ChaliceMedia Weblog » Technical Services http://chalicemedia.com/blog News and helpful tidbits about creative content and technical stuff from ChaliceMedia Thu, 18 Feb 2010 22:13:03 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Updated Tools of the Trade Part 2 http://chalicemedia.com/blog/2009/09/updated-tools-of-the-trade-part-2/ http://chalicemedia.com/blog/2009/09/updated-tools-of-the-trade-part-2/#comments Mon, 14 Sep 2009 05:40:44 +0000 Ron http://chalicemedia.com/blog/?p=103 Reinforcing that we don’t want to design websites, we want to implement websites to support our content distribution strategies with minimal configuration, customization, and deployment timelines. Aside from some specialty applications like event calendars, FAQs and photo galleries, we’re building around a few basic engines. The engine choices for a particular site are driven by a few brief questions:

  • What is the purpose of the site?
  • What is the target audience?
  • In the case of sites built to support fiction projects:
    • What real world component is the site supposed to emulate (a business, a media outlet)
    • How dynamic will the site’s content be?
    • Will the site’s content be required to follow or synch to a specific timeline?
  • Will the site require user registration?
  • Will parts of the site be restricted to specific users or user groups?
  • Will the site have an ecommerce connection?
  • Does the site have any specific requirements for look and feel?

Once these questions are answered, we apply them to a grid and drill-down process to determine the technology.

The first decision point is among the following high-level application types. This top level decision is based primarily on type and volume of content,

  • Content Management System
  • Blog Engine
  • Forum Engine
  • Social Networking Engine
  • Third party website
  • Other

The second decision point is the our defined emulation model (for fiction project websites only):

  • Will this site emulate a business?
    • Will we have to provide pseudo-transaction capabilities?
    • Will we need to be interactive with visitors
    • Do we need to closely emulate a REAL business site in look or feel?
  • Will this site emulate an organization (e.g. political party, lobbying organization, etc.)?
    • Will we need to have special types of subscriptions beyond RSS?
    • Do we need to take extra care regarding posting (since many loose cannons and nutcases play in the political blog realm)
    • Do we need to emulate a real organization for parody?
  • Will this site emulate a place?
  • Will the site emulate a person?

In the current state, these are the engines we’ve chosen:

Joomla! content managment:

  • Our company website
  • Our company technical division website
  • Two fictitious newspapers
  • One fictitious broadcast network
  • One fictitious radio station
  • One fictitious magazine
  • One eMagazine
  • One RSS collection site (parody government intelligence agency)
  • Two branded author sites
  • Two rock band sites
  • A web presence workshop tutorial site
  • Owners personal website
  • Fictitious religious organization
  • Fictitious city web site
  • A fictitious large retailer
  • A writer who is a dog

WordPress:

  • This blog.
  • Two branded author blogs
  • Three music-related blogs
  • One political blog
  • One fictitious author blog (tutorial)
  • Fictitious airline
  • Branded author website
  • Fictitious rock band
  • Humor blog

b2Evolution:

  • A blogging services website
  • An internet fiction project core site

bbPress:

  • prototype forum

BuddyPress

  • Prototype social network for writers

Concrete5:

  • Fictitious food company

Coppermine Gallery:

  • Three site related galleries
  • On fictitious art gallery

Drupal:

  • Fictitious author tutorial site.

Moodle:

  • Our online education site

PHPbb 3:

  • Fictitious author tutorial site
  • Tutorial interactive site

SMF (Simple Machines Forum):

  • Our forum prototype (currently not in use)

Blogger:

  • Fictitious bank PR blog
  • Satirical history blog
  • Junk mail rants blog
  • Parody financial dictionary
  • Fictitious fiction book site blog
  • Fictitious author tutorial blog

We also have current multiple presences on:

  • Facebook
  • Live Journal
  • MySpace
  • Squidoo
  • Twitter

Nearly a dozen more sites are currently in design stages.

]]> http://chalicemedia.com/blog/2009/09/updated-tools-of-the-trade-part-2/feed/ 0 A lot of new looks floating around http://chalicemedia.com/blog/2006/11/a-lot-of-new-looks-floating-around/ http://chalicemedia.com/blog/2006/11/a-lot-of-new-looks-floating-around/#comments Sat, 25 Nov 2006 06:55:54 +0000 Ron http://chalicemedia.com/blog/?p=55 If you’ve been visiting some of the ChaliceMedia websites lately, you’ve likely seen some new looks.  As part of the establishment of the ChaliceTech brand, we’ve been redesigning all of the websites, and integrating new tools.  Most of the sites were originally written using Microsoft FrontPage.  For many reasons, (one of which being Microsoft’s discontinuation of support for FrontPage) we’ve decided to implement a change to the technical underpinnings of the sites.

Phase 1 is the elimination of the requirement for FrontPage server extensions, we are about 80% complete in this phase.  Aside from Miscrosoft’s discontinuation of the product, the server extensions don’t necessarily play well with some of the php plug-ins and application components we’re currently using.  Phase 1 also includes the implementation of several Open Source portal environments.

Phase 2 is the conversion from FrontPage generated HTML to W3C validated HTML 4.01.  (in reality much of this is being converted to XHTML 1.1 simultaneously).  Phase 2 also includes the implementation and integration of numerous open source (GPL) tools.

Phase 3 is the completion of the transition to XHTML 1.1 and validation to W3C HTML 1.1 standards.

read more…

For those interested in some specifics, we are implementing the following:

Content Management Systems:

Drupal (limited circumstances… primarily when the ability for users to upload information is required)…  FrontPage extensions give Drupal fits…

Joomla will be used a little more… it’s easy to administer.   However, many functions require 3rd party plug-ins.

WordPress … this is our standard blogging environment.  We’ve begun building several custom themes.

Coppermine … photo gallery easy to install and administer.  We had originally installed instances of Gallery 2, but they were removed for stability reasons.

As a part of Client FrontPage conversions, ChaliceTech will suggest appropriate Open Source tools and plug-ins, and install and configure them as required.

 

 

]]> http://chalicemedia.com/blog/2006/11/a-lot-of-new-looks-floating-around/feed/ 0 Help! What if I’m not a Geek! http://chalicemedia.com/blog/2006/10/help-what-if-im-not-a-geek/ http://chalicemedia.com/blog/2006/10/help-what-if-im-not-a-geek/#comments Fri, 20 Oct 2006 03:47:03 +0000 Ron http://chalicemedia.com/blog/?p=49 Watch this space for new regular technical tidbits for non-geeks trying to exist in cyberspace.  Tips on website maintenance, hosting, getting started, blogging… all kinds of goodies aimed at the small business person trying to grow and the corporate casual user trying to move up.

First post coming tomorrow – 20 October.

Ron

ronh-80.jpg

]]> http://chalicemedia.com/blog/2006/10/help-what-if-im-not-a-geek/feed/ 0 RSS Feed Fixed http://chalicemedia.com/blog/2006/02/rss-feed-fixed/ http://chalicemedia.com/blog/2006/02/rss-feed-fixed/#comments Wed, 22 Feb 2006 04:33:16 +0000 Ron at CM http://chalicemedia.com/wordpress/?p=11 Sorry, there was a bug in the pointer to our RSS feeds… it has now been corrected.

Thanks,
ChaliceMedia Web Administrator

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