The more websites I build, the more I’m convinced that there is no one right solution. I have just rebuilt a client site using Drupal. I am very impressed with it’s control and ease of updating. I am using the default theme because it seemed to be a good balance of taste and function. The thing that I’m learning that it’s a matter of figuring out what the site needs to do and then using the right tool for the job.

When I was a kid I spent a lot of time under the hood, and under, cars. One of the things my dad taught me was to use the right tool for the job. Don’t use a pair of pliers when a wrench was a better tool. I think that’s what I’m coming to on the web as well. There are some sites that simply need to be a set of static pages that need to be updated on occasion. There are other sites that, like my new client’s, that need to be updated daily or weekly. Those sites can be complicated when a content management system isn’t used. However, content management systems aren’t always the best option for every site. I think it takes an understanding of the content and how the website is going to be used to really be able to understand what tool should be used.

I am a big fan of making sites work across platforms and browsers. I’m also a very big fan of building compliant websites. CMS doesn’t allows conform to the latter as well as hand coding does, so there is a sacrifice to be made there. Of course, the other side of the coin is if a site works properly maybe the standards don’t matter. I don’t subscribe to that though, I think building valid markup and css is important not just as a theoretical exercise, but as a real issue that should be used. One of my major problems with ASP and .Net development for the web is that it tends to neglect any browser or platform that isn’t Internet Explorer or Windows. I think that’s fine if you don’t care, but I think you should. I think taking the time to focus on making sure that other platforms work and are compatible is an important part of being a PROFESSIONAL web developer. If you exclude platforms because you don’t know how or don’t take the time to check on other platforms you are not able to really ensure that the customer who is being served.

Again, this falls to using the right tools. Over the last few years, Microsoft has had a major impact on how websites and software was/is developed. However, I see that tide changing, even with Microsoft products, and it’s time to start focusing on the web as a platform and the computer as the portal to that platform. This should have been done 10 years ago, but Microsoft made that impossible with it’s bundling of IE with Windows and destruction of Netscape. Websites need to be like parking lots, and you shouldn’t have to own a certain car to park in them.

I spent some time tonight looking at the websites of competition for one of my clients. I was trying to get a feel for what makes this client different and how to make them stand out even more online. Something struck me while sorting around these sites.

Most people give no thought to what they are putting on their websites and where they are putting it. One of the sites has a lot of text on the main page, but it’s all GRAPHIC. There isn’t any real thought out process of what they want the website to do or be. Most of these would be better off being called an online brochure instead of “website.” I say this because there is no interaction with the user which is the direction the web is taking. These sites are simply to say “We have a website.” But no one understands that in this day and age, that is usually the first or second exposure to your company.

Your website should be an extension of your business. Visitors should visit your site and should get a real feel for what your company is and does. There should be the same feeling for people when they visit your physical location. They should get a sense for who you are and what you are. When I visit a site for a company that has all their text as graphics on the page, it tells me that there is no real substance to the site or to the people behind it. It’s almost like a facade to something that isn’t really what it pretends to be.

There are certainly some times when just a brochure online does the trick and is exactly what people need. That’s fine for those situations, however, the web is growing and expanding, and it’s become increasingly important to give people a REASON to visit your website. They need to be able to do things for themselves, to save them time. Static websites are great for this type of work if you have someone to can manage the code properly. However, the problem is that most people don’t have someone that can manage the code properly, so they end up just with a graphics heavy site that no one can do anything with.

Yes, websites should tell everyone about how great you are, but they should also function as an extension of your business to help you service your customers better, faster, and more efficiently.

Ok, so it’s Friday morning, the day of the Leopard launch. I’m all excited because I have made plans to put my boy in daycare so that I didn’t have to stand in line with him at the Apple store. I was planning on being at the Apple Store at noon to make sure I got a good spot in line. So I started out my morning getting some things organized for the upgrade. Sitting, as I usually do, with a cup of coffee and my MacBook Pro on the Griffin Elevator. You can see it coming can’t you? I start a copy process, and read for my coffee, keep in mind that this is my FIRST cup of coffee and I’m not quite there yet mentally or physically. As I’m bringing my cup to my pathetic face for a drink of sweet wake up juice, I hit the edge of my wireless keyboard and tip the cup and dump about 1/2 of my coffee out. about 7/8th of that goes directly into my wireless keyboard on my desktop, the other 1/8th goes and lands directly on the keyboard of my MacBook Pro.

