Willy Dobbe - money

ProjectPAAS

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 19:53:41 +0000

A couple of weeks ago we launched the website of a service we have been working on hard for over half a year. The project started as a SAAS about performance and hence the internal project name was “ProjectPAAS”. As it goes with internal project names, it became the name of the service it self.

12 seconds start now

I still have problems explaining what the service is doing in an elevator pitch. But basicaly one installs a module on a to be tested staging site from d.o with the funky URL /project/paas, configures the service on the portal of projectpaas.com and then wait an hour or two. We start a service to measure your site from the outside and from the inside, analyse the data, make a report and when you check your mail you get an in depth report on all the elements of the chain that are relevant to the performance of the website.

We measure from one or more selectable (EC2) locations in the world with over 150 metrics and we only report on real data, no yslow wisdom. We know what influence speed, we see how it is configured at your site (with the module or from the outisde) and we simulate to find the the optimal value would be for your use case.

The cliché for example that one needs parallel download (images[1-4].example.com) to bypass the maximumum connection a browser can have to a host, is just that, a cliché. When one takes DNS lookup,TCP slow start and the sliding window in to account, for certain usecase, having images[x].example.com might actually be slower. So we are opinionated, we measure, we analyse, we report, you gain speed.

Easteregg

I really like retro future so we used this for a theme around the site and facebook. But since easter (Dutch "pasen" is coming up,
do check the projectpaas.com website, find the easteregg and twitter about it. :-)

This posting isn't as much about the service of ProjectPAAS as it is about why we made the service. To share our experience and to get feedback from you. There are two reasons we made it, one is internally driven and one is externally.

The internal reason is that we have been building some of the most visited sites and webapps in Drupal in the Netherlands. So after some time we got good at performance, we understood what to do and what not to do for the complete stack of elements that define speed, HTML, CSS, Linux, Apache, MySQL and yes, Drupal. Word got out that we were good and siteowners that have been building their site at another company, came to us for advice on how to get more speed in their site.
Once we had done a dozen of these reports, we wanted to make the reports more easily accessible for the site owners and website builders. This is part of why westarted the Performance Reporting

Land here

The external reason might be more interesting for you. We made the SAAS because we think that the CMS landscape will change and our business will change.

The landscape will change. 10 years ago everybody had his/her own CMS, there were more CMS-es then websites it seemed. 5 yeas ago it was clear who were going to be the winners in the consolidation, 80% of the proprietary "solutions" were gone and open source was no longer a dirty word in enterprises. Within the open CMS-es, the global top 5 was visible though especially in Europe there were still many local open source CMS-es. This consolidation perse was good open source and especially for Drupal shops.

However, the market won't stop here. Most of the Drupal websites are not complex, they don't have any connections to backend systems, less than 10k pageviews per day and are relatively expensive to build and most of all expensive to maintain. Here is the business case for open source SAAS, solutions based on open source software like Aqcuia and Wordpress.com offer. These solutions with standard modules and a customisable template is good enough right now for 20% of the Drupal sites out there and will cost a fraction of what building it "by hand" will cost.

The users of these open source SAAS hosting solutions will only grow. Good for the parties offering these services, bad for the Drupal shops that have been building relatively simple portfolio sites. By itself, this trend might have a big impact those coding Drupal core, modules or working in for example the security team. This is not meant in a bad way, but with most of the sites going towards a smaler group of SAAS companies, the number of "independent" individuals adding to core or writing modules might actually get lower, they might have another itch. It will be very interesting to see how this will develop, I might be completely wrong here.

Performance takes time

Traditionally most Drupal shops do projects, do maintenance and do consulting. Some have found a nice niche, a place geographically apart, a specific vertical or a certain service like migration from another CMS. However, most Drupal shops build relatively simple websites for SOHO plus. I know there are many shops that work for high end enterprises. But not all the 280.000 Drupal sites fit in the Alexa top 100.000. So I do think that if you are a Drupal shop, you have to find your sweet spot the next couple of month. On the one hand we have operational excellence (a SAAS to host sites like gardens or a service like ProjectPAAS itself) and on the other hand customer intimacy (the complex sites with lots of integration with backend systems and complex workflow). There might be space between these two, but the portfolio site area will get very crowded and Drupal will not be the best tool to serve this in my opinion. This is part of the reason why we build our first SAAS around a product we understand and is close to our core business. We are already planning next services that might still be build in Drupal but will target a broader audience.

