Drupal

Drupal proved to be a good fit for Westlake Laboratories — mainly so they could take advantage of its extendability and tremendous Ubercart E-commerce module.

This also meant de-GeoCitying their cluttered and broken look in favor of a minimal custom Drupal theme. The new design flexes to fit the user’s setup, unlike the old design in which page elements rearrange themselves at will and just get crunk all over:

It was a knockout week for articles about people who are smarter than normal people.

• There are over 300 million people in the US — only 32 of them are annually selected to be Rhodes scholars. There are almost seven billion people on earth — only 32 of them are annually selected in the NFL Draft’s first round. What are the odds that one person could score both? Hey, I only graduated from relatively lowly Kennesaw State University, and even I can calculate that it’s SLIGHTLY RARE. Future NFL star/current Rhodes scholar Myron Rolle makes you and me and everyone we know all feel like big, big losers. Can you imagine the pressures of being Myron Rolle? Article’s most underrated moment: when we learn that Rolle, quite possibly the most smartest American pro athlete ever, enjoys the music of Plies, who looks like this.
• Rolle’s fellow people-who-are-smarter-than-you, Ivy Leaguers Jessica Lin, Jessica Matthews, Julia Silverman, and Hemali Thakkar, have created a soccer ball that generates energy by being kicked. Fifteen minutes of play generates enough power to run a light for three hours, meaning a whole day of running/kicking can help patch the electricity gaps third-world villages have to deal with.*
• The Atlantic’s food columnist compares Walmart’s produce with Whole Foods’, hosting a blind taste-test for 16 professional food critics. THIRD-BULLET TWIST: several critics end up “not entirely happy” to discover the produce they preferred was actually THE POPULIST PRODUCE. This changes everything! Update the class war scoreboard: Little Guy 1, Rhodes Cornerback & The Soccer Teslas… still somewhat more than 1. Ok, fine.

Ebert: common ground.

Speaking of famous intellectuals with fun jobs and a lot of money and important friends: Roger Ebert, relentless tweeter and the only movie critic known of by regular humble folk, profiled after cancer surgeries have left him unable to speak, eat, or convincingly show anger. Also, check the second-disc commentary… it’s Ebert on the article on Ebert.

*: Source site turns out to be a nonprofit’s Drupal site. For more nonprofits that use Drupal, see our list here.

We’re super proud to introduce the new web home of the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding, a literally world-renowned nonprofit. Tanenbaum brings together people of different faiths by guiding schools, workplaces, and medical institutions and honoring peacemakers of wartorn regions.

The list of religious and political dignitaries*, corporations**, universities***, and charities**** who support Tanenbaum — via financial support, accolades, or contributions — is completely ridiculous. I offer you mere samples of each:

*: Billy Graham, Bill Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Kofi Annan, Madeline Albright, Joe Lieberman
**: Walt Disney Company, Conde Nast, Verizon, Kraft, Prudential, Shell, Viacom
***: Oxford, Princeton, Harvard, George Mason, Fordham, Columbia
****: Carnegie Corporation, JP Morgan Chase Foundation, Merril Lynch & Co. Foundation

And many many more. Somewhere in there, there’s little old us.

Tanenbaum’s old site was static (AKA hard to update, inflexible, and hard to expand) and didn’t present the clearest picture of exactly what they do.

They wanted to distinguish their programs from each other in an obvious visual way, instead of having only one look for the entire site. Being able to update their own content at the drop of a hat was also on the shopping list.

Looking over their content management system options, they narrowed it down to Drupal, WordPress, Ruby on Rails, and Moveable Type.

Already leaning towards going open source, Tanenbaum was impressed by Drupal’s flexibility.

So (PRESTO) we created a custom Drupal build for Tanenbaum, as we’re known to do from time to time. We developed:

• a complete E-commerce solution allowing sales, donations, and gifts
• Google Maps and social media integration
• different sections for each program
• a promo ad management system
• forums
• a couple dozen distinct content types
• Views/CCK-based automagical content displays
• easy-to-create photo galleries
• and a roped-off section offering premium content for paying members.

Pulling over and restructuring all their content followed, plus some proofing along the way. Tanenbaum’s old blog was hosted at wordpress.com, so we brought that on over into the new Drupal site too, consolidating their web presence and brand into one much-improved location.

So YEP we’re happy Tanenbaum’s new Drupal site is live and firing, and now we’re on to the on on to the next one.

The Image Initiative is a Syracuse, New York nonprofit dedicated to helping young women of color. They asked us to build an expressive website that puts them in charge of all their content and gives them plenty of room to grow.

The site features a custom Drupal build, an original theme with multiple highly distinct templates, and lots of Views/CCK work to ensure all their newest content goes where it’s supposed to go. We’re very proud of the finished product!

• We saw Avatar in 3D, sitting in the front row. There’s a lot to like, mainly the sensory overload. Two things really bugged me: first, there’s no way a female scientist in the year 2150 uses man to refer to humanity. Second, it’s a movie about a white guy who (SPOILER, I GUESS) ¹ enters a new culture group, ² endures a montage, and ³ quickly becomes better at all the group’s activities than any of the group’s lifelong members. Just as in The Last Samurai, Dances With Wolves, Last of the Mohicans, 8 Mile (peace to Brittany Murphy), Batman Begins, and many many more. This convention goes beyond lazy writing, and in fact presents real sociological puzzles — there’s a strange assumption of supreme white competence, for one. When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like “Avatar”? goes in on the newest version, in which the white guy not only masters the tribe, but becomes its Messiah too. Which is, like, even worse. (NOT REALLY THAT MUCH OF A SPOILER, BUT IT’S OVER)
• “The boss says, ‘Get there on time;’ the leader gets there ahead of time. The Builder makes sure ‘getting there’ matters.” More: The Builders’ Manifesto.
• A thorough, detailed case study by the company responsible for NBC’s current comprehensive branding campaign, focusing on the campaign’s dynamic use of bold colors. You should click this, but I’m really not gonna be able to talk you into it. That’s fine.

But Wait There’s More

If Earth had rings like Saturn, what would our sky look like?

Something Completely Drupal

Monty Python is now using Drupal.