Last year I attended Drupal Camp at Stanford. It was my first Drupal Camp ever and I learned a lot as documented here, here, here and here. The event is happening again, on May 4 and 5. However this year I may not have the time to go for it, because I have to work. I am still undecided whether I should go for it on the second day, which is Saturday. If I go, these are the sessions I might be interested in:

• Best Practices WYSIWYG with inline image handling by Jen Lampton (Last year she led a session on a similar topic, which was great.)
• Git (Get) it done right! Intro to practical applied Version Control for Drupal site builders by Peter Chen (I have to use version controlling more and more, so might as well learn it properly.)
• Supporting a Drupal site over the longterm by Anne Stefanyk,Meghan Sweet (Sounds like essential skills for working on large sites.)
• High Performance for Small Sites by John Bickar (This would be the most important session for me. I have several small, personal Drupal sites, that are slow. Just looking at the description of the session helped me to speed them up as now I use the Boost module, of which I learned there.)

Last month I mentioned that a new book is coming out by Ken Varnum, titled Drupal in Libraries. Now that the date is closer a whole new website has been launched for it, built in Drupal of course: drupalinlibraries.com. The site has a (currently empty) forum and the best news is that a sample chapter is available:

Planning Drupal Development in Libraries

The latest podcast of Drupal Easy had a 4.5 minute interview with Nate Hill, the web librarian at San Jose Public Library (starting at around the 2 second minute of the podcast) recorded at DrupalCon Denver 2012. In it he mentioned how SJPL’s website was redesigned in Drupal 6 and now converted to 7. Nate showcased the custom theme he built on his site along with a short description. It’s worth checking out as he has the technical knowledge of Drupal the user experience skills and understanding of library needs.

I just discovered Katherine Lynch‘s presentation from last June on “Libraries Going Mobile with Drupal“, given at LITA’s Drupal Interest Group meeting. I like when my worlds collide: part of my daytime job as an SEO developer is to think about how the increasing mobile usage affects our customers’ business and how we can maximize it for them. Meanwhile I am a trained librarian, who is on the lookout for the best tech tools for libraries and an avid/relapsed Drupal user. So this presentation covered three of my interest areas.

I downloaded the 280 MB PPTX presentation, but couldn’t listen to the audio, because after the conversion to a format that OpenOffice could access the audio was stripped. Nevertheless I clicked through the 63 slides. Here is a barebone summary

• Percentage of mobile users is increasing
• There are three trends of designs for mobile: app-like, list-like and bare-bones
• Each has its pros and cons and their detailed analysis is the best part of the presentation
• Drupal has pre-built themes to get started: Mobile, Garland Mobile, Nokia Mobile, Fusion Mobile
• Drupal has tools and  modules to get started: Mobile plugin, Mobile Tools,
• Pros and cons why go mobile.

Her conclusion:

• Mobile device users are greatly on the rise
• …with the potential to replace desktop devices
• Many libraries have begun establishing standards for mobile library websites
• Mobile development with Drupal is fast, easy, and as customizable as you want

I found this presentation through a page on Isovera’s website, who provide “Drupal solutions for smart organizations…”

I got my MLIS March 2008 and started actively working with Drupal a year after that. (I say “actively”, because in 2006 I did a bit of configuration on a  Drupal 4.7 site, but not for long.) However I never focused my efforts to learn how these two passions of mine, Library science and Drupal, relate to each other. I wanted to, ever since I posted about Drupal’s Biblio module three months ago.

The time is now. The prompt was the end of DrupalCon Denver today, where there was a “Birds of a Feather” session on Drupal in Libraries. LibraryWebHead, an librarian attendee of the event had this to say:

“Working with Drupal has made me more professional in my web work than I had ever been before. It keeps me on the cutting edge. I’m always learning from people building the most amazing sites on the web. [..] this mission – similar to the mission of today’s libraries – is to allow all people to create their best possible lives online. Mozilla, heck, open-source software itself is about empowerment and freedom. These are core tenets that all librarians can embrace.”

Below is a quick summary of resources about Drupal in Libraries, starting with the top four + 1

• The Libraries group at drupal.org is the best place to stay in the loop about what’s new in the Drupal/library world.
• The very active  Drupal4Lib email list, with 60+ messages a month, mostly helping members with hands-on troubleshooting issues
• The Drupal4Lib Interest Group at ALA’s LITA  (Library & Information Technology Association) with only 25 entires in 3 years.
• Drupalib is intended as “a place for library drupallers to hang out” It’s been around for years and has about 200 entries. But it’s not a lively “place” 1 entry in 2011 and 5 in 2011.
• Ambient Relish has little info about itself, but collects people, modules and themes on the topic

Two upcoming events:

• A 90-minute, online workshop on May 30, titled “Drupal Basics: What Drupal Can Do for Your Library” by Sean Fitzpatrick for $55. (Also mentioned in American Libraries and at ALA.)
• At ALA’s annual conference in Anaheim CA,  LITA will have several Drupal related sessions on June 22:

How to Quickly Build a Web App Using Drupal
We will demonstrate techniques for pulling together a web application using Drupal 7 along with modules and other free components. We will focus on creating a site that provides a good see experience and has a distinctive look without taking a huge effort.

