evan's blog

Having just returned last week from a trip to the annual North American DrupalCon in Denver, I wanted to reflect a bit on the importance of the events of the week. First of all, I'm grateful to MCN for sending Joe Stewart and me to the conference for yet another opportunity to further our education and network amongst our peers. This was my second DrupalCon and Joe's third, and it seems to get better every year.

Every industry has its buzz words, and the web is not immune.

I recently published an article on my personal blog about using AJAX/AHAH in Drupal, and I thought I might reference it here, just in case it helps point anyone in the right direction. For the non-developer audience, the functionality I'm referring to has been widely popularized around the internet and is what allows you to create and retrieve content on a webpage without having to refresh it (think posting a Facebook status or Tweet).

My dad had an unusually good knack for building and fixing things. When I was a kid, we would regularly take trips down to our unfinished basement to work on a project - one of the most common being readying the red Snapper lawn mower for another summer voyage. Needless to say, he was the head mechanic and I was the assistant. It never ceased to amaze me what he could accomplish in a short amount of time with what seemed like an endless assortment of tools and an even more intimidating selection of components and parts.

The other day, I got a call from a client with a nearly decade-old static HTML website asking why he pays for monthly hosting.  I believe his words were, "I pay you every month, and I'm not getting anything out of it."   In trying to sympathize with his situation, I of course got to thinking about what it means to be a website owner.  Who needs a website?  The general opinion these days is that everyone does, at least every business.  And of course designing for the web is my livelihood, so you would think I'd naturally agree - right?