For the moment, if you are intersted in our product, dont be shy and talk to us on twitter or faces us. Potential resellers or users are welcome to fill out our form. We really do hope that our product can help you build faster websites and thereby push Drupal even more ahead of the curve.

Frontend United, From Amsterdam to London

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 15:46:14 +0000

Last year, I was one of the coorganizers of Frontend United In Amsterdam, The Netherlands. I have organized dozen of events, DrupalCons, DrupalJams, DrupalCamps totaling a dozen of events. The best and most funny to organize of them all however was the Frontend United conference with good friends Jesper, Marek, Morten, Philippe and angel Isabelle. The weekly conference calls quickly became a selfhelp group and the best comedy channel available.

The fun we had organizing the event, clearly payed off and turned the event in to the best event I ever attended. Mostly because Fronten United is different. We have some rules to live by and these rules help us organize it and give the best value possible to the attendees. In fact, we try to be for Drupal what TED is for technology! Our rules are simple

Outside in, not inside out
Attendees first, not the sponsors (or mobile :-)
Grow horizontally, not vertically
Maximum value for attendees
Nerds rule

These are simple rules, resulting in a great conference. Outside in means we will look at technology, design. The unimportant stuff and then but only then Drupal. We look at speakers who are architects, painters, people whose actions or ideas are completely irrelevant for Drupals community in the narrow sense but if mapped on our community, code or license of great influence. We value attendees above sponsors. We do *heart* our sponsors, they are the best. But in the end the sponsors and the organizers work for the attendees, not the other way around. We will never do a sponsored talk, an opening by a sponsor or a case-study, mixing content and sponsors is the best way to kill a brand in our opinion. We believe in growth, but not that a number like “attendees” has anything to do with growth. We aim at 250 people max per conference and grow in quality from there. We will never have 2.000 attendees but will have the best sessions available. As for the nerds part, the group photo was taken at 13:37 time.

We succeed in all of these rules last year. All but one. Despite the fact that one sponsor went belly up and did not pay our fiscal agency, the Drupal Association (thanks!), we still made money. And thereby did not give the maximum value for our attendees.

Or did we? If you look at this blog by friend Baris Frontend-United was awesome or at the blog of the king it looks we succeeed in givin the attendees the best con ever! It was great to hear jan Willem Tulp talk about data visualization and the story of how Jeroen Wijering sold his a license for his video player to YouTube for $25 is still great to hear. No matter what your question was (“$25 per server? Client? Month?”) his answer would be $25.

Here are some snapshots of the money we made with sales and the hat-round, the venue “Pakhuis de Zwijger”, the banner with the sponsors, the excellent t-shirt with the infamous astronaut and the drinking venue with the Druplicon as a logo.

So far for 2012. On with 2013. With the help of a great all-female team in the UK, we are pulling the best Drupal conference of once again, backed by the Drupal Association (thanks), in London, 13 and 14 of April, in Cargo. Ticket sales will start shortly, great keynote speakers are already lined up but we need you as a speaker and as a sponsor! So please earmark the date in your agenda, think about an inspiring talk Frontend related and download the attached sponsor brochure. And mail we if you are interested in sponsoring, bert AT boerland DOT com.

Now lets rock London!

Steve Jobs Lost Interview 1990 - A must watch for any entreprenuer

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 11:06:11 +0000

Steve Jobs Lost Interview 1990 - A must watch for any entreprenuer. And since everyone should be an entrepeneur, for everyone :-)

Steve Jobs is a perfect icon for the the modern entrepreneur. A orphan from middle class America living in Silicon Valley becomes a global icon.

De Stentor.nl en bannerblockers, geen goede combinatie :-)

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 09:31:18 +0000

Ik weet niet of het express is of niet. Maar de DIV (zeg maar het kadopapier rondom de content) van denieuwe website van de Stentor is zo gekozen, dat banner blockers (links chrome met een default bannerblocker) de content blokken.