It Takes a Village: Implementing a Homegrown Solution for Streaming Video Resources
Limited to streaming only those videos a vendor hosted, ASU Libraries sought to expand collection options with a trial project for hosting content locally. Kaltura, was selected as the platform, but Kaltura does not work out of the box. This presentation will cover how using Drupal, along with Kaltura, we built a working video hosting solution. The presentation will cover administrative hurdles, stumbling blocks, pitfalls, enhancements, and lessons learned along the way.

Scaling Drupal: Building a 4 Million+ Union Catalog
Using Drupal, the Genesee Valley School Library System built a 4M+ record union catalog to meet the needs of over 400 school libraries in the Greater Rochester (NY) Region. The team behind FiveSystems.org, including the Drupal in Libraries Library Technology Reports co-authors Christopher Harris and Andy Austin, talk large scale Drupal development including external search engines, theming, the challenges of FRBR, and database scalability.

Publications that relate to Drupal in Libraries

• A 131 page book titled Drupal in Libraries by Ken Varnum, to be published next month by Neal-Schuman
• A 37 pages long report titled Drupal in Libraries by Andy Austin and Christopher Harris, published by ALA TechSource in the May 2008 issue of its Library Technology Reports
• Open Source Web Applications for Libraries by Karen A. Coombs and Amanda J. Hollister, published in October 2010, with a 25 pages long chapter on Drupal

Articles, blog entries

• Battle of the CMSs: Drupal for libraries by Kate– MMIT blog, December 6, 2011 – a good summary of what modules are available and what is missing now ffrmo Drupal for library use
• DrupalCon 2011: The Future is Greater Than Features by Sean Fitzpatrick  – American Libraries, March 9, 2011
• Drupal Gets Easier: Making a site? Ning-less? Try Drupal Gardens by Christopher Harris — School Library Journal, May 1, 2010
• Drupal: The Change We Need by Sean Fitzpatrick  – American Libraries, April 28, 2010
• Drupal and Libraries: An Interview with Drupal Core Developer Alex Bronstein by Karen Coombs, OCLC Developer Network — Library Journal, February 1, 2010
• New York Public Library Launches New, Drupal-Based Web Site by Norman Oder — Library Journal,  January 7, 2010
• Drupal Done Right by Karen Coombs — Library Journal, November 15, 2009
• Redesigning the Teen Web Site with the Drupal Content Management System by Samantha Thomason — School Library Journal, October 21, 2009

What’s missing from this overview is actual examples of libraries using Drupal. I leave that for a later date, as it deserves its own post.

I first became aware of Infopeople couple of years ago, when I attended the CLA (California Library Association) conference and they had a great booth with quick presentations. Infopeople is “a statewide LSTA (Library Services and Technology Act) project that functions as the training arm of the California State Library.“ Since then I receive regular emails about their upcoming courses, but didn’t make it to any of them. They offer free webinars and for-fee courses (online and on-ground), but even the latter costs only $75 for librarians in California.

Their free, online, four part series on Digital Preservation ended March 20. A great thing about Infopeople’s offering that they make the archive’s of past webinars available for free. Hence I could and did go through all four part of the series, viewed the slides and read the transcripts of the chats and the presentation. I didn’t view the full recording, because I didn’t feel like filling out the required registration form to access that. The PDFs and PPTs are available without registration.

I learned a lot from the series, presented by Jacob Nadal. In the first part, on “Fundamentals” I most appreciated the historical context/analogy and the extensive framework on how to think about preservation. On my own I might have been more focused on the technical aspects, but the short definition of “Digital Preservation” reminded me that it “combines policies, strategies and actions that ensure access to digital content over time.” Then we got an expounded view on all the key words in this definition.

The second part, on “Text and Image Formats” didn’t give me that muich new information, because I have been working with digital texts and images for 20 years. The third part, on the other hand, was about “Storing and Managing Digital Collections“, which I didn’t pay as much attention all these years as I could have. Keywords I want to remember from this presentations are OAIS (Open Archival Information System), Fedora Digital repository, LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe). I was quite familiar with the contents of the fourth segment on “Audio and Video Formats“, but I got a deeper understanding of the technical aspects of these formats.

