and for good reason. They offer a huge range of enterprise content management services while other systems we use manage only web content. Most of the projects we work on don’t require those enterprise features (such as document management) so the web part is really all I was interested in. Unfortunately, Alfresco’s background is in document management, not web content management, and it shows. While the model works well enough for developers, content authors will probably be confused by the interface they have to use. It’s all based on Java and XML, and templates are built using an XML templating language of your choice. Alfresco offers a lot of examples in Freemarker but I used XSLT. When I used the system, all content definitions had to be manually created by a developer using an XML Schema. I believe that Alfresco has recently rolled out a new feature that allows you to generate these schemas using a tool, but haven’t had a chance to test it. The real thing to remember about Alfresco is that while it is open source, it isn’t really free. You can get the community edition for free, but you get a better version with more up-to-date bugfixes and features if you pay. Alfresco focuses on interoperability. You can get at the Alfresco repository using Java or PHP, as well as a REST architecture, and it supports several relational databases including MySQL and Oracle. It’s language-neutral, so it’s really meant for pulling together multiple web applications under one roof than to handle a single web site, which is what I’m looking for.

Bottom line: Alfresco is good for a huge organization with lots of applications that it needs to keep in line, but is looking to only manage some of the content, with an eye toward pulling more of it into the CMS later. The kind of project I’m thinking about is one that would probably live entirely contained within an Alfresco implementation. So not the best match for what I want, but definitely a good product to be aware of for companies trying to take control of a number of disparate web applications.

The newest version of WordPress has made updating ridiculously easy. When you sign in and there are updates available, you see a link that says “Click here to update.” This makes it incredibly attractive for projects where you’re working with people who have little to no technical skills.

I appreciate this more now since I just had my first experience with updating Drupal. While I was fairly impressed with the simplicity of the initial installation for Drupal, updating was clearly neglected (although at least someone seems to have their eye on this). Updating, especially between minor security revisions, really should be easier. In most situations that I’ve worked in, a CMS is supposed to let users manage the web site without giving them the ability to damage the web site to much. Making updating difficult is one of the most dangerous things you can do since people just won’t do it if they don’t know how.

I’ve been asked to investigate Drupal as a possible CMS offering to diversify BigBad’s portfolio of CMS offerings. I thought, while I’m at it, I can share some tips and tricks I discover along the way. One of the first problems I ran into when I started making my custom Drupal theme was that the editing interfaces looked really bad in it. Like, unusable bad. Things like deleting nodes or viewing their outlines, editing users, or even logging in were difficult or impossible. So I set out to try to find a way to make all admin and editor interfaces use the administration theme, and found my solution in the Administration Theme module. This module adds more options to your Site Configuration > Administration Theme that let you specify that batch processing and Devel pages should show in the admin theme, and also gives you free license to enter Drupal paths for any other pages you want to use the admin theme, complete with a wildcard character.

Here’s what I put in my Custom Pages:

node/*/delete
node/*/outline
user/*/edit
user
users/*

I’ll probably end up with more entries in there as I run into more snags, but this seems to be working pretty well for me so far.

I need a new banner image for the top of this page. I’ve been using the stock one for far too long. If you have an idea or a banner I can use, let me know in the comments and/or send me an email. It needs to be the same size as the one that’s there now: 800px by 200px. If I get a good one, I’ll put it up. If I get a lot of good ones I might have to put them in some kind of rotation.

If I don’t get anything, then I’ll be forced to use my own creativity. And I don’t think anybody wants that.

I’ve been using Gmail Notifier for years to tell me when I have new mail. It’s nice and lightweight, and stays out of my way. A few months ago, it just stopped working and I couldn’t figure out why. I tried updating, read through a bunch of Google Support pages, and saw a couple of useless forum threads on the subject, to no avail. So I left it alone, hoping the problem would solve itself. It didn’t.

Just today, though, I stumbled on this little gem: A patch that allows the Notifier to work if you’ve checked the “Always use https” setting in Gmail (which, incidentally, you absolutely should). Just install the patch and your Gmail Notifier will work again. I don’t know why Google doesn’t mention this on the download page for Notifier or why they don’t just build this functionality into a new release. Anyway, I know I wasn’t the only one to have this problem so I thought I’d share my knowledge.

Fear not! This blog will stay around to chronicle my regular thoughts and rants. However, I recently moved into an apartment with three roommates, all of whom are women. It seemed to me that this had far too much entertainment potential for me not to document it in some way. So I set up Estrogenous Encounters to document my experiences. Enjoy.

The recent release of the iPhone 3G, combined with my now having a job and regular income, is making it increasingly difficult to accept the shortcomings of my lowly Samsung T209. I find myself noticing situations in everyday life when I really wish I was connected to the Internet. The iPhone would be a big jump for me for a number of reasons, not the least of which is an incompatibility with my pocket organization system. Let me explain: I have three items that I carry with me just about everywhere I go:

• Wallet
• Keys
• Phone

These things cover the basics, and this system has been running without major errors for about, say, 6 years. Not too bad. I keep my wallet in my right pocket, and keys and phone in the left. I find that this keeps me reasonably balanced, and keeps either pocket from being too full. The three things I need to access most often are within easy reach. As things stand now, I have a flip phone, which works very nicely in my pocket system due to its small physical size and built-in screen protection. Not that I would really care what happened to such a screen anyway: so long as I can read phone numbers and names off of it, all is well.

The iPhone, alas, is not a flip phone. Not only that, but it boasts a gloriously unprotected 3.5 inch screen. Such a screen could not peacefully coexist in a pocket with my surely-jealous keys. And so we see the breakdown of the two-pocket system: is there any way to rearrange things to accommodate an iPhone?

As you can clearly see, the only way to bring an iPhone into my life is to disrupt this delicate system somehow. So what can be done? First and simplest, is there any way to live without one of these items? Can I live without keys? Much as it should be possible to live a keyless existence in the year 2008, there are certain factors that are simply beyond my control and absolutely require traditional keys. They must stay. Can I live without a wallet? Absolutely not. I could probably slim it down to the absolute bare minimum, but even then the space savings would not be substantial enough to make room for an iPhone. So if these three things must remain, what are my options?

1. External phone clip – Functional and effective, but do I really want to walk around the city advertising the fact that I have an iPhone? And do I want to be that guy who wears a phone clip? No and no.
2. Only wear cargo pants – This wouldn’t be hard for me because I love cargo pants. There are two reasons why this wouldn’t work even for me though. First and foremost, there are some situations when you just can’t get away with cargos. Second, cargo pockets are located just a little bit too low to be truly useful. I wouldn’t want to store something in the full-time, since it would hit off the side of my leg frequently, impairing mobility and potentially causing injury.
3. Carabiner keychain – Effective at isolating the iPhone, and exceptionally good for balance. Wearing keys on my belt is more palatable than wearing a phone on my belt. Still, I prefer keeping my possessions where they are not advertised to the world. Also, keys dangling from a belt could potentially swing around, causing injury or imbalance.
4. Man purse – Having experimented with a man purse on a recent vacation, I was pleasantly surprised at its versatility. Not nearly as heavy and unwieldy as a backpack, but able to carry a good deal more than pockets alone. Unfortunately, it would mean having to dig around in a man purse every time I needed something out of it. It would also mean having to carry something around just about everywhere I go. It would also mean having to endure the ridicule that comes with using a man purse.

Not an easy problem, as you can see. Hopefully I can get these integration problems ironed out so that I’ll be able to introduce an iPhone into my life someday soon.

I lied. Sorry.

http://www.codershole.com/idump.php