mike.monan's blog

One of the most useful pieces of navigation for a user is the 'breadcrumb' trail at the top of any page on the site they're visiting. It's something that is easy to forget, but so important (and expected) in all but the most simple of sites.

Now, onto the geek...One of the rooms at DCC was dedicated to Birds of a Feather (BOF) sessions, where groups of people interested in the same topic could just run an ad-hoc session.

i just got back from Drupal Camp Colorado (DCC) last weekend. What a great experience! Many thanks to the the CommerceGuys (another local MI firm!) for covering nearly all my travel, lodging, and conference costs.

The first thing new Drupal developers ask me is, "How do I make my new Drupal site look different from the rest?" Drupal 5 Themes by Ric Shreves is the first book dedicated entirely to theming Drupal. This topic certainly deserves its own book and I'm glad we now have it. (On the down side Drupal 6 is already released and Drupal 7 is in the works.)

Somehow I’ve been able to avoid advanced theming by using sub-contractors or taking themes from the Drupal Theme Garden. But I realize that designers and programmers cannot go it alone. In order to build the most interactive sites, we need to reach across the gap and learn a bit about each other’s craft. Enter Drupal 5 Themes.

Organic Groups Panels (ogp) is a new Drupal module that I think will become a phenomenon. Thanks to everyone who created this module (and its dependents)! It comes just in time for a project I'm working on now. Sweet!

Organic Groups (og) can solve so many complex group development models. I love it, but it always deserved a bit of custom coding to improve the user interface. Organic Groups Panels, released and distributed with OG, makes it so that I can turn that custom coding into Views and Panels that are OG aware. What this means is more functionality passed to the Group owners (privileged users) while reducing programming efforts.

Here is a screencast of this new functionality deployed on Groups.Drupal.org by Josh Koenig.
And here is a look at what I have done with the A2Drupal group page.

I'm really trying to contribute code back to the Drupal community but I can't keep up with this pace of development. Approximately one new module a day, one great module a month and a few ground breaking modules like OGP in the last year.

The three of us, Steve, Mike, and Mike met each other at the Ann Arbor Drupal Users group. We each had been using Drupal to develop and deliver content managed sites. We'd each used some other available tools to create and deploy these types of sites, but Drupal offered something that the others did not: developer friendly extensibility.

By using Drupal we realized that we could consistently deliver better solutions for our clients. Period.

I enjoy focusing on helping website users accomplish their tasks as effectively and efficiently as possible. I enjoy architecting and developing custom solutions for interesting business problems. Many times, in my ten plus years of working with the web, I've seen developers forget about the end users and/or get bogged down in the technical aspects of the development work. The developer friendly extensability of Drupal allows me to do the things I enjoy and not fall into this trap.

Working with Drupal allows me to concentrate on the higher level business questions. It gives back my time so that I can concentrate on the issues that really do matter when it comes to delivering your site - delivering custom well-designed solutions that help you keep your users and customers coming back.

After a few meetings (and after-meeting gatherings), we hatched the plan for Switchback. We've all been living and working in Ann Arbor for years, but hadn't found the right team of people to work with. We'd pool our knowledge, efforts, and resources and focus on delivering sites developed and managed via Drupal, and by doing so, we'd provide GREAT and cost-effective solutions for our customers. We decided that we'd strive to keep everything as open and transparent as possible, and give back to the Drupal community as much as we could, starting with continued organization of the Ann Arbor Drupal Users group.

I finally feel that I've found a great technology and community to build something around. We've got the right team and we're ready to launch. I'm excited to get things off the ground and I know the other guys are too.

Check this space in the future for posts about new Drupal modules and issues, about how your can help your users complete their tasks more successfully, and other general Switchback musings...