Marketing Intelligence™
Throughout history, man has marveled at the vast complexity of this planet called Earth; where humanity has been left searching endlessly for answers to the unknown, unexplained, and undefinable. In a world where nuclear weapons threaten the extinction of mankind, global warming is melting polar caps, and dirty dancers can’t beat back the beast, one man emerges with the power to shed light on what has never been seen before.
Volacci’s favorite content management system (CMS), Drupal, continues to grow in popularity worldwide as several high profile sites in Australia migrate to the CMS. Websites in Australia who have recently powered up with Drupal are the Prime Minister’s site and ABC’s three digital radio websites - Dig Music, ABC Jazz, and ABC Country. Also on the international scene, Drupal is used by a wide range of organizations, such as the Obama Administration, McDonald’s, and Green Peace.
Two years ago, the man over at Drupal, Dries Buytaert, spoke with Computerworld Australia that the five-year goal with Drupal was to see it utilized for more complex sites as it spread internationally. There are now more than 400,000 Drupal-hosted sites around the globe, with more than a million unique visitors per month to their website, www.drupal.org.
Last month I published a blog post asking the Drupal community what Project Management Software they use, how they use it, and what their experience was. This was in an effort to understand what PMSes are being implemented amongst our inspiring community of Drupal fans. Are they enjoying the software or cursing and shaking their angry fists at the screen? We received a total of 17 unique comments, with 13 answers to the query.
This past Wednesday at Drupalcon Paris 2009, Acquia, a company who provides commercial support for the Drupal content management system, revealed a sneak peak to attendees of their new project Drupal Gardens. Drupal Gardens is the company’s new “software-as-a-service” version of Drupal specifically targeting non-technical users and designed to speed up the design and deployment of Drupal social publishing sites. This new software will not only keep Drupal competitive with other hosted publishing platforms but also extend its reach to new users who might be intimidated by the technical adoption barriers that any CMS present.
Drupal Gardens was built on Drupal 7 and is a hosted webs service that includes design tools similar to blog publishing platforms. There are no skill set prerequisites or ownership of hosting environments required. According to the announcement, Drupal Gardens will include:
SXSW 2010 Interactive Panel Picker Voting ends tomorrow and I would sincerely appreciate all the votes that I can get before the polls close.
My proposed session, entitled Drupal 6 Search Engine Optimization, covers SEO for Drupal 6: Which modules you’ll need, how to configure them, and what more you can do to get your site to the top of Google.
Three Additional Reasons You Should Vote:
1. The SXSW web site is a Drupal Site.
2. This is not only good for Drupal, but for Drupal in the greater tech community.
3. Dries Buytaert, the Drupal project founder and lead, is also a proposed speaker, so you can vote for him as well.
Please vote for my session here, and help SXSW Interactive get back to being the great technical conference that it was a few years ago!
SXSW Interactive (held annually in Austin, Texas) features five days of compelling presentations from the brightest minds in emerging technology, scores of exciting networking events hosted by industry leaders and an unbeatable line up of special programs showcasing the best new websites, video games and startup ideas the community has to offer.
SXSW 2010 Interactive Panel Picker Voting ends Friday and I would sincerely appreciate all the votes that I can get before the polls close.
My proposed session, entitled Drupal 6 Search Engine Optimization, covers SEO for Drupal 6: Which modules you’ll need, how to configure them, and what more you can do to get your site to the top of Google.
Three Additional Reasons You Should Vote:
1. The SXSW web site is a Drupal Site.
2. This is not only good for Drupal, but for Drupal in the greater tech community.
3. Dries Buytaert, the Drupal project founder and lead, is also a proposed speaker, so you can vote for him as well.
Please vote for me here, and help SXSW Interactive get back to being the great technical conference that it was a few years ago!
SXSW Interactive (held annually in Austin, Texas) features five days of compelling presentations from the brightest minds in emerging technology, scores of exciting networking events hosted by industry leaders and an unbeatable line up of special programs showcasing the best new websites, video games and startup ideas the community has to offer.
Most, if not all, people familiar with Drupal know of its home at http://drupal.org, where all the activities amongst the community’s developers and their amazing contributed modules strive for excellence. However, most folks who are unfamiliar with the “.org” address and are doing research on the CMS assume that the Drupal site ends in a .com and go to www.drupal.com. Until now, www.drupal.com has been a placeholder page forwarding visitors to the project page, but it has been experiencing a significant amount of traffic from those would-be noobies.
Now, with the combined efforts of Development Seed, Raincity’s Robert Scales and Drupal community “hero” Boris Mann, future Drupal members have an awesome website in www.drupal.com to learn about the popular CMS. This is an exciting moment for all members of the Drupal community, because, as Jeff Traynor puts it on the Raincity website:
“We already know that Drupal is powerful, but, like at the end of many Hollywood teen flicks, the nerdy girl just took off her glasses on prom night and it turns out she’s beautiful!”
At the recent Search Engine Strategies (SES) San Jose Conference and Expo 2009, a session was dedicated to the benefit of blogs and RSS feeds for SEO efforts. The session focused on how and why to incorporate them while also running an SEO campaign.
The speaker that perked up the ears of us here at Volacci was the managing director of Receptional LTD, Dixon Jones. Jones, who favors using Drupal over WordPress, believes that blogs can be pretty significant. He gave the example of Dave Naylor’s blog, which is tied to more than 6,000 referring domains. Jones also advocated using multiple bloggers to mix up the voice and messaging focus. In regards to RSS feeds, Jones also added that RSS feed widgets can confer SEO benefits.
Drupal, the highly popular Content Managment System (CMS), is about to beef up its black book with a new module called “Socialize”. Socialize was developed by Gigya, a startup out of Alta Vista, CA specializing in the social media realm, and our good friends, Acquia, a company that specializes in custom Drupal installation.
As I make my way to the City of Angels today, I would like to dedicate some time in honor of one my cinematic favorites, The Big Lebowski. I would also like to rally other passionate folks within the Drupal community to join me Friday evening for some burgers at the In-N-Out Burger on UC-Irvine’s campus, followed by bowling at the Irvine Lanes.
In-N-Out Burger
4115 Campus Dr.
Irvine, CA 92612
Irvine Lanes
3415 Michelson Dr.
Irvine, CA 92612-1605
949-786-9625