If you are novice to the topic, or you want a refresher, I strongly recommend this course. You may also want to check Infopeople’s archives of 200+ webinars on other library related topics.

This morning I passed my Google Analytics Individual Qualification, also known as Google Analytics IQ test or GAIQ. My listing on the official site proves it, so does the GoogleIQ Certifiate.

I’ve been using Google Analytics on my personal site since late 2007, but only started to explore its more advanced options since last June, when I got a job as an SEO developer. But I never had to use its e-commerce/AdWords related options so for the questions related to those areas on the test I had to do more research.

Here is what helped to passed the test. These worked for me, may not work for you and you may find similar information on other sites too. I list them in order of helpfulness, top being the most helpful in preparing and passing the exam.

1. I played with GA a lot on my own to understand  how the features work.
2. I watched every video of the official GAIQ Lessons. Paused where necessary to explore it in GA itself.
3. I crammed. The day before I read/studied a lot.
4. I studied thoroughly Slingshot’s “How to Pass the Google Analytics IQ Test” PDF that I found at this SEOMoz’s blog entry and is also linked from SlongShot’s site.
5. I went through every question at googleanalyticstest.com. If you don’t have to  take the test right now, you may want to wait a week or two as their FAQ says “The questions are in the process of being updated for Google Analytics 5. The full update is scheduled for completion by March 31, 2012.“
6. I browsed through Justin Cutroni’s Google Analytics book, published by O’Reilly.

Here is what I kept open during this “open book” exam (How long will we call it “open book’ even thought I had no printed books open?)

• My Google Analytics account
• The downloaded version of a 175 page PDF from SlideShare that had most of the text and pictures from the GAIQ Lessons videos. It is 18 months old now, so portions of it might be a bit out of-date.
• Regex tool for IP address range
• Jen Sorenson’s detailed notes.
• The page of the Google Analytics API that lists all the methods used in Google Analytics Tracking Code.

As a webdesigner, SEO developer, UI expert you need to be aware how and whether your product gets displayed on various browsers. How do you optimize it? Well, you have to know your standards and what works and what not on different platforms and browsers, there is no avoiding that. But beyond that you need to check your product. Sometimes you don’t want to or don’t have access/time to test on all possible or even major platform. So what tools should you use for checkign browser compatibility.

I will cut to the point. I recommend Adobe BrowserLab and then explain why is it better than the other options when you do a cost-benefit analysis. To use Adobe BrowserLab you need to sign up/in/for/with a (free) Adobe ID. Then you just give it a URL and it can show you how that page would look like with Chrome (13 & 14 on Windows), Firefox (5 &7 on Windows and OS X) Internet Explorer (6-9 on Windows) and Safari (5.1 on OS X).

A side note: On a local tech email list there was a slight case of panic as someone misread an email and thought it said that BrowserLab would be discontinued April 22. A quick check on the official page of Adobe CS Line online services clarified that it  ”Adobe CS Review and SiteCatalyst® NetAverages™ will no longer be available after April 12, 2012.” Don”t worry then, BrowserLab lives on. (For now?)

Here is a round up of the tools you may find in your search for the best browser compability tool. A lot of them are great, but their free option, if they have any, are too limited. I am on a no budget, so they didn’t work for me as well:

In the past all the videos I had to create were intended for online distribution. This time though I had to make a DVD. I use Adobe Premiere to edit my videos. On the few occasions I wanted to make a DVD out of its output I just used Windows DVD Maker and it worked fine. This time however no matter what format I outputted from Premiere, after I created the DVD, the audio was out of sync from the video. I knew it was time to upgrade my tool. So I got Adobe Encore, which is designed to work together with Premier. It did, but I didn’t. When I opened it I had some ideas what to do, but not enough to produce a simple DVD. Therefore I turned to the web, where I found two videos that put me on the track in 11 minutes, combined. They were both made by Ryan Atkins.

After watching the first one I managed to make a simple DVD with no menus. Finally it was not out sync. After watching the second one I could even make a set of menus. Although the missing step from that was that I had to create my buttons foist in Photoshop. Otherwise both were assumed the level of knowledge and the speed of learning that I was comfortable with me. Thank you, interwebs and Ryan Atkins for getting me going in 11 minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50FmEzktcKA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILHLYwG9FV8

Yesterday, February 7, 2012, I attended a webcast titled “Google in the Real World: How Links Boost Your Rankings“. It was presented by Stephan Spencer for O’Reilly, who published his book “The Art of SEO” three years ago. The books 2nd edition is coming out in March. This webcast was much better than the one I listened to 2 months ago. The slides were available at the beginning of the presentation so I could follow it from there. I learned a lot from the presentation, particularly about the tools of the trade. The pace was much closer to my level: fast paced. I believe I am not allowed to share the slides, so I won’t. (The thumbnail on the side is of the cover slide though.) But we were encouraged to tweet through it, and I did. Below is a somewhat cleaned up  version of my tweets, with added hyperlinks, in reserve chronological order, latest being on top.