Rechts in een default safari zonder bannerblockers. Zie zelf op destentor.nl

Dit is OF heel slim (als je website wilt zien moet je bannerblocker uitzetten / gerconfigureren / site whitelisten) OF heel dom en website bouwer heeft geen bannerblocker :-)

(en ja, ik heb veel tabs open)

Gesloten overheden

Thu, 19 May 2011 19:34:47 +0000

Raar om te zien. In een wereld die gaat naar openheid in data, applicatie en gebruik. Waar overheden open data ontdekken en open standaarden. Daar trappen inkopers van gemeenten in enorme dikke FUD die op de stoep ligt en vegen ze hun voet met hun mond schoon. Leest u even mee:

Wij werken nog vaak met gesloten standaarden, wat vooral te maken heeft met de applicaties die we gebruiken. Het is belangrijk dat er ondersteuning kan worden geboden. Daarom kiezen wij nog weinig voor open standaarden. Ik ga voor zekerheid.”

gemeente.nu

Jawel, het is 2011. Iedereen weet wat de exit kosten van proprietary software zijn. Wat de prietpraat proprietary projecten echt zijn. Iedereen kent de Motie Vendrik van bijna 10 jaar geleden waar duidelijke uitspraken over open source in staat. Maar in het noorden (let wel, Ich bin ein Groninger) gaat het licht nog niet op bij GemCC.nl.

Verder staat het vol met inkopers logica. Inkoop afdelingen zijn zo groot geworden dat ze denken dat ze profit centra zijn geworden. Waar doelstellingen zijn om 5% van elk contract af te krijgen zodat de inkoop afdeling "geld verdiend" (gok eens wat verkopers gaan doen?).

Waar geld besparen in plaats van geld verdienen de boventoon voert. Zoals: "Er werd bijvoorbeeld vrij automatisch gekozen voor de aankoop van laptops, terwijl pc’s goedkoper zijn.". Typische inkoop logica. Niet kijkend naar het gebruik, het *ahum* "Nieuwe werken" of de mogelijkheden maar naar 300 euro inkoop verschil gedeeld door 36 maanden afschrijving; een tientje per maand...

Ik ben voor samenwerkende overheden, tegen versplintering. Ik ben voor goed omgaan met gemeenschapsgeld. Maar logica als trots zijn op het gebruik van gesloten standaarden en FUD nonsense als "ondersteuning" niet op open standaarden / software, dat stuit me tegen de borst en ik kan me niet indenken dat iemand dat mag zeggen bij mijn overheid.

Het noorderlicht dooft langzaam,
de tijd staat stil in mijn geboortestreek,
wil de laatste Groninger de nachtkaars uitkussen....

Switched over to Linode

Mon, 16 May 2011 15:05:59 +0000

I have been hosting my domains at home ever since 2000 or so. I even did my own mail server in 1998 at home when I first got TCP/IP via cable, but with the amount of spam I get, that was no fun. Hosting at home is no fun. The temperature of my box goes through the roof on a hot day, when my girly is rewiring the electricity my host goes down and the boxes are very noisy.

So after a decade of hosting at home, time for change. Due to Ber Kessels advice, I now host at Linode. It rocks!

I still maintain the box myself with full root access, but there are so many nice addons. I have for example TTY / console access on a seperate IP address, lots of MRTG stats and a very good documentation. Setting up a Drupal website for example can be donme with an imeg (Ubuntu, PHP, Apache, MySQL, all in one image) and you can "burn" your own images.

The only drawback? On the iPhone app you can reboot your system with one click. Not good in combination with kids :-)

Shamless plug, if you want a Linode account as well, use my referral code

Happy b-day d dot o

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 17:54:49 +0000

Ten years ago. A decade. Ten years ago I registered drupal.org and gave the domain after a couple of days to Dries. I can still remember choosing between .com (more popular, even then) and .org and decided to register the later. I found it a better fit for the community. If I wasn't so cheap, I would have registered both but the domainname claiming was not where it is today. In the end, everything went well and drupal.com was donated as well.

Now d dot o has a pagerank of 9, many subdomains, an own URL shorter; dgo.to and there are thousands of domainnames -most not complying with the trademark policy- with Drupal.

