Blog Marco

ARRRRGGGHHHH!!! I hate moving to new hosts. Something always goes wrong. Maybe it's me. So here's a venting blog entry about my recent ordeal with a Drupal Installation on HostGator which I just solved a few minutes ago. Call it a debrief on my experience and see what lessons I can learn from my mistakes. There isn't anything wrong with HostGator. I realise now what I was doing wrong.

I always go about Drupal installations systematically. Actually I wasn't leaving my long time hosting service (MediaTemple). I just wanted another host and wanted to try out another service (and also to use them as a backup, in case anything happens).

So I sign up to HostGator (which was painless except for the hip pocket - although their hosting prices are competitive). I bought a new domain name from GoDaddy and another from a company called IntaServe which offer registrations for *.com.au's. I've had experience with GoDaddy before - so that went smoothly - although for the uninitiated - you'll probably get lost in the jungle of promotions that they have. I'm slightly annoyed with Intaserve. I guess that's where my attitude started down a downward spiral. I came into the new project all optimistic and now this Australian registrar is screwing my workflow. Why? Because their business systems are screwed. I think they need to have a look at their registration systems: just a few tweaks with their wording in their emails and automated systems and they would be really good. But no, it took me a while, emails to Intaserve took a while to get answered. I was emailing HostGator at 11pm on a Sunday night in Australia and I was getting a response from them. So I had to give Intaserve a call to fix things. In five minutes the pain was all over. Thank God I don't have to deal with Intaserve again until the next time I need to renew my domain.

I've setup a new website for my photography business which sports my name: MarcoPalmero.com. It took half a day to setup, including setting up the servers, typing up the website html and css using notepad and the graphics. It took an extra hour to copy the existing portfolio from the original Photos2View website and to find a few new photos to add to the page.

I have also setup another blog - aptly named Sydney Photographer Blog - which will only have topics regarding photography (unlike this current blog which tends to be very random about topics). I've posted up photos I took from last Saturday from Eric and Prescilla's Wedding.

I went along the Drupal showcase for some inspiration. There are so many crappy - un-modified designs out there... But there are a few occasional great websites. I came across two in my visit today. One was exemplary, the other so-so but worth the mention.

Your MTB (MTB is short for Mountain Bike) is a community website for MTB enthusiasts. Its great! Smooth design, great functionality. Definitely a place to be inspired for my next Drupal designed website. There's a discussion thread here all about it.

Ruby Baboon is like digg.com with a twist. Not exactly original, but I like how they used a combination of modules to work together as well as some customisation of the theme.

I don't particularly like the design of my blog, or any of my websites for that matter. It isn't my specialty. Anyway, Just browsing throught he Drupal showcase and here are three interesting drupal website designs:

Bootstrap: A lot of white space and attactive

Jia Style: Lots of colour but I like the column layout

Altiris Juice: I like the subtle lime colours as well as the well set out page - a lot of white space!

There comes a time in a webmaster's life when they lose the passion they once had in building, designing, promoting and maintaining a website. And that time came for BetterWeddingIdeas.com. One of my first websites other than this blog of mine. That passion was lost, I stopped updating the site and my baby started losing visitors. I didn't want that to happen so I sold it off on a webmasters forum. I set the auction going but it eventually sold just a few hours at BIN (Buy It Now) price. some may say I could have received a higher price for that website but I'm happy because the site is going to a trustworthy person who already owns a wedding website. The true purpose of the sale is to see my baby grow more, and with me it had no potential to do so, and now it has the chance to become a successful website. right now I'm in the process of finalising the transaction and transferring the domain name and the servers.

This blog website is recently featured on two Drupal website showcases:

Drupal Showcase - News. Travel. Uni. Life. Photography
Drupal Sites.net - News. Travel. Uni. Life. Photography

Thanks for putting up those sites guys - Both DrupalShowcase.com and DrupalSites.net are doing a great service to the Drupal community by promoting existing websites and showcasing Drupal websites for other people to experience.

Here are some Drupal websites that I have found while surfing. These particular Drupal websites caught my attention as each one has some particular unique feature or content about them.

This website is owned and managed by an active Drupal contributor. He was the author for the Adseense module for Drupal. His website contains a lot of information about Drupal and its configuration amongst other things. Adsense placement on the website is typical: The footer the skyscraper columns. In my opinion the ads "fit" the website very well.
The Baheyeldin Dynasty

This website was a discussion thread from the Drupal Showcase forum. This website demonstrates what could be done with Drupal when design is kept simple and practical.
Personal solutions BudgetStorage.co.uk

This website was also from the Drupal Showcase and what caught me was the modification of the ecommerce module to get the results they wanted in this website configuration.
Q Baby - eCommerce store

An intersting feature on this page is that when you view it in Internet Explorer it pops up with this message:
When viewed in IE:
"We see you're using Internet Explorer. Try Firefox, you'll like it better.

· Firefox blocks pop-up windows.
· It stops viruses and spyware.
· It keeps Microsoft from controlling the future of the internet.

Click the button on the right to download Firefox. It's free. "

Here is a page with interesting drupal website designs - they either have some visual merit or some system that seems interesting. It takes a lot of effort to learn how to put up a website and to program how the system behind it - here is a listing of just a few...

SkiBits.com - drupal site
Everything snow
Includes Ecommerce module
A bit of Adsense
Interesting four column setup
Blogs for users
Also does hosting
And sponsors a skier

Did You Know Blog Your Daily Dose of Knowledge
Drupal
Two Columns on the right
Blended Adsense - in one column

nextstep Hertfordshire advice on learning and work
3 columns and a header/footer
Use of frontpage snippets" whats new... etc

Geeks on steroids
Content, SEO and Design
Website Design and SEO Forum Forum Index

All IT Books
Getting heaps of hits - affiliate for Amazon
Drupal Forum Post about All IT Books

Free Articles and Content, Reading.com.au

Website is built by Drupal, is a bit messy, but the Photos are interesting to view.
Herring Images Photography in Charlottesville, VA - Seeing with the Fish
Herring Images Photography

I was thinking last night about a way to find other Drupal sites out there... and here it is... I searched for some Drupal footprint.

Google search using "add new comment" - this still doesn't cover all drupal pages (but I guess you can't suss out every one!

So this search covers the one that have enabled comments, the previous search covered the websites with login.

I want to kick off a list of the best sites out there... keep it informative so we have somewhere to look when we need ideas when making websites!

I'll start it off:

Linux Professional's Association | Linux for Professionals

http://www.lpa.org.za/
Rating: 7/10
Review:
Nice and practical. Perhaps a good model to emulate if you would like to implement Drupal for simple informational websites for clients or yourself.