ChaliceMedia Weblog » joomla 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 Updated Tools of the Trade Part 1 http://chalicemedia.com/blog/2009/06/updated-tools-part-one/ http://chalicemedia.com/blog/2009/06/updated-tools-part-one/#comments Tue, 16 Jun 2009 08:19:28 +0000 Ron http://chalicemedia.com/blog/?p=91 We’ve implemented a substantial number of changes over the past several months, the major drivers for this have been some vast improvements in the tools we use. Here is a brief rundown, with more details coming over the next several posts. Our primary function is the creation, publication and syndication of content, not designing websites. Therefore the tools we use for quick deployment are extremely critical to our objectives.

The first major change, is a host deployment tool. We currently have around 80 applications deployed across 50 websites, all of which are hosted on BlueHost servers. Several months ago, BlueHost implemented Simple Scripts as a replacement for Fantastico Deluxe to do application deployment. Revisions and updates are much more up to date and the installations are straightforward and painless.

Key open source applications have recently released major upgrade versions for better security, greater ease of use, and enhanced functionality. Joomla! content management (www.joomla.org) 1.5.x has major improvements over 1.0.x, which also required replacement or modifications to all the existing templates we have in use.

Drupal’s 6.x releases have been much more flexible and robust for our needs, so we’ve expanded the use of Drupal (www.drupal.org) as a CMS in a number of websites.

A major player in what we do, WordPress (www.wordpress.org) has introduced a wide variety of widgetized flexibility in verion 2.8.x and they have introduced some exciting new applications that we’re already running test configurations on. WordPressMU allows multi-user blogs. BuddyPress is bolt-on to WordPressMU to give it robust social networking capabilities, and BBPress is a new forum/bulletin board engine from WordPress.  This blog was upgraded to 2.8 and a new theme installed within the past couple of days.)

Next post, we’ll give some examples of how we’re putting these upgrades to work.

Ron

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