Blogs

Review of "Cracking Drupal ~ A Drop in the Bucket" by WILEY Publishing about #drupal Security

Sun, 2009-05-03 19:25 — DougVann

Whoa! This book does not seek to alarm you as much as it seeks to inform you. The problem is not that Drupal is not secure. What author Greggory Knaddison shows is that its up to the admin to make sure that all of the security features are used properly to ensure a secure site. By showing what hackers might do the reader is informed on how to make sure that those attacks would not cause damage to their sites. In a word, this book is PRACTICAL. And for a second word I would add ESSENTIAL.

Looking back at the 1st quarter of 2009

Mon, 2009-04-13 08:49 — DougVann

Is 2009 REALLY over 25% finished? OK. So it is. What was it like for you? My family has seen less of me this year than in years prior. We made a decision to get as close to debt-free as possible this year and that means breaking new ground on income. Some how spending less is supposed to play a role too, but that doesn't sound like any fun now does it? I am thankful to have a family [Wife and four children] that packs in the quality time that we do spend together. I have 3 day weekends every week and we take advantage of that as much as possible.

Monday April13th Indiana Drupal Meeting on JQuery!

Sun, 2009-04-12 08:47 — DougVann

JQuery Fun!

Here's a quick note about the next Indiana Drupal Users Group meeting. Details: http://groups.drupal.org/node/20776 We're going to have some fun with JQuery! In preparation for the meeting, I wrote the following instructions to give you an opportunity to check out JQuery on your own. Also see the attached file, courtesy of www.Lullabot.com If you find all of this particularly useful, please offer a comment. If you want to play around with JQuery do the following: * Get FireFox: http://www.spreadfirefox.com/ thats a Drupal site by the way!

Can't wait to present at the 2009 cmsEXPO

Wed, 2009-04-01 00:20 — DougVann

If you know me at all you have to know that a CMS is a Content Management System and, for me, the best one going is Drupal. That's why I am so excited to be heading out to Chicago and taking the short trip uptown to Evanston. The CMS-Expo is a 3 day event at the Hotel Orrington April 29th through May 1st. (Oh Man! My B-Day is May 1st!) Since Drupal is not the only CMS available, there will also be tracks for WordPress and Joomla.

2009 Washington DC #Drupalcon Debriefing

Sun, 2009-03-15 10:01 — DougVann

A week ago today I returned home from this years Drupalcon held in our nation's Capital. Nearly all the videos for this year's Drupalcon are posted!

Drupalcon ticket | $200
Flight | $178
My portion of a shared hotel | $432
Meals and Cab fare | about $200
I have to say that for about a thousand bucks, I gained a tremendous amount of knowledge and networked with a huge number of people!

Some knew me from my Twitter Account, or from the various Drupal Groups that I post to, or from My Blog. Others knew me from my unsuccessful application to the Drupal Association. [read my comments about the experience here http://drupal.org/node/375900#comment-1265304 ]

The sessions I enjoyed most were:
Drush: command line Drupal productivity.
More Than Search: How ApacheSolr Changes the Way You Build Sites,
Project Flow and Tracker,
Why I Hate Drupal,
Building APIs that Rock,
Boosting Our Raw Capacity to Provide Drupal Training,

I made some great, new friends, some who gave me business leads. I had the opportunity to sit down with 7 authors of Drupal books representing 5 different books. I picked their brains for a big project I'm working on for a Patient Records Management system that I am developing for a small Dr's office in Florida. It goes without saying that the project moving along quite well after getting some questions answered and plenty of great ideas from those "Giants" in the Drupal community.

The biggest excitement for me this year was discovering that starting in April I will become one of the maintainers of groups.drupal.org where I will help the various geographic groups fulfil their mission to meet the needs of their local groups. I will have a whole blog post dedicated to thisv topic once I assume the role.

Soon, i would like to take some of the session videos, re-watch them and blog about them. Look for it!
- dv
- twitter.com/dougvann

What I hope to accomplish at Drupalcon 2009 in DC

Sun, 2009-03-01 16:47 — DougVann

in 48 hours I will be landing in Washington DC to attend DRUPALCON

But why? The reasons for going are numerous. Here's a list:

The training will be invaluable! This year there are more concurrent sessions than there were when I attended last year. That makes it harder to decide which session to attend, BUT it also means greater variety. It is important to note that not every session will be 100% Drupal related. Client relations, project management, social media, server administration, development tools, and other broader categories will be covered in some sessions.

Catching up with Doug Vann: NINE quick bullets

Thu, 2009-02-19 09:28 — DougVann

I have started twice to post a new blog and found myself distracted by mounting tasks. Here's a quick update on everything I can think of.

