Tom Geller's nuggets o' joy

A comment in response to Jim Butz' blog post ("Drupal and Startups: Is there a Connection?") mentions Google Sites, an online system that allows people to easily build Web sites with such "Web 2.0" features as discussion boards and event calendars. Then a comment in Acquia VP Jeff Whatcott's blog said that "Google Labs [is] cooking up their own CMS support division".

Such online "build-your-own-site" systems have always been severely limited when compared to Drupal; on the other hand, Drupal’s installation procedure is still WAY beyond the abilities of 98% of the market. So we have simplicity and complexity, both reaching for the middle of the market.

Which will get there "firstest with the mostest"? Google’s a good bet — they’re smart folks, and the company has an amazing inventory of existing products they can leverage well. (Calendar, Groups, Maps, and Documents for site building; AdSense for revenue; Adwords for marketing.) The addition of e-commerce features (via PayPal/Google Checkout?) would make such a solution appeal to a lot of small business owners.

Meanwhile, I've been thinking about whether a consumer-level Drupal hosting service could be successful. Some ISPs offer one-click Drupal setup, but a lot more could be done to make hosted Drupal more user-friendly, such as one-click themes and modules, automated backups, integrated marketing services, etc.. The diversity of available Drupal modules could make such a solution more powerful than anything Google could offer... but simplifying and bulletproofing it for a consumer audience is not a trivial matter.

So here are two questions to consider:

• How is the market segmented? That is, which users would benefit more from a Google Site, and which should go with hosted Drupal?
• To the appropriate audience, what advantages would a hosted Drupal site have over a Google Site?

These are questions all Drupal consultants will have to answer soon. I hope the discussion we start here helps us all in our business. :)

Today I proposed two sessions for BADCamp, a FREE two-day Drupal event that will happen 11-12 October in Berkeley. Except for the Installfest, they're among only a very few sessions aimed at people with no Drupal experience at all. If that's you, please register for the site and vote for them! They are:

• First Drupal Steps: From Download to Launch. This session is perfect for first-time Drupal administrators, those comparing CMSes, and anyone who wants to get a structured Web site online fast. We'll go through the steps necessary to: set up Drupal on a local development computer; personalize the site by selecting a theme and adding site-wide information; turn on and configure functions that are included in the basic Drupal download; and ensure that everything's working correctly for stability, security, and ease of administration.
• Second Drupal Steps: Improving Your New Site. So you've successfully launched your first Drupal site. Now what? This class looks at some of the options Drupal provides to gain greater control over your site and improve how it appears to visitors. Topics covered include: Managing users; modifying themes to give your site a unique look; finding and evaluating modules and themes; and eeping the site running well with updates, backups, and added security.

In any case I hope to see you at the event. (And register soon! There's a good chance it'll be oversubscribed.)

I'm excited to finally be able to give out access to the complete Drupal Essential Training course for free for 24 consecutive hours. Just go to:

http://www.lynda.com/go/tomgeller

...and sign up. There's no obligation, and you won't be asked for payment information. If you like what you see -- or want to take any of Lynda.com's 450 other courses -- it's only $25/month.

Please do let me know what you think, and enjoy the course(s)!

• Increase PHP's memory settings or you might have problems backing up and restoring your Drupal site. You'll see the issue if you go to the MySQL-controlling phpMyAdmin screen (probably at http://localhost/phpMyAdmin) and click "Import": The maximum file size allowed is 2,048K. That's only 2MB, and the databases for most Drupal sites are much larger than that. (The example site for Drupal Essential Training gets as big as 5MB.) To change this limit:
  1. Click the WAMP icon in your system tray.
  2. Select "PHP". In the side menu, select "php.ini" to open a file containing PHP's configuration options.
  3. Search for the line, "upload_max_filesize = 2M".
  4. Change it to "upload_max_filesize = 32M" (or whatever you like).
  5. Save the file and restart WAMP. (Better yet, restart your computer entirely to be sure. I'm frankly not sure whether it makes a difference.)
  6. Now go back to that "Import" screen in phpMyAdmin: You should notice that the limit has changed. (Thanks to L.H. for pointing this out.)
• L.H. writes: "In Windows Vista, the WAMP icon disappears from the system tray after x time (not sure about the duration protocols). To make the WAMP icon re-appear (so that you can access localhost, phpmyadmin, php.ini, etc.), you have to activate the "start WAMP server" icon (from start menu, desktop or wherever); then the system tray icon reappears. Pain in the chicken, but that's Vista."

I love old paper. When I hold an old newspaper, I feel the vibrations of its life over the past century. The texture of its surface reflects truly the moisture of the air that surrounded it, the dust that settled on it, the fingers that gripped its edges. When you can read these things in an object, you're plunged into a world of senses.

Just as importantly, paper from before the advent of radio and T.V. provides an insight into popular entertainment. Magazines carried poetry, serials, recipes, illustrations, sermons, travelogues; many cities had a half-dozen daily newspapers. People with few other entertainment options -- particularly those in rural areas -- devoured the densely printed periodicals they received by mail and bound them into treasured volumes at the end of the year. (Remember that most people in the U.S. lived in rural areas before the 20th century. Whereas in 1990 only about 25% of the U.S. population lived in a rural area, 60% did in 1900.)

The cover you see here is from one such volume. "Chatterbox" appears to be intended for studious girls, and focuses largely on morality tales and trivia about faraway lands. ("There are only two known species of camels: the Arabian variety, with one hump, and the Bactrian camel with two of those curious appendages.")

