by Denise

I was only partially kidding when I tweeted about HTML the other night. It’s been a while since we posted, but it’s because we’ve been in crunch mode. The site unveiling is just around the corner! So much to do!

Ron, George and I have been hacking away steadily on the Drupal site. Of course, Ron’s got the heaviest load with all that’s left to develop. George is working on graphics and permissions for the different roles we’ll have, from registered users to editors. I’m putting together all the static pages like terms and conditions, about us and pages that link back to the core static pages.

This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered Drupal through my work. In Portland, I worked on a project led by Denver’s Deproduction called the Open Media Project. Denver had already developed a Drupal tool set that allows site users to register for classes, reserve equipment, submit video content online and vote for favorite shows. Through a complicated algorithm, these votes (and many other factors) determine the cable access line up. They’re a pretty rad group that won a Knight Foundation News Challenge grant to generalize their tool set enough for other community media centers to adopt.

Drupal is a pretty overwhelming CMS. It can only be hosted on select web hosters and has an intense installation process. I used to attend the Portland Drupal meetups (I love and miss that group!) in hopes that I could ease into it. I came to understand some of the jargon used in Drupal, but when it came to web coding, forget it.

I like to mull over how I’m from Silicon Valley with family members that are all based in different branches of technology and engineering. In that respect, you could think of me as the black sheep since I shied away from anything to do with tech and web. My jobs just keep bringing me right back. Outside of design tools, I’m only proficient in HTML, am familiar with CSS and know I have to pursue PHP. I’ve been trying to build up to Drupal for two years.

It’s great because I feel like I’m getting kicked in the pants with this project. There is no time to be intimidated anymore, and as one of the admins for the site, I’m getting accustomed to the menus and set up. I’m seeing first hand just what Drupal is capable of and interacting with it. Ron is definitely doing all the heavy lifting here (we owe him something like a thousand cupcakes at this point), but even with my limited skills in HTML, I’m able to contribute. Together, we’re working on site interactivity and realizing what can be done in phase one by the time of the beta launch and what has to be done early in phase two.

Any structural things have to be done in PHP. I can’t help with that, but even with HTML, it’s amazing how one of the easiest web languages can be so incredibly empowering.