Ten years ago. A decade. I think someday someone will study the history of our community in an academic way. I also think that we should document our own past; "Project Drupast, documenting the future that was". As an open source community, much of our activity has been very well preserved, in code, documentation and on post on d.o itself. A bit of history can be found on the history page. But it doesnt do justice to our rich culture of ten years rocking the web. So take a look at a small timeline I started on tiki-toki. I know that with drupal core, cck, views, the timeline module and lots of templating, this could be done in Drupal as well and would welcome any initiative like that for "project Drupast". But untill that day, I would like to gather a couple of people who would want to help me putting the most important dates in this timeline. So if I know you, trust you, please contact me to get Drupast kicking like d.o does.

Ten years ago, I wrote Dries "Have fun with the new domainname". He did. We did. d.o rocks!

Hoe ik Twitter uitvond....

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 10:08:02 +0000

Hoe ik twitter uitvond. Linkbait titel maar wil verhaal er achter vertellen.

Elk congres waar ik kom, elke klant die ik zie, hoor ik wel een verhaal over hoe iemand een geweldige bestaande dienst 10 jaar eerder heeft uitgevonden. Dus over hoe iemand 8 jaar geleden foursquare verzon "maar te vroeg was". Of over hoe iemand twitter eigenlijk gemaakt had, maar de markt nog niet rijp is. Ook ik, ik heb het internet nog niet uitgevonden, maar wel twitter.

In 2001 ging ik naar een klant die actief was op het gebied van "portal" en mobiel integratie en legde hem voor hoe korte status meldingen verstuurd zouden kunnen worden via mobiel en getoond op "de portal". In 2002 besloot ik -toen klant niet op in ging- het te bloggen, zie deze posting:

Creeren een blog space voor end users of een connectie naar een blog space en maak het mogelijk dat al die tieners met hun mobiel via sms hun blog live in de klas kunnen updaten (ik heb duits. en de leraar stinkt uit zijn mond. nou, doei!).

Het voorbeeld ("de leraar stinkt uit zijn mond") maakt dat iedereen er wel de kwaliteit van Tweets in dit voorbeeld kan zien :-) In 2003 schreef ik er nogmaals over. In 2003 bestond twitter nog niet, maar werd er al wel met "microblogging" geexperimenteerd.

Goede ideeen worden op heel veel plekken ter gelijke tijd uitgevonden. Sterker nog, het is mijn stelling dat als je iets uitvindt wat niet bestaat in een vorm, dat je je zorgen moet maken. Maar het gaat niet om het bedenken van iets nieuws, dat is eenvoudig. Ik en vele anderen worden in hun hoofd gehinderd door het hebben van duizenden ideee-en. Maar de hinder is dat we er niets mee doen, omdat het volgende idee er aan komt. Het gaat er om dat je het ook daadwerkelijk bouwt en daadwerkelijk tot succes kan maken. De rest is borrel praat.

En meer dan dat, het gaat er om dat je iets kan bouwen wat op meer en andere manieren gebruikt kan worden. In een goed boek kan je meer of iets anders lezen dan de auteur voor ogen had. In een slcht boek volg je de gedachtes van de auteur.

In een goede tool kan je op andere manieren gebruik maken van de functionaliteit, anders dan dat de bouwer voor ogen had. In een slecht tool, doe je wat anderen doen. Juist het aanpassen van de bouwer van de tool naar de nieuwe mogelijkheden, is de kracht van de tool en de bouwer. Twitter heeft vele vormen gekend voordat ze is geworden wat ze nu is, omdat mensen het anders gebruikte dan de bouwers hadden bedacht. Hashtags, RT's maar ook hoe mobiel / SMS en bijvoorbeeld chat integratie werkte, was vroeger heel anders op twitter.

Mijn punt is niet dat ik twitter uitvond. Iedereen weet dat Al Gore twitter heeft uitgevonden. Maar wel:

Focus is de sleutel, leveren is goud. Het gaat om uitvoering: een goede uitvoering van een slecht idee kan nog steeds succesvol zijn. Geen uitvoering van een goed idee niet. Goede ideeen zullen altijd op verschillende plaatsen door vele mensen worden verzonnen. Het verschil tussen een goed idee en een goede implementatie is uitvoering en het claimen van een succesvolle uitvoering waar men (ja, ook ik) is blijven steken in een goed idee, is prietpraat
Succes heeft vele vaders, mislukking is een wees. Zelden horen je mensen zeggen dat ze orkut, myspace, plurk, buzz of een andere dienst met potentieel die het niet heeft gehaald hebben uitgevonden. Toch hebben ze het tijdens de opstart fase van plurk, myspace, orkut, buzz wel degelijk gezegd, maar de prietpraat verstomde.

