Drupal vs WordPress - The Drupal Development Advantage

In our last Drupal vs WordPress comparison blog post, we focused on the true cost of ownership for each open source CMS project. We spent some time in the analysis of the following diagram, depicting the incremental cost over time for a typical enterprise website project.

To summarize: our contention is that the significant hidden costs of an enterprise grade web development project are oftentimes found in the post launch customization and continuous development tasks over the total life of the project.

Drupal is Dead image

Drupal is Dead - Long Live Drupal (E16)

Commercial Progression presents Hooked on Drupal, “Episode 16: Drupal is Dead - Long Live Drupal". In this episode of the Hooked on Drupal podcast we dare to cover the most controversial of Drupal news, including the Dave Hall blog post signaling the imminent decline of Drupal. Could it be true? Tune in and find out if Drupal 8 is already dead.

Drupal Manufacturing Website Case Study - Hosco Fittings

Commercial Progression has been working with Hosco Fittings since 2013 to build an ERP integrated Drupal website platform for their modern manufacturing needs.

Initially, Hosco had met their limit with a WordPress website and needed a better platform to integrate with their inventory management systems.  The Hosco.net website was rebuilt in Drupal with a new design, Fishbowl inventory management integration, and a custom built distributor locator. View the technical case study brief in our online portfolio.

Drupal Vs WordPress - The Great Open Source CMS Debate

The great debates of all time; Coke vs Pepsi, Chevy vs Ford, Mac vs PC, and in the realm of Open Source content management systems it comes down to Drupal vs WordPress. The greatest debates of our time all have something in common: passionate supporters. In the world of Open Source CMS projects, Drupal vs WordPress is no less polarizing. In a sea of opinion, it can be hard to find the facts. Does it really come down to personal preference or are these CMS projects fundamentally different tools with best use scenarios unique to each?

Backdrop and Acquia Lift

Drupal 8 Release Date from Dreisy-Wan Kenobi plus Backdrop & Lift (E7)

Commercial Progression presents Hooked on Drupal, “Episode 7: Dreisy-Wan Kenobi You're our only hope!".  In this latest installment, lead developers Brad Czerniak and Chris Keller are given a mysterious droid with a message from "Dreisy-Wan Kenobi" concerning the future release date of Drupal 8.  After a brief moment of reminiscing about the highlights of DrupalCamp Michigan, Brad and Chris muse about the cryptic messages that seem to predict when Drupal 8 will launch, what the fate of the Backdrop CMS will be, and what Acquia Lift actually is.  Tune in for cosmic revelations from beyond time and space.

Winning the Race with Drupal

Winning the Web Development Race with Drupal (E6)

Commercial Progression presents Hooked on Drupal, “Episode 6: Winning the Web Development Race with Drupal".  In the latest installment; Alex Fisher, founder of Commercial Progression is joined by a special guest; Ann Siegle, CEO of Spoke8 Marketing.  Ann Siegle is not only a veteran of successful web development projects, but she is also a seasoned automotive racing enthusiast.  From Ann’s experiences in the grandstands and back at the shop, she has developed a rich metaphor that relates the efforts of web development and digital marketing to that of auto racing and building an effective racing team.  Commercial Progression and Spoke8 Marketing have formed a strong team with Drupal as the winning vehicle on the track.  In this candid discussion, Alex and Ann provide a tour of their winning open source web development strategies.

DrupalCamp Michigan 2015 Presentation Slides and Video

Commercial Progression was a proud sponsor of the 2015 DrupalCamp Michigan. With over 100 in attendance, 11 formal presentations, and 1 excellent after party... the survey results are in and the community agreed that this was the best DrupalCamp Michigan to date. In addition to our general sponsorship, the Commercial Progresssion team represented well with 3 presentations covering all Drupal skill levels. This year's media package also included a complete video capture of each session, which you can find on our youtube channel.

Drupal + Grunt + BrowserSync

As responsive design becomes more important with each passing day; it becomes essential to find an efficient way to test your site on as many screen sizes as possible. In the past, responsive design testing meant running around the office and borrowing as many devices as you could. Loading up the site on each and testing individually.

DrupalCamp 2015 is Hooked on Drupal

DrupalCamp Michigan 2015 Preview (E5)

Commercial Progression presents Hooked on Drupal, “Episode 5: DrupalCamp Michigan 2015 Preview".  In the latest installment, lead developers Brad Czerniak and Chris Keller provide a preview and discussion of session content on the schedule for DrupalCamp Michigan 2015.  DrupalCamp Michigan will be held on Saturday January 31st at Henry Ford College in Dearborn Michigan. At DrupalCamp Michigan attendees will have an opportunity to participate in beginner and advanced event tracks.  All participants will benefit from networking opportunities, web technology discussion panels, and collaborative code sprints.  Registration cost is $15 which includes a continental breakfast and box lunch.

