Vonn New Technology

Working with your Website Builder

vonn — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 14:35:43 +0000

You've just contracted with a website builder to make a new website - hopefully it's me. Soon, you'll have a platform with which you can talk to the whole world. A professional builder will guide you through the process of developing your content, but ultimately it's up to you to decide what you want to say. Most people find this difficult.

One of the mistakes that many people make is they think they have to decide on the front page first and then work their way down through the rest of the site. That is a more difficult approach because the front page is more of a summary and inviting foyer to the rest of the site. Start from the other direction. Think about the various other pages and types of content you want and put those together first. The front page will come together more easily when you have a clearer idea of those things.

The front page should be fairly low on text - bullet points and images about what you offer. Put yourself in the chair of a visitor to the site and ask yourself, "What can this guy do for me?" or "How does the mission of this organization align with my values?" and answer that as succinctly as possible. Put important logos, links, teasers of other parts of your site on the front page.

Make the navigation the same on everypage so visitors don't get lost.

A more detailed resume or mission statement should go on an 'About' page. There you can have a lot of text. Attention span is very low on websites, so the volume of text will probably make a bigger impression than the actual content of the words.

Everywhere: Highlight important points with bold or color and break up the text w/ images as much as possible.

Give your builder lots of pictures to work with. Let her pick ones that speak to your message and look nice with the colors of the theme. Even pictures that are low quality might be helpful because they will help the builder know more about you. With a bit of cropping and adjustment sometimes even low quality photos can salvaged.

Give links to external sites a target="_blank" so they open a new tab instead of leaving your site. Your builder will do this for you or show you how.

Embed video where ever you can.

Pick a theme that complements your message. It should be pleasing to the idea but also simple so it isn't distracting.

Be sincere.

A Gentle Lift

vonn — Tue, 25 May 2010 15:17:28 +0000

I've been theming a new website this week and was explaining my approach to the general aesthetic presentation of a site to my client. She seemed to find what I said interesting and helpful, so I decided to blog it here.

First of all, when I say 'theming', I mean that I am building the aesthetic presentation for the site: the colors, fonts, background colors and textures, graphic design elements. In other words, the way the site looks.

My biggest influence in doing this work is not a web or graphic designer at all, but my dear Friend, Christine O'Brien. Christine was a visual artist and also a person who was keenly aware of the aesthetics of her surroundings. For her, taking care of aesthetics was a way of showing love. Her home, Lizard Hall, in Gulfport Florida was a delight to visit. Using color, light, simple objects and imagination, she created a welcoming space that fostered a sense of creativity, good will, and peacefulness.

She once explained to me, "When you step into a room you should get a gentle lift."

That made a big impression on me and has become what I am for when theming a site. I break it down into a set of criteria:

Clean, uncluttered layout
Textures and colors that are pleasing to the eye and enhance the message of the site rather than distract from it
Harmony among the colors, fonts and graphics
Welcoming to visitors, with easy, intuitive navigation and easy to read text

How do I know when I've achieved the 'Gentle Lift'? One thing I do is step out of the room and back in again. I leave the site I'm working on and then pop back in. Do I feel that gentle lift myself? Does the site make my eyes happy? Then I ask the owner of the site to get involved, since what is pleasing to me might not be pleasing to everyone.

2 New Websites this Week

vonn — Fri, 07 May 2010 18:20:42 +0000

I brought 2 new websites to life this week and they are both for organizations that are doing great work.

New York Yearly Meeting

The development of this site has been a long-term project working with the Communications Committee and staff of New York Yearly Meeting, the organization of Quaker meetings in New York state and parts of New Jersey and Connecticut. This project consisted of an entirely new Drupal site, the migration of some content from an old html site, and the development of much new content. My role was to do the Drupal design and creation, organize and manage volunteers to migrate and write content, edit and review the content and finally to deploy the site on a new hosting service.