Ik? Ik ga denk ik het internet maar eens uitvinden. To snel op een congres.

This is Drupal's next version!

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 21:04:51 +0000

You are looking at Drupal's next release, with the internal name D7A4. It was found lost in a bar in Antwerp, Belgium. Camouflaged to look like an ordinary Drupal 6 on an USB stick. We got it. We disassembled it. It's the real thing, and here are all the details.

While Drupal may tinker with the final packaging and design of the award winning CMS, it's clear that the features in this lost-and-found next-generation Drupal version is drastically new and drastically different from what came before. Here's the detailed list of our findings:
What's new

Better security
Usability enhancements
database abstraction layer
Better Documentation in core
Several Performance Improvements Implemented
Beter themes
Better file handeling
Better image handling
Custom fields

What's changed

Color module now usable by themes other than Garland.
Usability improvements including re-weightable roles and saner Forum module defaults.
A variety of optimizations made to data import-related functions to make migrations faster.
Lots of previously missing documentation for hooks has now been documented. Hooray!
Increased test coverage, particularly core Tokens.
Lots of smaller bug fixes, security patches, and improvements.

How it was lost

Dries Buytaert—a PhD in Computer Science and Engineering graduate of the University of Ghent and talented amateur photographer—is a Drupal Software Engineer working on the core Drupal Software, the little program that enables communities to florish. A dream job for a talented engineer like Buytaert, a PHP fan who always wanted to meet Rasmus Lerdorf.
On the night of April 27, he was enjoying the fine local ales at a pub, a nice Belgian beer garden, in Antwerp. He was happy. The place was great. The beer was excellent. "I underestimated how good Belgian beer is," he blogged on his next-generation CMS he was testing on the field, cleverly disguised. It was his last blog post update on the secret Drupal version. It was the last time he ever saw the USB stick, right before he abandoned it on bar stool, leaving to go home.

The Aftermath

Weeks later, Boerland.com got it for $5,000 in cash. At the time, we didn't know if it was the real thing or not. It didn't even get past the Druplicon installer screen. Once we saw it inside and out, however, there was no doubt about it. It was the real thing, so we started to work on documenting it before returning it to Buytaert. We had the software, but we didn't know the owner. Later, we learnt about this story, but we didn't know for sure it was Buytaert's USB stick until today, when we contacted him via his phone.

Dries Buytaert: Hello?
Bert Boerland: Is this Dries?
Dries Buytaert: Yeah.
B: Hi, this is Bert Boerland from boerland.com.
D: Hey!
B: You work at Drupal software, right?
D: Um, I mean I can't really talk too much right now.
B: I understand. We have a device, and we think that maybe you misplaced it at a bar, and we would like to give it back.
D: Yeah, I forwarded your email [asking him if it was his USB stick], someone should be contacting you.
B: OK.
D: Can I send this phone number along?
B: [Contact information]

He sounded tired and broken. But at least he's alive, and apparently may still be working with Drupal software—as he should be. After all, it's just a stupid USB stick and mistakes can happen to everyone. The only real mistake would be to fire Dries in the name of Drupal's legendary impenetrable security, breached by the power of Belgian beer and one single human error.

What does it mean for you

After consulting our lawyers, we decided to test the next version o this Drupal CMS and to offer a free download link so you can enjoy the works of this Drupal engineer as well. This so you can get familiar with the new slick industrial interface and the new API's. We higly encourage you to download the software and help test drive it.

And for those not getting satire, please read this bad checkbook journalism

Sponsor DrupalCon Paris 09 (DOP did, and so should you!)

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:44:45 +0000

In case you are going the Drupalcon Paris, we have the option to meet in person since I was able to get in as well. But be sure to talk to your boss / yourself and convince him or her that presence in person is a great way to align with the community, but sponsoring the con is the best way to get more out of it; love, a better conference for all, potential employees and most of all prospects.

