Digital Meanderings
Meanderings of a coder

When I initially setup a website for my consulting firm I decided to use Drupal. After months of letting the site lay dormant (I was too busy actually working) I decided to take some time to get it running. I must say that I am impressed.

What I Need

As with all websites it is important to have a clear idea of what you want out of the website. I split to split this into two separate lists - what I need now, and what I want in the future. In this post I will go into what I need now.

• Visitor Tracking via Google Analytics.
• Provide an easy way for prospective clients to contact me.
• Provide an easy way to update the site.
• A blogging mechanism.

How I Got There

Visitor Tracking via Google Analytics

Visitor tracking is important to any business. It provides a way to see a few things - Are people actually visiting the site? How long are they staying? Who is talking about site?

Setting up Google Analytics is easy enough - add some Javascript to the theme and be on your way. What happens when you want to switch the theme? You have to go back and update the theme. I don’t plan on changing the theme to often but why do it if I don’t have to?

The Google Analytics Project provides the ability to use Google Analytics without having to worry about the theme. It also provides lots of other useful features:

• Role Tracking - Only track the types of users you care about. Do you really need to track what your team is doing? Probably not.
• Profile/User Segmentation - This only works for people who have accounts on your site, but it’s still a nice feature. It gives you the ability to see which users did what or even track where the users are from!
• Download Tracking - If your site offers downloads, this is a must. Imagine the following situation: You post a PDF of the requirements for a project you’re working on. You can validate whether someone, in particular, the certain user (or users) has looked at it. Great to know if you’re worried about your project schedule.

Provide an easy way to prospective clients to contact me

Why have a website if the visitors can’t inquire about your services? I provide a simple page with contact details and mailto: links but that’s rather boring and doesn’t provide many features. So I wanted a form that users could use. Now, I could write my own form to do this but every time I wanted a new form, or I wanted to change an existing form I would have to update code. Being a programmer, this isn’t really difficult, but I wanted it easier.

The Webform module provides pretty much everything I want. With no programming involved at all I was able to create a form that collects all the information that I’m curious about. It also provides more nice features - it will automatically email the form, store the results in the database, and it also works with the Captcha project to prevent Spam.

Also be sure to check the Webform Report project. I haven’t worked with it enough to write it up, but it does looking like a promising reporting tool.

Provide an easy way to update the site

This feature is default with Drupal. I would go so far as to say that Drupal is simplicity. Don’t get me wrong, there is a learning curve involved but just click around inside of Drupal for an hour or so and I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it.

A blogging mechanism

Another great feature of Drupal is its blogging mechanism. Again, it’s another feature that comes with Drupal. Each user can have their own!

Finalize

So far my experience with Drupal has been great. I have been able to find modules for all the things I’ve been trying to accomplish. And I’m certain that I could write my own module if I can’t, especially after looking over the Developer’s Guide.

Linked List

The list below provides an easy way to get to some of the websites that I’ve written about.

• Drupal
• Google Analytics Project
• Webform Project
• Captcha Project
• Webform Report Project
• Drupal Developer’s Guide

I am a developer working on the requirements and design of a large application so I spend a lot of time in meetings. For example, tomorrow I have 2.5 hours when I won’t be in a meeting. This equates to pages upon pages of notes. Some of these notes are minor, some require the application design to be rethought or updated and others require some clarification from the SMEs. As you can imagine scanning through these notes can be onerous. So I’ve developed a low-tech version of tagging.

My meeting tags are very simple icons that I put next to each note or group of notes. They enable me to quickly scan through my notes and grab out what I need to do, what needs to updated or even what questions need to be asked. Below you’ll find examples of my “tags.”

• Exclamation Point enclosed in a square - Important, requires immediate attentions.
• Question Mark enclosed in a square - Requires more information from another developer or a SME.
• Light-bulb enclosed in a circle - An idea for improving something.
• “PM” enclosed in a square - A note to keep for the project’s post-mortem.

There are other icons I use, but this should be enough to get you on your way.

Why not use a computer?
I have yet to find a good note taking application. I could use Word, but I’m pretty anal about how things are formatted, so I would spend too much time formatting and therefore less time paying attention.

Don’t the icons take a lot of time?
Not really. At first, it may take a few extra seconds to draw or remember which icon you use for what, but once you get used to it, it is really quite quick.

It seems that Leafyhost is still proving to be a bad hosting choice. I just received and email from Jon H, a current Leafyhost subscriber. It turns out that they are still up to their old tricks. Below you will find the contents of his email. I’ve also added this email as a comment to the original post.

I have been a customer with LeafyHost since June of 2004 (back when they were Aetheri) and at this point I’m very fed up with them. I had great patience with them when they had their hard drive failure last year because they had been a very good host for my site. I use my domain largely for e-mail and hosting images, so downtime wasn’t really an issue for me. Also, Christopher and I had been posting on the same forum (not Ars) for something like six years and he hooked me up with a free hosting package after my prior host ( vectorstar.net) had massive downtime issues because they refused to replace a failing network card (absurd, I know). They had been prompt in handling what few support issues I brought to their attention and all was well. Things have changed for the worse since the drive failure. At this point LeafyHost is on yet another server because “our current colocation provider has been having problems with their upstream bandwidth providers, and combined with the issues with securing more power in the past that they’ve had, they are moving out of the data center where we are currently located.” This was handled with few hiccups with the exception of my site being a 404 even after all the dust had settled, but as far as I can tell that wasn’t their fault. The issue had resolved itself by the time I fired off an e-mail to them.