I’m awake now! And I’m pissed as hell. This is something I NEVER DO! I never spill something like that. So now I’m shutting off my machine, turning it upside down on a towel to make sure the coffee doesn’t go any farther than the keyboard and I get a towel to help wipe up the mess. Of course the wireless keyboard is toast. I just throw it in the trash because I know it’s NEVER going to survive. So I get it cleaned up and power the machine back on to see if it’s working. Well it comes on fine and everything boots up okay. Well, then I try to type and it’s obvious the keyboard is screwed because keys are sticking and repeating. So I pack it up and make a trip to the Apple Store about 10:30 because I want to see if I can get it fixed and still upgrade. I was thinking that this is going to be money out of my pocket because there is no way Apple is going to replace it because I spilled coffee in it.

Well, much to my surprise Apple did replace the keyboard, that’s the upside, the downside is it took them 5 days to get a keyboard in to replace it with. I did end up getting the first copy of Leopard at The Woodlands Apple Store, I was first in line of course and I bought an iSkin for my MacBook Pro’s keyboard to boot.

My leopard upgrade did not go quite like I had planned. I was going to do a wipe and start over with my machine, but I decided to go the upgrade route and just not loose every thing. Well, that didn’t work out quite like I had planned. The install wouldn’t proceed and gave me some errors with the hard drive that I had to wipe out the entire partition and recreate it before it would proceed.

I did backup my home directory and my library directory from Tiger on a backup drive, but that didn’t go well either. My problem started when there was a problem with the drive that nothing seemed to be able to fix. The Leopard Install DVD’s copy of Disk Utility would see the physical drive but not the partition on the disk, even though the partition would boot. I tried to repair it with both Tiger’s disk utility (It froze up my system), and also using TechTools Pro. TechTools Pro said that it found errors and after a few runs it fixed it. Partition still booted, but Leopard wouldn’t install, so I decided to just wipe it and start over. I ended up not only having to erase the partition but delete and recreate it entirely before Leopard would proceed. Once I did that, it worked fine.

I’ve been using iGTD and iCal as my productive workflow for about a month now. I really like it and I don’t know if I’m getting more done or not, but at least I feel like I know what I NEED to do. Well, something happened on the way to the forum, as they say, and during the Leopard upgrade .Mac quit syncing properly. The funny things is that Keychain worked fine, but it looks, at least from here, that Bookmarks, Calendars and Contacts are broken. I got some of it back because of my backups, but I still haven’t gotten my calendars or bookmarks back, even though I know the bookmarks are still on the server. There have been notes on the .Mac server for days about there being a problem with Syncing, and now it’s “offline” for maintenance. I’m hoping it comes back soon, it’s making me a bit batty not having my calendars.

Other than a few quirks here and there, things that I find mildly annoying but nothing more, Leopard is fantastic. I am not upset about upgrading or anything and everything seems to work well. I do have to say that programs launch FAST. Not just Apple applications either, EVERYTHING seems peppier, but some of that could be from a clean install of the OS as much as anything else.

I know there have been a lot of people who have complained about the Dock and the Menu Bar. I think they are just being overly picky. I think they look great. The Dock is a little odd to get used to because of the new “Lights” under running applications, but as with anything there is an adjustment period that takes some getting used to and I’m starting to adjust.

I already have a favorite new feature. Finder. No, not Coverflow or Quicklook, but the multithreaded Finder. It should have been this way all along, but I’m not complaining now that we have it. File operations are much faster and more responsive and I have less Finder BeachBalls than before.

Still have to upgrade the Mini, Mom’s and Grandmother’s machines to Leopard, maybe I can do that next week sometime.

As always, I welcome your comments.