But to the point. The one thing I've learned from writing is how many ways a sentence can be phrased. The best writers play through several variations in their heads without even realizing it; the rest of us have to revise, revise, revise. Each variation is subtly different from the others in emphasis, inflection, and tone.

The following tidbit from this Chatterbox volume, in which the same seven-word sentence is rearranged in 25 ways, illustrates the point nicely. (Plain text versions are available from several sources.)

What fun language is!

The last few days have been busy, and I'm sorry if I've been slow in correspondence. Here's what's up with reviewer access to the Drupal Essential Training videos.

• I believe I've sent email to everyone who contacted me. If not, please let me know.
• According to Lynda.com, reviewers will receive their two-month passes soon. Hooray! They give you access to the whole site, in case you want to learn Photoshop, Illistrator, and Joomla as well. ;)
• I'm very sorry that I wasn't able to get review copies for everyone who asked. I understand Lynda.com's decision to limit how many go out, even though it's unfortunate for those who can't get them.
• But please do continue to spread the word! I'd particularly love to see reviews outside of the Drupal community, for example in Web design magazines. I'd appreciate any ideas or contacts you could suggest.

In other news:

• The course was the subject of Lynda.com's weekly video podcast. (And let me tell you, it's a really odd experience to hear someone else say your name repeatedly.)
• The DVD is now available! It's $49.95, available directly from Lynda.com -- look in the bottom of the right-hand column. It should be available from Amazon.com soon as well, and I'm looking into selling them directly.

Now I'm working on rebuilding the tomgeller.com site in Drupal, to be a Drupal resource. (I'm a little embarrassed that I didn't make the conversion before the videos came out.) Like the gellerguides.com site, it'll be built on Drupal 6 -- and will be my first time using the new version of Panels 2. [/fingers crossed]

(By the way, may I just give a shout out to Earl "merlinofchaos" Miles, creator of Panels 2? He just released an alpha version for D6, and I'm lovin' it.)

Thanks again for your interest in the course: It's really encouraging. The Drupalsphere has a feeling of emerging greatness that I haven't sensed since the late '90s, when I was involved in Linux communities. That experience, together with being on the wrong side of several losing ideas during the dotcom bust, taught me to recognize qualities of a winner. I'll talk about what those qualities are -- and how I think Drupal does (and doesn't) exhibit them -- in a future blog post.

As of 11:27 this morning, I've had an account on Drupal.org for exactly one year. :)

With the release of the Lynda.com series, some of you in the Drupal community might (rightly) wonder about my relationship to the subject. I'm a relative newbie -- this Friday will mark the one-year anniversary of my drupal.org account -- and haven't worked full-time in technology for years.

So I neurotically imagine crowds of honest, talented, long-time CMS engineers sneering: Where do you get off pretending to be an expert?

Well, I don't think I'm an expert -- not about Drupal, anyway. What I *am* good at is translating between developers and users, decision makers, and the market. I've worked in communications for about 15 years (depending on how you count it), freelancing as a writer for the past two. Doing the Drupal series for Lynda.com was where several paths of experience crossed for me: training, writing, performing, and technology. (Here's my resume, if you're curious.)

As for Drupal: I first started playing with it around August 2007, but got distracted by a commission to write a real-estate book, "Save My Home: 10 Steps to Avoiding Foreclosure". While waiting for it to be published, I decided to use its release as a way to hone my Drupal skills on its promo site: savemyhomebook.com was the result.

Meanwhile, I attended Macworld Expo in January 2008. I love Macworld: While I'm not as involved in the community as I was in the '90s (when I wrote and edited for MacWEEK et al.), I always see old friends at the show. I ran into Tom Negrino and Dori Smith, who've written a few dozen books between them, and had each created courses for Lynda.com (which had a large booth at the show).

"How are they to work for?", I asked. Dori and Tom just couldn't say enough nice things about them, encouraged me to make a pitch, and invited me to the company's party that evening. There I met Acquisitions Editor Jeff Foster, who pointed me to their "Call for Trainers" page. That turned into a request for a longer proposal, which led to a contract, which led to about 150 pages of speaker's notes, which led to a week at their studios in Ventura, California to make the videos. And here we are!

The experience has been wonderful, especially because of the positive response I've gotten from the Drupal community. I'm spending most of my days now interacting with Drupalistas, improving my PHP/MySQL skills, figuring out where I fit in, and learning all I can about How Things Are Done -- both technically and socially. I'm also striving to stay in touch with the perspective of those who don't use (or even know about) Drupal. That's a vast frontier, and one I'm eager to explore.

CNN just published commentary by fellow San Franciscan, Craig's List founder and proud Obama supporter Craig Newmark, titled "Internet can strengthen democracy". He writes:

Nationally, the [2004] Howard Dean presidential campaign pioneered the use of the Net for grassroots campaigning, involving ordinary people in the election process. The Net proved to be an effective tool for organization and fundraising. However, this campaign didn't quite reach critical mass, perhaps because there weren't enough Americans with high-speed Internet connections at the time.

It's worth mentioning that the much of Dean's online presence was powered by Drupal. Two reports from July 2003 that describe Drupal's use are in this Wired article and this volunteer's report.

(I think I met some Drupal folks who were involved in the Dean effort back then, but can't remember who they were. If it's you, please comment here and tell us about the experience.)