Posts about Tools of the Trade

May 10, 2012 by Valarie Geckler

Beyond "clean & user-friendly": websites with a better purpose

When we talk to a client about their initial desires for a new website, 99% of the time the first comment is some variation of: I want a “clean” and “user-friendly” site.

On behalf of the web design industry, let me apologize for every ugly, tough-to-use website you’ve ever had the displeasure of navigating. I’ve seen them too, those websites of nightmares, and frankly,...

April 26, 2012 by JD Collier

CiviCRM and Drupal, the dream team!

I'm just going to get this out of the way: CiviCRM is complex. Of course, it is complex. We are not comparing CiviCRM to a simple blogging platform or little piece of software to perform a simple task. CiviCRM is a constituent relationship management solution. It is a great solution to manage non-profits, advocacy and any membership-...

April 25, 2012 by Art Williams

A First Look at Drupal Commerce: More Than a Module

Last week we were evaluating solutions for a client and I had the opportunity to install and test Drupal Commerce (DC) for the first time. Digett and I both have a long history of Ubercart use, but since we made the move to Drupal 7 in the middle of last year none of our new website builds have needed a full shopping cart system.

April 20, 2012 by JD Collier

Wordpress vs. Drupal: The Prize Fight!

I have developed very large, very small and every size website between. I have rolled my own CMS, used (and even developed extensions for) Typo3, Wordpress, Expression Engine, Mambo & Joomla, WebGUI, SharePoint, MonkCMS/Ekklesia360, DotNetNuke and Drupal. By far, I have been most loyal to Wordpress and Drupal.

March 30, 2012 by JD Collier

12 Recommended Chrome Extensions for Web Development

My recommended Chrome Extensions for web development

I started this blog post to sway Firefox users to give Chrome a try as their primary development browser. I discovered there are almost no differences now. The only reason I switched to Chrome a few years ago was speed compared to Firefox at the time. Today, that is not an issue. In fact, I just did an informal test on my machine and both browsers started in less than 2 seconds. Also, I can't tell a...

February 24, 2012 by JD Collier

Rinse and repeat: Do you have a place where you keep common code?

When you make websites for a living, there are many times when you repeat something from a previous project. You need to add code to increase PHP memory limit in the htaccess file, set up the initial framework for your CSS file, or add your Made-By logo code to the footer of a website. The list goes on and on. Sometimes you find yourself whispering the shampoo bottle mantra, "rinse and repeat."

February 1, 2012 by Art Williams

Battle of the Drupal 7 Modules: CKEditor vs WYSIWYG

CKEditor is the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor of choice around the Digett office. While some may bemoan the use of a WYSIWYG editor at all, even an experienced developer can usually save a lot of time during content entry by using one. Drupal does not come with a built-in editor but there are many excellent options; CKEditor is the cream of the crop.

January 24, 2012 by Mark Figart

Want advice about video? Tell a story.

After a recent insightful conversation with Stephen Mick of Proof Creative in Austin, I felt like I had to capture his advice in a post. I'm positioning it as advice to digital agencies, but anyone should be able to extract value from it. My apologies to Stephen in advance if I've misrepresented anything he intended to say.

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