Features of this site include:

Lots of new dynamic content
Online calendar of events
RSS feed
fresh graphic design
online donations
coming soon will be online event registration

Here, I'm helping volunteers migrate content in a 'not-so-old-fashioned' Quaker workcamp. From left, Claire Simon (facing away), Kathy Thomas, me (standing), Lee Maxwell, and Susan Bingham. Not pictured were volunteers Heather Cook and Jon Baily-Savory.

Ubuntu in Action

I was just finishing reading the book Three Cups of Tea, about Greg Mortensen's work building peace by building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and feeling very moved and inspired, when I received an email from Etienne Mashuli of Ubuntu in Action. Etienne and the rest of the Ubuntu organization are doing similar work in the African Great Lakes region (Rwanda, Burundi, eastern DRC and Tanzania, an area that has been devastated by war and genocide in the last 2 decades. Etienne himself grew up in this area and is now a student in the United States. I was honored to be able to contribute to this project by designing a new website for Ubuntu in Action, to help spread the word and raise funds for this vitally important work.

Features include:

lots of graphic design elements and photographic content
online donations
easy for visitors to post and share to social networks and email
RSS feed
automatic backup
live Twitter feed

Live streaming on As I Am

vonn — Fri, 07 May 2010 18:13:28 +0000

I've recently starting working with a new client, Robin Hankins of As I Am Institute. Robin hosts a live weekly TV show that is streamed live on livestream.com/asiam. The show features guests who discuss topics related to spirituality of particular interest to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.

I produce the show remotely, preparing pre-recorded segments, cuing cameras, preparing and running videos for sponsor's ads, and archiving shows so that visitors can watch later at their convenience. This is a fun project to work on and I've enjoyed listening to the guests.

Tune in to watch live every Thursday at noon or watch any of the archived shows below:

Watch live streaming video from asiam at livestream.com

Lots of Activity

vonn — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:46:38 +0000

I sure have been busy lately!

A bunch of website projects that have been in the works for a while have come to fruition all at once. It's been great fun deploying all these sites. Every time I get one up on a publicly-accessible server, I get to send an email to my client that says, "It's Alive!" Of course, the best part is that I learn something new with every project. That's why I like this work.

Here's a run-down of the new sites:

Hemingway's Cat

This site is for the band, Hemingway's Cat, which I also happen to be a member of. The most difficult challenge in creating this site was finding time between doing work for my paying clients to get it done.

Aesthetically, I was more daring with this site, using vibrant colors on a black background, design elements that I created for other promotional materials using Photoshop, and a customized Drupal theme that I made using the Zen Starterkit.

Neat features of this site include:

Widgets that leverage the band's social networking activities on facebook and reverbnation.com
Streaming of music so curious listeners can hear what we actually sound like rather than just read descriptions
A calendar that maps the geographical points of our shows
A blog where the other members of the band and myself can reflect on our shows and what we're working on
A way for fans to comment on the blog, but with CAPTCHA challenge to prevent garbage from Spambots appearing on our site
Search Engine Optimization and integration with Google Analytics

Mawenawasigh Healing Arts

This site is for a healing arts practitioner in Salt Point, NY (Dutchess County). Aesthetic considerations were of the primary importance to this client so this site features unique design elements such as the logo and the left sidebar graphic, that began with digital photography at her location and continued with the creation of the elements using Photoshop. This site features content that is easily updated by the owner with a rich text editor, image handler and calendar system.

The Melanie Group

This site is for a professional educator in the real estate business. It features content that is easy for the owner to update, including a rich text editor and a calendar and events scheduler that is customized to handle her specific classes and webinars.

Balanced Pools website

vonn — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:57:08 +0000

This e-commerce site is for a start-up company based in Clearwater Florida that sells an environmentally-friendly swimming pool product.

BalancedPools.com needed an easy way for website visitors to calculate the volume of their pool and how much product they need and also to estimate their energy savings. For this site, I used Drupal 6.13 and wrote two custom modules using PHP and Drupal's Form API.