• Spencer Q&A: No good SEO can be done for under $500 a month.
• Strip away all commercial links during the initial media swarm. Friend popular/power uses or get them to submit your story.
• Popurls.com – aggregator of the most popular stuff from many social sites.
• Leveraging Social Media to linkbaiting: news sites, bookmarking sites. Newsvine, Mixx (aka Chime.In), Kirtsy, TechMeme, ShoutWire,
• Nofollow rules: doesn’t help with increasing link authoity but still helps bring up your visibility.
• Viral videos: be creative but unpolished: Will it blend; Heroes spoofs; Intuit’s tax rap.
• Seed linkbait: Do it from poweruser account, with streetcred.
• Seeding linkbait: giving push to your content. Leverage social media communities. Each has its own quirks, anomalies and rules.
• Link baiting utilities. WP plugins (SEO Title tag), WordPress Quiz, FireFox ext: SEO for FF.
• Fun campaigns: Gizoogle.com translates pages. counterfeitmini.com, mentosintern.com, angryleprechaun.com
• More viral content: personality tests, quizzes, widgets (swicki, SeenOn.com’s Grey’s Anatomy)
• People are more inclined to link to a wiki than to a single person’s definition. Consensus is valued.
• Wikis: contribute to Wikipedia, and other (NewPR, ShopWiki, Web 2.0 Expo…) create your own ( SEOGlossary.com )
• Any type of site can do RSS feeds, not just blogs: alerts, specials, events, arrivals, best sellers, forum posts…
• RSS: Unspamable. Propgate deep links to drive traffic and PageRank. Spammers will lift your content from RSS though.
• RSS: You are targeting linkerati and not your audience, but they pass link authority to you.
• “You should be fired if you do a marketing site without an RSS feed.” – Robert Scoble
• Genesis/Thesis: SEO friendly themes/frameworks for WordPress.
• Blogs are great for launching linkbait campaigns. Dark side: comment spam, splogs (spam blogs).
• Blogging for links: SEs/Google love blogs. Inherently link-rich (hat-tips, blogrolls, rss feeds, trackbacks, comments.
• E.g. Shoemoney.com: design business card competition for “getting bizcards for life”
• Get creative: give awards, badges; allow webmasters to republish your article; publish unique content: podcast, screencast, wikis
• Bake in “copy me” instruction into message. Meme example: TP folded in triangle at hotels-promise by cleaner of attention.
• Memes: “copy me” backed by threat and/or promise; chain letters, contest, surveys…
• More viral hooks: original research, CC licensed photo, free theme/plugin/software, start a replicable meme (buttons, tools…
• Hooks for viral content: tools, how-to, compilation, scoop, expose flaw/fraud, be contrarian, be humorous. 10 things I hate about.
• Link baiting: create something that is linkworthy, so people can’t help but link to it.
• LinkResearchTools.com does Link Intelligence: breakdown of links, anchor texts, MozRank scores, sources… filtering them…
• Focus on anchor text. Throwaway words (“click here”) bad for SEO, because of Google’s mis-association with site.
• Other tools: Raven, Advanced Link Manager, Back Link Analyzer
• Competitive Intelligence: not just for finding links.
• Finding Link Targets: look at competing sites, use tools mentioned, review links to your site -> get them optimized.
• Alternative to PageRank: SEOMOz’s MozRank and MozTrust from OpenSiteExplorer.org.
• Problems with PageRank Meter: months old, indicative old, imprecise, not =Google’s algorithm, doesn’t consider redirects.
• PageRank (entertainment only): Google Toolbar, 3rd party tools to it, historical PR from SEOMoz’s PR Checker tool
• Google’s link: operator shows sampling only; use webmaster tools for backlinks, after verification.
• Check link popularity: opensiteexplorer.org, majesticseo.com, linkresearchtools.com
• Links: great content, submit to good directories, work with partners, competitive intelligence, link bait, soc. media, blog, rss.
• Best SEO links: descriptive anchor text, passively obtained, not from same IP block, not all from same TLD (.com/org/edu)
• Best SEO links: topically relevant, one way, not in footer/sidebar, earned by merits, editorial endorsement, not crowded.
• PageRank is logarithmic in nature.higher PageRank may lead Googlebot to crawl more frequently, faster and deeper.
• Attending “Google in the Real World: How Links Boost Your Rankings.”