Dutch Open Projects became a silver sponsor some time ago, and so should you! Now I do not know how the economic downtime is hitting on you, but in the Netherlands this crisis is only bringing more companies towards using Drupal. It used to be true, that people choose Drupal for the quality and stayed for the (lack of) costs, but there is a complete new mantra now: come for the lack of costs and stay for the quality!

So if you are being hit by the crisis, invest in your product and become a sponsor! If you are doing well -good for you-, refund some of your love in cash to the community by aligning your wallet with the community.

Pat Patterson wrote an OpenSSO module for Drupal

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 08:10:41 +0000

Dear friend Pat Patterson (twitter) pinged me the other day to let me know he actually wrote a module for Drupal. If you do not know Pat, he is the leading authority when it comes to all things "Identity Management"; process, vision and actual code in Sun's OpenSSO project (Sun's open version of the previous proprietary Sun Access Manager. And now Pat released OpenSSO module for Drupal.

Identity management is complex, it is more then 1 slide per second or a technical solution. The biggest problem in ID management is trust, procedures as well as installed base. Migrating a corporation with thousands of employees that is fully AD based (like most enterprises are) towards something like OpenID is impossible. And OpenID by itself only solves parts of the AAA problem. Where OpenSSo might for a corporation migrating towards a more open way of dealing with identities ("persons") a far more better way.

Logging in to a website with Single Sign On (or more often: Single Log On) is only a small part of the problem of an enterprise. Sure, an increasing part since more and more applications are webbased; AJAX replaced RDP and ICA for many tasks. But still, only a small part. So if one wants to push Drupal into the heart of an enterprise as an Intra- or extranet, one needs to understand that OpenID / OAUTH might be good for an all webbased company, but not for any company that is older then 10 years.

OpenSSO however is. And Pat's work to integrate this into Drupal sure helps. Thanks Pat!

Hack de Overheid, een korte screencast over open data

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 16:50:35 +0000

Omdat ik het leuk vond een andere vorm van presentatie en vodcasts te maken en omdat het onderwerp me aan het hart gaat:
een introductie over hackdeoverheid.

Hack de Overheid, een korte screencast from bert boerland on Vimeo.

Helaas kan ik er niet bij zijn maar hoop een volgende keer aan te schuiven. De presentatie boven gaat natuurlijk veel te kort door de bocht. En een medium als een blog kan dat goed aanvullen. NYTimes met al haar rijke API's wordt vaak als voorbeeld opgevoerd over hoe om te gaan met "tweepuntnul", data en het openbreken van walled gardens. Maar een overheid is anders dan een bedrijf. Een overheid bestaat over 100 jaar nog (hopenlijk), een overheid heeft geen inkomsten op een manier die in een kwantitatief business plan te vatten zijn. Een overheid heeft direct heel weinig baat bij het beschikbaar stellen van data en wel de kosten.

Aan de andere kant dient een overheid transparant te werken en za door "many eyes" van crowdtasken data nieuwe waarde kunnen krijgen door combinaties te doen die de overheid zelf niet voorzien heeft, bedacht heeft of nodig heeft. Die nieuwe gecombineerde data heeft potentieel zeer veel kwantitatieve en zelfs kwalitatieve waarde voor Nederland en dus voor de overheid. Het genereren van mashups van data (en dat is dus meer dan wat plots op een Google Maps) maakt dat meerdere bronnen gecombineerd kunnen worden. Bijvoorbeeld CBS data met kadastrale gegevens voor een academisch analyse om te bezien of een woonboulevard of 10 losse woonwinkels beter is voor verkeer en economie. Gooi de data op straat en er zijn mensen die er kennis mee maken!

Voor een overheid het echter kan doen -zie screencast- dient er het nodige te gebeuren. Met nam procedureel. Bijvoorbeeld onder welke licentie deelt de overheid de data? Een creative commons lijkt handig maar welke? En tot welk niveau kan de data terug te leiden zijn tot personen of huishoudens? Er bestaan 6 cijferige postcodes in Nederland die uit 4 huishoudens bestaan dus is dat bijna te identificeren tot een persoon. En omdat de overheid voor veel data nu geld vraagt (KvK, kadaster) i ze een marktspeler. Als ze deze data nu om niet gaat aanbieden, verstoort ze daarmee de markt. Concurrerende partijen die in de ladder niet verder gaan data data (dus niet informatie/kennis) zien plotseling een aanbieder die hun diensten gratis aanbiedt. Veel te regelen dus.