The problem I have with them at this point is that I have two support tickets that have been open for several months. No updated information for the tickets has been supplied in about as long as the tickets have been open. The first ticket is a real minor issue that I just brought to their attention since it was affecting all users (DSPAM died). I was told on 2/22/07 that “It looks like we have a fix, but we need to test it out through our dev server first. Once that looks to be stable, I’ll move it over to Uffish and update this ticket.” Nothing since. It’s a minor issue since Thunderbird has done a superb job of filtering out most of the junk mail I receive, but I am frustrated with the lack of *any* information since February.

The second ticket is a much more severe issue for me: I can receive mail, but am unable to send mail. The last piece of information I received on this issue was when Sam told me he was passing the issue over to Chris and that he would look into it. I haven’t heard a thing from either Chris or Sam on the issue since that day. I have sent several e-mails to them over the last two months asking if any progress has been made on the issue and have not had a single reply to any of them. No “Hey, we’re still looking into it,” or a “We’re working on fixing it now,” or even a “Fuck off.” Nothing. Complete and total silence. After the migration to their third server the whole ticket system is down. You go to the page and get a page saying that they need to install the Zend optimizer on the server before the page can be displayed.

This is complete and utter bullshit. A web hosting company should respond to a user’s requests for information pertaining to the quality of services being provided. They should respond in a prompt manner with as much information as is available at the time. Before the site went down with the migration a few other users had been complaining in the LeafyHost forum about the lack of communication from Chris and Sam, or if they got a reply it was slow in coming. At this point I have to wonder if Chris and Sam even care about their hosting service at all. Have they decided that since things appear to be spiraling down the toilet they might as well piss off their customers? Have they decided that no news is good news? Are they playing NetHack all day?

These guys need to start taking their business much more seriously if they hope to make it through 2007.

As many readers of this blog realize, I’ve been searching for financial programs that run on Mac OS. Unfortunately all of the software that I’ve tested thus far has sucked something fierce. Enter Billings 2 written by Marketcircle.

Billings 2 is a program that manages time tracking and invoicing.

The basis of time tracking is the “Time Slip.” A Time Slip can be thought of a piece of paper that identifies what you’re working on and how long it takes. (I think a lot of contractors can relate to this time tracking philosophy.) Time Slips are then bundled together into Invoices.

The application also tracks taxes, estimates, and retainers.

The application data seems to be stored in SQL Lite. This makes reporting easier.

This leads me to my favorite part of the application - the reporting engine. It is the most powerful reporting engine feature that I’ve come across. If you are familiar with Oracle Reports, or any other reporting engine then you can pretty much jump right into creating your own Invoices. For an in-depth look at the reporting engine and how to create custom invoices, check out the Report Engine Concepts document.

Overall, I definitely think that any consultant looking to change applications, or looking to make the switch to Mac should take a look at this application.

Billings 2 is provided by Marketcircle and costs $59.

As I’ve mentioned many times on my blog, I’m moving to South Dakota and I’m starting a new job. One of the interesting things about this move is the fact that my current company wants to keep me on as a part time consultant! I’ve always liked the idea of consulting but I’ve never been in the financial position to live the life. Thankfully with a part time gig I will be able to do it. Working as a consultant has one hangup - taxes.

A consultant is self-employed so they have to take care of their own taxes. This often means filing quarterly taxes, along with a payment. Consultants also have to pay extra taxes to make up for the taxes that are normally paid by the employer.

I’ve never liked filing my taxes. Thankfully since I’m single and I don’t play the stock market I’ve always filed the 1040-EZ. Now, as a consultant, my taxes will get more complicated. So I’ve been looking into a book keeping service. I’ve been thinking about Quickbooks but the software alone only takes me so far. I still like the idea of having a professional looking over my work and doing the actual filing. Enter payroll and bookkeeping services from Accounting Paradise.

With Accounting Paradise you sign up for an online Quickbooks account and fill in the required information. For a monthly fee (starting at $10/mo) they will prepare the necessary forms and help you file them. To see more how this works check out their “Working Together” page.

This post brought to you by the payroll and bookkeeping services from Accounting Paradise.

I recently installed the DiggClick plugin. Although it is a great plugin I’ve noticed a small issue with it. When someone Diggs your post and they aren’t on the actual post page, the plugin gets befuddled.

Example, if the Digger is viewing the following URL (http://digg.com/view/technology/upcoming) when they Digg your post, the plugin will get befuddled and display an error message where the “DiggIt” button should be.

Note: If you are unfamiliar or uncomfortable working with a database you should not attempt this. Also make sure to backup the WordPress database in case anything really terrible happens.

In order to fix this issue you must first get the actual URL of your Digg post. It will look something like this: http://digg.com/mods/DiggClick. Next open your Wordpress database, using a tool such as PHPMyAdmin, then browse the “{blogname}_postmeta” table. Find the entry where the “meta-key” value is “DiggClick”. The “meta_value” column should contain an invalid URL. Change this value to be the actual value of your Digg post. Commit the changes then refresh your blog. The error should disappear.

The above needs to be done for every post with an error.

Another work around, that doesn’t require database hacking, is to navigate to your blog post from the digg post page. This will set the correct value in the “{blogname}_postmeta” table.