In 5 days my wife and I will celebrate our 13th anniversary!!!! What do we have to show for it? 4 children! Here's a photo of BEAUTY and the beast! http://flickr.com/photos/vannfam/2262137664/in/set-72157603897742636/
My son broke his elbow playing dodge ball at church. He's doing pretty good. He has a cool camouflage cast and get this... The Doctor says that the cast is water proof and that it needs to be cleaned daily. Tyler has to take a shower every day and get the cast thoroughly washed out. The cast is on day 3 of 21. See his blog about it here: http://tyler.dougvann.com
My new job is not so new any more. I have been working at Slingshot SEO inc. http://www.slingshotseo.com since January 19th. I have worked on their custom PHP/MySQL CMS as well as finishing up their 1st Drupal development project. The 3 guys that run the company are some ultra hip cats who get it. They deliver high valued SEO services to clients gaining them a high level of respect from the business community. I'm blown away at the quantity and quality of referrals that continue to come in. It's oh so good working for a debt free company that is doing things right.
I applied for [and failed to gain] membership to the Drupal Association. See my comment about it on Drupal.org http://drupal.org/node/375900
Next Thursday I am joining a friend of mine, Elvis McNeely, to start a local Drupal Users Group on the campus of Purdue University. See the discussion here. http://groups.drupal.org/node/19209
In mid April we will have some serious Drupal developers in town as they speak at the Museums and the Web Conference. http://www.archimuse.com/mw2009/ We will have some of them joining us at a special meeting of the local Drupal Users Group
In 10 days I leave for Washington DC for 6 days. http://dc2009.drupalcon.org This is the BIG HOORAH for the Drupal Community. Project Founder Dries Buytaert will speak as will many of the most important contributors to the project.
President Obama unveiled a new website that is intended to bring a level of transparency to the government spending frenzy going on right now. That site was developed in.......... Wait for it.............. You guessed it!!!!!!!!!! DRUPAL!!!! http://www.recovery.gov
I have been invited to speak at the CMS Expo in Chicago April 29th - May 1st. Once again I will be out of town for a family birthday: MINE! :-) http://www.cmsexpo.net

Drupal HackFest: Definition

Sat, 2009-01-31 10:34 — DougVann

In a couple hours I will be attending the 2nd Indiana Drupal Hackfest. MAP IT HERE [yep its another blog post about Drupal again...] :-)
A few months ago one of our Indy Drupal Users Group members, Seth Dudenhofer, proposed a meeting where we get together and work on each others projects; a meeting where we hang out, update our sites, teach one another what we know. Thus was the birth of the Indy Drupal HackFest. [Not a place to HACK Drupal Core -- We NEVER do that! :-) ]
So far 16 people have signed up to attend. Why are they coming? What are they expecting? I have no idea. The Hackfest is an open house where you just show up and ask your Drupal questions and hopefully, get the answers you need.

My 2009 has been full of Drupal

Sun, 2009-01-25 00:37 — DougVann

Man...I finally got around to making my 1st blog since New Years Day, and what's it about?
DRUPAL! [[AND a little catch up on how my year has been going]]
I started the year off unemployed but by Jan 12th wound up enjoying my 1st day on the NEW job at www.SlingShotSEO.com where I write PHP code, administer severs, and develop in Drupal.
Now it's January 24th and I've enjoyed two wonderful weeks at the new gig. SlingShot SEO does what its name implies as well as developing high end sites for businesses with a focus on E-Commerce. They deal with a custom CMS that a former employee developed. They have one Drupal site in current development AND a few more coming up. There were 3 developers in the company and then I came in to become the 4th. The other three were indoctrinated into Drupal by joining the Indiana Drupal Users Group that I lead. Thanks to meeting them at the meetings, they now work with Drupal and I now work with them!

BIG NEWS!!!
I have my plane ticket AND hotel set up for Drupalcon in Washington DC March 4-7.
http://dc2009.drupalcon.com
For those who don't know it... Drupalcon is the MAJOR convention for users and developers of the Drupal Content Management System.
This years Drupalcon is being held in Washington DC in early March. I attended the 2008 Drupalcon in Boston last March.
This years even is sponsored by MANY great organizations including www.sun.com , www.google.com , www.warnerbrosrecords.com , www.divx.com , www.princess.com, and www.pbs.org/engage
A complete list can be found at http://dc2009.drupalcon.org/sponsors
Why am I going?

For me, 2008 ROCKED! but I still believe 2009 can beat it!

Fri, 2009-01-02 00:13 — DougVann

I'm paying homage to 2008; the year that will go down in history as the most incredible year of my web development career.
When 2008 started I had no idea that EVERYTHING was going to change. On the last day of 2007 I created my Drupal.org account http://drupal.org/user/222746 and days before that I downloaded & installed Drupal; a file that was barely 1Meg in size.
For those of you who don't know... Drupal is a funny named but POTENT piece of software that doesn't run on your computer. It runs on a web-server allowing you to create amazing [OH SO AMAZING] websites. Check out this 16 page list of 100+ sites built with Drupal. http://buytaert.net/tag/drupal-sites
Anyway... Back to my awesome year.

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