Maar het is onze data!

Wereldomroep (Radio Netherlands Worldwide) using Drupal

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 19:30:08 +0000

Today my employer Dutch Open Projects launched the website for Radio Nederland Wereldomroep. The public broadcasting system in the Netherlands is endless complex, so I will not explain that system here. But Radio Nederland Wereldomroep (Radio Netherlands Worldwide) is a very old international public broadcaster, with regular transmissions starting back in 1927 to the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia. More information about RNW can be found in the wiki entry.

The site rnw.nl has more then 100 writers in eleven editorial staffs and writes in six languages, including Arabic and Chinese. Building the site in three months with Drupal sure was fun. We had a team of three coders and two themers (and me as consultant) that created the site using D6, lots of contributed modules and custom code. We choose to use Organic Groups for the editorial staffs, making it possible to cross-post content in multiple groups and write in one group in multiple languages. I am not the biggest fan of OG but it fitted the business requirements and worked very well.

By itself, the fact that Radio Netherlands Worldwide switches from a proprietary CMS towards an Open Source CMS is not the biggest news. However, the switch is a milestone since it symbolises that companies and NFP that didn't look to Open Source and only listened to the proprietary prietpraat are moving over; we are winning! Lost of newspapers, broadcasters and other companies are ditching the proprietary CMS-es and migrate towards Open Source. I have seen business cases where just the migrating costs from a proprietary CMS towards an Open Source CMS were lower then the yearly license costs. In the Netherlands, the financial crisis is not as bad as in many other countries in the world, but the crisis sure make people look towards how to spend many well. It used to be true that people switched towards Open Source because of the quality and stayed for the (lack of) cost. Now people switch because of the money they save and stay for the quality! The Open Source market is booming in the Netherlands. (Note that it can also backfire, I see a lot of companies using Open Source tools without knowing the pitfalls, have a failing implementation and thereby give Drupal or Open Source a bad name.)

The site is not finished yet, both content and coding wise there is some work to do. That is one of the disadvantages of a time boxed approach. However, meeting a deadline, having a dedicated professional team that worked 36 hours in two days during Pentecost, sure is a adrenaline boost. With the Wereldomroep being a switcher and another public broadcaster in the Netherlands (NCRV) that has been using Drupal for a long time for many sites and more to come (more news soon :-) ), the future of Drupal in the low lands is looking bright!

Drupal and godaddy.com

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:17:16 +0000

Over at consumerist is some bad press on Drupal

GoDaddy demanded $6,579 from Adam Fendelman after his disk usage skyrocketed to over 250 GB without warning, vastly exceeding his account's 150 GB allowance. GoDaddy's security department launched a "full-scale investigation" and quickly determined that Adam was responsible for both the data binge and the extraordinary bill. Adam refused to let the matter drop...

The massive data splurge was apparently caused by a bug in the widely-used open source website management software Drupal, which, like a cancerous tumor, was unstoppably copying thousands of temporary files into Adam's account.

Short story: someone used lots of local disk space on godaddy's hosting service caused by a bug in Drupal? Apart from the fact that GoDaddy should have set a quota, should have had procedures and transparent billing / monitoring mechanisms, Drupal a "cancerous tumour"?

Anyone knows what was happening here? Is GoDaddy blaming Drupal and why? Core? Module? I sure as hell /never/ saw Drupal eat 250GB harddisk space and I would like to know what was happening and if it has nothing to do with Drupal- as would be the case I think- that this news should be corrected ASAP.

BTW: 100GB of storage is 6.000 Dollar over at GoDaddy? Another reason to stay away from GoDaddy like "the plague"!

Renew your Drupal Association Membership

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 11:53:27 +0000

If you are a member of the Drupal Association (and thereby helping the community and showing off you care about the community) you might want to check if you should renew your yearly membershipssfee! If it has been more then a year since you have paid, you should remove the cool "member" badges from your site! Or.... you could renew your membership at the association site!

Please do check to see if your membership is up for renewal and wear your badge with pride! Your financial support is important for the community.