Automated field formatter settings summaries in Drupal

Drupal developers [hopefully] find themselves writing "field formatters" fairly often. These pieces of code add ways to display the data stored in fields, so having an arsenal of formatters can come in handy.

Making formatters is often straightforward, but some of the work gets repetitive and tedious. The snippet below should allow you to at least get up to speed more quickly, if not make the "settings summary" a worry of the past.

hook_menu(): More than you ever needed to know

hook_menu is the most-used Drupal core hook; it's well-documented, and many tutorials are available.

This isn't documentation or a tutorial. What I wanted to know was: how much are each of the plentiful [Drupal 7] API options used? So I set about to collect data, using core implementations of hook_menu(), as well as those from the contrib modules tracked by DrupalContrib.

Flat Design: When Should Design Go Flat?

I’m a fan of both flat design and skeuomorphism (realistic design style). But recently I’ve noticed that flat design is popping up everywhere. This isn’t a bad thing, but it doesn’t sit right with me. More and more people and companies are moving away from realistic, skeuomorphic interfaces, and trading their in-depth button designs for simpler, edgier ones. This had me wondering: why go flatter? Flat design done right can make an amazing layout and even better user experience. But is this why web designers started to favor a flatter look?

Streamline your Style Tiles with Sass and the Style Guide Module

Is your creative team completely opposed to designing in code? They shouldn’t be. Here’s a hybrid approach to rolling custom Drupal themes that has the potential to significantly streamline your workflow and ensure greater visual consistency throughout your project’s lifecycle - all thanks to Style Tiles.

Debugging Drupal: Flashback to DrupalCamp Michigan

I dug this video out of the archives from the first DrupalCamp Michigan in 2011.  While many Drupal developers have a lot of success building websites without a coding environment more complex than a text editor many times more serious tools are required.  My presentation below gives users a basic introduction to debugging Drupal and how you can get started within no more than an hour worth of effort.

Building a scalable Drupal deployment in the cloud

When Commercial Progression launched the new [Ad Sales website](http://www.commercialprogression.com/project/national-geographic) for National Geographic Networks, they loved it so much that they wanted everyone to come and see it.  To help encourage them, they sent out an e-blast to thousands of ad agencies around the world that offered a chance to win a free iPad to first 100 visitors.  The resulting traffic spike brought our server to it's knees.

My Drupal Development Tools

I am always fascinated by the tools that other developers use. It’s usually the first thing I ask them. “Hey, I know I haven’t asked you your name yet, but what operating system do you use? What IDE? How many git commits have you made today?”

Presenting at Wordpress vs Drupal

I'll be participating on a panel discussion about the decision to use Wordpress or Drupal for your organization's website. Having experience as a former Wordpress developer and now a dedicated Drupal advocate I'm looking forward to this event at the June 1st Lunch Ann Arbor Marketing meeting!

Git Introduction for Drupal 7

Watching a really good webinar from the Los Angeles Drupal User Group on how to use Git for version control (Drupal.org is moving from CVS to Git with Drupal 7).

If you're familiar with CVS or Subversion this is a great introduction that provides some comparisons between methodologies and commands. If you're new to version systems then Git is a great place to start.

Presenting at Refresh Detroit 6/16

I'll be giving a presentation in a couple days at Washtenaw Community College. I've been invited by Brad Czerniak to speak as part of Refresh Detroit's monthly meeting on using Drupal to solve real-world problems. The presentation is entitled Applied Drupal: Leveraging The Nature of Open Source to Deliver Great Websites for Clients.

Presenters are Brad Czerniak, Alex Fisher and Steve Colson.

Two Types of Web Designers: Which Is Building Your Website?

There are two types of people who design websites. The first, who I'll refer to as Type 1, is someone who's less experienced or not fully focused on web design and lets technical issues or the constraints of an off-the-shelf template dictate the end web site product. The second, called Type 2, is someone who figures out what the site must do to be relevant and meet business goals and then designs the site so it does exactly that.

How To Create A Blog With Drupal

Creating a Drupal based website with a blog on a page other than the front page can be frustrating and a bit confusing. By default, when Drupal is installed it has two content types, Story and Page, and lists on the front page any stories or pages you create and mark as Published and "Promoted to front page". However, many sites want their front page to be a static or semi-static Page and a blog in a different section of the site.

Drupal Webforms With Dynamic Select Boxes Tutorial

When I originally set out to create a form with dynamic select boxes I thought it'd be easy enough to just create some fields, throw some values into the fields, and then repeatedly modify the options on one field based on the option selected in another field. While Drupal is built around forms (and provides many ways for creating and changing them) the best way for handling dynamic select boxes populated from an external database wasn't obvious.