Other cool features include:

A system for wholesale customers to create their own log in accounts.
Integration with PayPal for handling transactions and shipping.
A rich text editor so the business owner can easily update text and graphics.
An easy-to-use interface for the owner to approve wholesale accounts and interact with customers

William Penn House website

vonn — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:43:24 +0000

I've just deployed a new website for William Penn House. This organization came to me because, although they had a functional, well-constructed site already, the person who had been maintaining it was leaving the organization. They needed a solution that would allow people with less time and inclination for technical stuff to be able to maintain the site easily.

Some of the coolest features of this site include:

a rich text editor, so that staff members can enter and format content, including images, with an interface that looks a lot like Word;
a powerful calendar and date system, so they can enter an event just one time and have it appear in multiple places on the site, and then disappear when the event is past; and,
a rotating slideshow on the home page that is easily updated with new photos

I created this site for them using Drupal 6.10.

Audio Recording for Janet Carter Storytelling

vonn — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:40:32 +0000

I recently had the opportunity to do the audio recording for an evening of storytelling at the Saugerties Public Library by Janet Carter. John Drew of JFDXIII Studios did the video and I did the sound (but not the music at the beginning and end).

For the recording, I used 2 condenser microphones connected to my m-audio 1418 firewire interface, into my Mac Powerbook, running Pro Tools.

Getting Started with Drupal - vital resources and tools

vonn — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:29:24 +0000

Quite a few people have been talking to me lately about wanting to get started making websites with Drupal, so I thought I would share here some of most useful tools and resources that I've found:

1. The Drupal Community as found at drupal.org. This open source community is your source for everything from core source code and contributed modules and themes, to discussions, case studies and technical support.

2. Building powerful and robust websites with Drupal 6 by David Mercer. This book gives a great big-picture overview of Drupal, a lot of practical information, and hands-on exercises. This should be your first Drupal book.

3. Using Drupal by Jeff Robbins, Angela Byron, Addison Berry, Jeff Eaton, Nate Haug, James Walker. This book takes your Drupal to the next level, taking you step by step through case studies that illustrate how to integrate the most powerful Drupal modules. It will help you make sense of the dizzying number of modules found on drupal.org.

4. W3Schools Online Web Tutorials. Drupal is a powerful tool that leverages your knowledge of web programming, but it doesn't eliminate the need for it. You still need to be able to find your way around html, css, php, and to some degree SQL & jQuery. This website is a great resource if you need to look something up or remediate your skills.

5. Drupal 6 Themes by Ric Shreves. This book will give you the knowledge and best practices for making your site look the way you want it to look.

6. A daily walk. You need a healthy mind and body if you want to be productive and creative behind the computer. Get outside, breath some fresh air, see some beauty and get your pulse rate up. Your brain needs oxygen.

7. Firebug. This add-on to Firefox is a great tool for figuring out what code in which file is causing a behavior. It's also good for looking at other websites and seeing how things are done.

8. Pro Drupal Development second edition, by John VanDyk. This book delves into the nitty gritty of the technical details of the Drupal core and modules. It's not always necessary to get into this level, but it's very reassuring to have this book as a guide when you do.

These are the resources I've found most useful so far. I hope you find them helpful too. Let me know if I've missed your favorite!

Home from DrupalCon DC

vonn — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 23:24:25 +0000

I arrived home last night from DrupalCon DC and my brain will be busy digesting everything I learned for some time to come. The information was flowing fast and free. For the most part it was highly technical but there were parts that also delved into Drupal, the open source movement, and the web as a social phenomenon too.

Drupal founder Dries Buytaert spoke of the way Drupal has continued to develop as the work of an community of volunteers who organize themselves to solve problems rather than do as they're told. "Coordination replacing planning."

Regarding the current economic crisis, I learned that recovery.gov is running on Drupal. Also, there is an advantage to building on open source products because they are supported by communities of people rather than companies. One thing we are learning is that no company is immune from crisis and may not be around to support its products tomorrow. This concern does not apply to open source software.

The following plenary address by philosopher David Weinberger, "Is Drupal Moral?" is not technical and may be of interest to my readers: