Content systems: Joomla! vs. Drupal
October 4, 2007
Since 1991 I’ve been the list owner / moderator of Milton-L, a discussion list on the life, literature and times of the poet John Milton. In 1994 I created The Milton-L Home Page as a support site for the discussion list.
I’m now ready to take the web site to the next level, allowing the community of Milton scholars to contribute events, publication notices and more to the site. It’s my hope that the site will become as useful as the discussion list has been.
The current site is on a static (i.e. non-cgi enabled) web server. This server is slated for some big changes and I know the web address for the site is going to change. A few months back I purchased the johnmilton.org domain, and I plan to use this domain for the new site.
When I first started with hosted servers, I looked at several of the open source content management systems. I settled on Joomla! because both the front end and back end were intelligible not only to me but to the community that will use the site. I also liked the theme templates that are available.
In the back of my mind, though, Drupal has always been lurking as the best solution. D’Arcy loves it. NMC switched to it. It seems infinitely configurable, but that makes it seem infinitely complex, to me and the community. Unless I could wrap my brain around it all and architect the site well.
The most recent upgrade of Joomla! broke both of the installations I was using. Users can no longer log in on the front end. So now I’m really looking at Drupal. Here are my questions:
- What’s the state of spam and spam protection for Drupal? Is there a Spam Karma 2 equivalent to keep me safe with a minimum of effort? I plan to create user roles carefully, but I’d love to have a good security system in place.
- What are the best plug-in modules for Drupal? I’m already looking at the Events module, since I need to have that kind of content on my site. But what are the best plug ins overall? I’ve always appreciated blog entries listing WordPress plug ins - love to see a Drupal list too.
- Do you have any theme recommendations? I want to keep things simple, but Drupal’s default themes are a little plain.
- Other than Drupal.org, what are some good web sites for Drupal admins to follow?
- What am I not asking that I should?
Technorati Tags: blog, drupal, humanities, JohnMilton, learning, Milton, Joomla!, socialsoftware, teaching, web, WordPress
Social Networking and Network Stress
July 2, 2007
NetworkWorld has a cover story on the stress that social networking sites like MySpace put on DNS servers. Pages on MySpace point to content all over the internet, causing browsers to perform dozens, sometimes hundreds of DNS lookups per page. That combined with the popularity of social networking sites has threatened the performance of DNS servers. Some, including the Department of Defense, have blocked access to these sites.
The article includes comments from Travis Berkley, supervisor of LAN support services at the University of Kansas. Faculty, staff and students generate an average of 20,000 visits a day. Kansas didn’t have to update their DNS servers, though. They’re running BIND version 9 software, which apparently handles the load comfortably. The article also notes that Kansas limits how much internet bandwidth students can consume from their rooms, which probably also helps. Does limiting bandwidth reduce the number of DNS lookups? Other than slowing the rate at which pages are loading, I would think this would be true only if the limited bandwidth caused students to use the internet less.
The challenge is that more social networking sites are coming, many integrating new kinds of media. Just yesterday I received an invite from Intellagirl (thanks!) to Pownce, yet another social networking site. Pownce is like Twitter: you create a network of friends, all of whom can read and respond to short messages, or microcontent as Bryan Alexander calls it. Twitter restricts you to 140 characters; I’ve never made use of TinyURL until I met Twitter. Pownce seems to allow longer messages. They also allow for other types of microcontent, including links, events and files.
I’m waiting for my social network to sign up for Pownce. At this moment I have fewer than five friends there, and that’s not enough to sustain conversation. If you’d like an invite to Pownce, let me know and I’ll send an invite so long as I have any left.
One annoying bit about Pownce is the inline advertising. Pownce inserts advertising messages at random points in your message stream. Not good. I can pay $20/year to make the ads stop, but unless my social network decides to use Pownce over Twitter, I’m more likely to abandon Pownce.
Another bit about Pownce that I’m not crazy about is the Pownce client. They’ve built an application to deliver Pownce content to my desktop, but it runs on a new Adobe technology called AIR. I don’t know why I had to install the AIR framework to get my Pownce content, but the real issue is that Pownce doesn’t seem to be opening their APIs. That means there won’t be any innovation around the site other than what the company comes up with itself.
Hopefully they’ll get smart and open up their APIs. In the meantime I’m keeping an eye open, hoping to be impressed, but ready to walk away if it doesn’t tip.
Technorati Tags: Pownce, social software, socialsoftware, technology, Twitter, web
Firefox to WordPress - Deepest Sender
March 18, 2007
If you can read this, I’ve got a recommendation for you.
I’m always looking for an easier way for faculty and students to blog. Blojsom’s interface is difficult for anyone who doesn’t know HTML. WordPress has a pretty easy interface but I’m always looking for another, easier way.
I’ve purchased ecto for my Mac. It’s a nice tool for writing and managing blog posts. It’s what I use on those all-too-rare occasions that I find the time to blog. It’s a simple WYSIWYG interface for editing, and it works well with images.
Yesterday I decided to search through Firefox extensions and I came across Deepest Sender. As a free extension, the price is right and the tool is cross platform (though I admit I haven’t installed it on my tablet yet).
It works with most API-enabled blogs, has a simple WYSIWYG editing interface, and apparently knows how to handle music files. I just went through my preferences and saw options (turned off by default) to automatically detect music. So it’s possible that Deepest Sender can handle podcasts.
In addition to the Normal editing tab, there’s a Source tab where I can easily muck around with the code and a Preview tab. I log in before editing and all of my blog categories are in a drop down box in the upper right corner. I can post as a draft or make the post live right away.
What I don’t see is anything that supports tagging. And I didn’t think there was a way to see what’s been posted to my site but I’m wrong - there is a Post History option in the File menu.
Deepest Sender has just made it to the top of my list as an entry-level blog editing tool for faculty and students. It gets them to use Firefox and makes posting most entries easy.
Futurist: To fix education, think Web 2.0
December 4, 2006
C|net posted a story on Friday of a talk that John Seely Brown gave at MIT. Brown suggests that Universities and employers who want to improve engineering education should consider a Web 2.0 approach to changing the way they teach.
Brown points out that the current generation of students learns more through interaction - experiential and social - than through standard lecture experiences. It’s also helpful to ground learning in the real world: have architecture students do their work in public settings.
Of course as you discover technology that can transform the learning process, it means you’re going to have to adapt your teaching to use the technology effectively. Too often we start with new software, hardware or web service by using it while we do what we’ve always done. This is rarely effective.
For example, if you are interested in virtual worlds, like Second Life or Croquet, you shouldn’t be thinking about having your avatar stand up in front of a virtual classroom full of other avatars for a standard lecture. An immersive multimedia environment is magic, but you’ve got to use the magic. Instead of a standard lecture, think about the possibilities for interactions that aren’t possible in the real world. Gardner has suggested that he’d like to have students stage a period Shakespeare production in a virtual world. Perhaps in Second Life or in Arden such a thing would be possible. Some students would build the stage, others could create the costumes, while others script avatars and perform the different characters. Add someone else using their in-world camera could capture the performance creating machinma (a movie created in a virtual world). Over time you could build a library of these perfomances.Â
That’s the kind of experience that technology can bring, and teaching should change to take advantage of the opportunities for active learning, with students building their understanding of a subject rather than waiting passively to be filled with knowledge.
Technorati Tags: learning, SecondLife, teaching, virtualworlds, Web 2.0
Shelfari
November 4, 2006
About a week ago Gardner suggested Jim Groom’s blog, bavatuesdays, and it’s already paid off. Jim mentions yet another Web 2.0 site, Shelfari. You can build your library collection, rate and comment on your books, see what others have said about books in your collection, and keep up with your friends’ reading lists. There are links to Amazon in case you see something you’d like to buy.
I’m just getting started with the service but I connected with the idea of this site immediately and I look forward to connecting with other people’s libraries.
Technorati Tags: reading, Web 2.0
EDUCAUSE 2006 - Social Software, Teaching and Learning
October 10, 2006
For my pre-conference seminar I chose to attend Bryan Alexander and Barbara Ganley’s seminar on social software, teaching and learning. I’ve spoken with Bryan about social software, and seen him present at NLII (now ELI), but I’ve never had the chance to attend any of his workshops.
The seminar has a web site where all of the materials for the class have been placed.
Barbara began by grounding the conversation in teaching and learning - this is the focus of today’s seminar. She reminded us that Dewey said that learning is a social activity. She suggests that we consider the learner as a node in a network. Doing the discipline unites learning the discipline and learning new literacies. Social software puts the students in the center; the dynamic of the class changes.
Bryan pointed out that students have used the technology but have not reflected on the implications and possibilities about the software. He described blogs as blobs of microcontent presented in reverse chronological order. Blogs are not new, they are old, established and huge in size. Technorati says there are 50 million blogs in the world. Even if you doubt the specific number, there are a lot of blogs.
Bryan talked about community blogs, specifically ErieBlogs.com, where everyone in the community can blog. There’s even competition between the community blog site and the local newspaper. Baghdad Burning blogs the war in progress - something unparalleled in history.
Warblogs: Blogs devoted to a conflict. The Command Post is an example of this. A Blog Carnival is a blog post that aggregates various blog posts on a specific topic.
Barbara suggests that a blogger starts writing, but then communities form around that person, connecting as nodes in a network. If one blogger vanishes from such a network, the network can survive.
Bryan showed a Middlebury blog that aggregates blog posts from Middlebury students studying abroad. Barbara says blogs are about conversation, reflection and linking.
What about blogs as a permanent record of someone’s mistakes? Barbara says that education is a cycle of disruption and repair, not some neat and tidy experience with no errors. Class-based blogs are webbed, with students commenting and reflecting. Thought evolves over the course of the class and it’s good for the blog to record that progress.
Once the faculty posts a comment to a blog, it effectively ends conversation. So Barbara holds off on posting comments so she can let the students build the conversation themselves.
Blogging allows for informal learning to merge with formal learning.
My note-taking was poorer this afternoon:
Wikipedia as a source: faculty generally don’t accept encyclopedia entries as sources in research. Wikipedia is a starting point, not a destination.
Barbara has the students create their own guide to using the wiki. She also finds PBWiki to have very easy templates.
Unless someone starts a wiki page, it’s very hard for others to start.
Technorati Tags: blogging, EDUCAUSE2006, learning, E06SEM02F, social software, teaching, wikis
The Changing Face of University Websites
August 29, 2006
Maish Nichani has posted an article, “The Changing Face of University Websites“. The article takes a positive view of the latest redesigns coming from many institutions. Maish approaches the new designs from the positive viewpoint that institutions in this generation of web site redesign are adhering to web standards much more than before. XHTML and CSS are being widely adopted, information architecture is organizing the site and making it easier to access content, and home pages are “also showing a common structure”. RSS is being used, and branding is being applied more consistently throughout sites.
All of this is encouraging as Richmond looks to create the next generation of its web site. We’ve recently reorganized the support structure for the web and made plans to implement a new CMS. Once we have our new Web Services department up and running, I hope to see Richmond’s site come together according to many of the principles Maish outlines in his post.
Technorati Tags: standards, web
Keeping Spammers at Bay
February 11, 2006
One of the nice features about blojsom is its ability to ping blog notification services. It’s a nice way for others to know I’m out here in the .edu blog world. Unfortunately spammers watch those services as a means of finding more places to spam.
Over the last month or so the comments on my blog started being spam. I found a few ways of combatting the spam, but the spam bots just got smarter and smarter. Things finally came to a head when all of my blog entries were getting spam comments at the rate of one comment per blog post every twelve hours.
Luckily there’s a plugin for blojsom that can help. Now the bots have to do a little math or their comments will be rejected. I don’t doubt that they’ll catch up some time soon, but for now this seems to be an effective way to keep them off my blog.
If anyone here at Richmond has blojsom comment spam, please feel free to contact me - I can tell you how I set up the plug in.
Visions of Science Photographic Awards
October 22, 2005
As featured on /. - The Novartis and Daily Telegraph Visions of Science Photographic Awards for 2005 have been announced. I always enjoy browsing through the award winners of contests like this - the images are always interesting.
I think I’m drawn to these kinds of events because they represent that cross-over between science and art. Be sure to take a look at the winner of the Art Meets Science Award - a picture of a barn as it looks to a migrane sufferer. If that’s what things look like when you have a migrane I am very happy not to have that affliction in my life (I do remember once when Jean was suffering a migrane and made me turn off a Mozart recording - she was seeing the music.
Of course I wish they made the images available in larger resolutions - some of them would be amazing desktop backgrounds - but I understand why they would only want to put lower resolution versions of the images on their site
Hey You - Get Off On My Cloud
September 2, 2005
Okay. Entry two and Sue has guided me through the tricky world of adding a cloud to my blog. Not sure if I like it, but I thought I’d give it a whirl.
If you haven’t played with clouds before, it’s the collection of odd-sized words in the lower right-hand corner of the page. Each time I make an entry I’ll add some tags. Those tags are added to the cloud and the more I use those tags, the larger the tag will appear in the cloud. So it’s a quick way to see what I’m talking about most. Get it?
It may be too jazzy for me in the long run. But it’s worth trying out for now.
