JaySmall.com/old

Small Initiatives developed a new brand identity and Drupal-based Web site for Radiant Markets, LLC, a services firm focused on advertising and marketing solutions for small/medium businesses.

Development included:

• Brand logo and collateral design, including color palette, letterhead, business cards, Web and PowerPoint templates
• Administration of a CentOS Linux Web server
• Installation and implementation of Drupal 6
• Extension of Drupal to support locally focused subdomains and client Extranet sites
• Implementation of corporate e-mail using Google Apps and Gmail

This project remains in active development.

In some projects for friends-and-family clients, I'm investigating open-source, Web-based software solutions in these categories, and hoping my site-visiting friends can point me to more options.

• Accounting: I'm checking out WebERP, and it seems powerful, but focused on wholesale or retail businesses that keep inventory instead of service businesses. Know of good options for those?

Just a quick shout-out: My pal Steve Yelvington has posted several items in recent days describing Morris Communications' development and deployment of a new site management system grounded in Drupal.

I'm a Drupal fan, natch, but even if you are not, these posts will be worth your time. Steve describes in detail the decisionmaking processes that led to building and organizing the administrative tools -- be they custom work or stock Drupal modules.

This time last week, I complained mightily because I tried to write a blog post in Drupal's browser text entry form and lost it in progress. Drupal 6 did not have any way to save drafts in progress.

This time this week, it does: the Autosave module, just today, got an upgrade for Drupal 6.

Night before last, I had nearly finished writing an item for this blog into the Web entry form offered by Drupal, the open-source site management framework that powers SI.

In wrapping up the post, I went fishing for a link, forgot to do so in a new browser tab, found the article, grabbed the link ... but when I went back to look for my post in the entry form, it was gone -- lost in browser history.

Argh. Argh!

Please understand, I really like Drupal. But losing 45 minutes of work reminded me that WordPress, which I used to use, has Drupal version 6, which I use now, beat in two key areas:

Change keeps life interesting, and Ka and I have had our share.

She now works as a principal in the financial services practice at The IQ Business Group. She says she'll still post to her blog here at SI as time allows.

We both are nearing the halfway point in our MBA studies, and just completed final exams for summer term. That means a bit of time off from classwork, which gave me just enough time to:

• Upgrade the system that runs the SI site from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6.
• Lay in a new design while I'm at it.