Ok, guys....I now know why I love Drupal.
I spend so much time working on sites for clients that my MustardseedMedia.com website had been pretty lame for a long time. So, yesterday I got fed up and decided to fix it.
Because Drupal rocks so hard, here we are less than 24 hours later (only about 9 working hours since I fired up Photoshop to start to play with design ideas, actually) and the new MustardseedMedia.com is online.
I built the site totally from scratch, not even updating the old site. I used some nice module implementations and even hacked the user-registration process to fit a unique need. Now, I'm sure it's broken in some places (and at least one page isn't done yet), but I thought it was a true testament to the power of Drupal to build a production site in such a short time.
So, check it out and let me know what you think, what you find broken, and how it can be improved even further!
Nice work!
Hey Rob, dig the new site! Far too often I'll check out a rockin' site, follow the "made by" link only to find a designer who's self promo pales in comparison to their paid work. It's been said "The shoemaker's children always go barefoot." It's great to see what was a nice site, is much better now.
A few observations...
I really like the idea of seeing static sites as lazy! But I wonder about the 75-year-old secretary comment. I'd soften it up just a bit and say "We will demystify Web 2.0 and build you a website that every church secretary can update." You'd never disparage an entire group by ethnicity, education, or socioeconomic status. So why associate our elders with incompetence, laziness and the inability to interact?
Why generate so much semantically relevant text as images? If .css styling won't cut it for you, why not use sIFR or P+C DTR?
Take a look at how the site validates.
Nice work!
-NP
PS: Congrats on the Mollom site. I had seen it a few weeks ago and pleased to learn it was your work. For what it's worth, that takes you from "cool" to "big time" in my book.
CSS images
Hey np
good suggestions. I wondered if people would think my joke about the secretary was offensive :) (changed it per your suggestion)
As far as images, I think maybe you're assuming incorrectly about their nature. All images (main nav, page titles, block titles...even the homepage listing of functionality) other than content images are done with CSS (as background images). Check the source and you'll see that all original content is nothing but h2, a, or div tags. Are you seeing some that aren't which should be (did I miss some)?
As far as flash replacement, I'm not a fan of this at all...images are more industry standard and I believe that's for a reason: a more universal user experience. While flash replacement is sematically OK (ie. if there's no flash installed, it'll still display the text), it kills design. 99% of my visitors will be able to view CSS background images...this can't be said about flash. Therefore, everytime a visitor doesn't use flash, my site design (image) isn't as striking. Not to mention, doing the thigs I do on this site would take more markup to make the flash replacement happen than doing it thru CSS. Therefore, I always use CSS background images over flash replacement...I haven't found an instance where this can't be done. Hmm...sounds like maybe a rant on a future episode :)
And no I never ran the validator I should probably do that on Monday. (a product of my 9 hour build) :)
Thanks for the input!
-Rob Feature
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.mustardseedmedia.com
9 hours...Wow!
Hey Rob,
Maybe I'm just hypersensitive to the whole age thing; but no one would say, "Websites even a [insert the nationality of your choice] can update." Even the idea is repulsive. So to lump the elderly together as one massive no-tech group is unfortunate. Clearly, many older folks are intimidated by tech but every once in a while someone online will be helping me out...I think they're 20 until they say..."back in the 60's when I was programming mainframes with punchcards..."
From a ministry perspective the elderly population of most moderate-sized churches easily exceeds the critical mass to ensure a successful online community. You and I need to fit this stuff around the edges of our other responsibilities; work, kids, spouse. Get a church full of retired widows and widowers who have the drive to mentor and life experiences that will dazzle us whippersnappers...now that would be cool! Anyway...just a tangent.
Kudos on the type. I checked out your code and I was way off the mark. I simply clicked and dragged...when it didn't highlight I simply assumed the worst. My bad.
9 hours...Wow!
Blessings!
-NP
"Websites even a cave man
"Websites even a cave man can update!"
It's "Its"
The new design is sweet. Also, glad to see you added a feedburner feed for the blog. (I knew something was up, since the blog showed up as broken in Bloglines yesterday, but I hadn't had a chance to investigate yet.)
One little glitch I see is the phrase "too old to interact with it’s visitors." Never mind the confusing rules, here's how I remember it: the word "it's" only has an apostrophe when it means "it is." Never any other time. So you might want to tweak that one.
I guess you can't say it's so easy even a caveman could do it, since I think that phrase is taken. I've over-generalized how easy it is to use Drupal sites, too. I'd be tempted to say it's so easy even your music minister can use it, but I'm still working on that one. ;-)
Micah
Stupid English Language
English is hard. This was my second spell check notification in (literally) 30 seconds (just got an email from someone else). I gotta do this with all my sites, offer them up for public spell checking :)
Thanks Micah...
-Rob Feature
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.mustardseedmedia.com
Grammar Checker
Where is my grammar checker in the browser. I mean Microsoft Office has had that for years and years. Wait, is that one place M$ has a one up on OS X and Mozilla?
Matt Farina
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.innovatingtomorrow.net
www.mattfarina.com
Office, but not IE
Actually, Firefox is ahead of IE on spell checking. Spell checking is built in to Firefox, but not IE. Neither have grammar checking.
I liked the comment about the music minister, but again it is likely to offend someone.
Bizare Time Warp
I just listened to episode...it was either 83 or 84...where Rob announced that he had done his site in 9 hours. It's funny to find this post and see it was 7 weeks ago. It's like I'm stuck in a time machine. Anyway, keep up the good work!