Conscious Manifestations

I have been involved with the launch of a Drupal-powered website for a project called Grow Clean Air. This website is the latest incarnation of an effort that has been going on for nearly a decade to simultaneously reduce the global carbon footprint and empower farmers in Africa and India with sustainable agriculture and health practices.

The main things you can do at Grow Clean Air are:

Simultaneously Offset Your Carbon Footprint and Empower Communities in Africa and Asia to Change Their World and Yours
Demand more transparency from the exploding carbon market!
Discover the Facts about the Exploding Carbon Market
Offset your carbon (CO2) footprint by purchasing credits from India and Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda)
Find a List of Recommended Carbon Calculators

Here's a snippet from their site:

Don't simply offset your emissions when, at no extra cost, you can also visibly...

* be active in supporting sustainable community agriculture for developing countries in Africa and Asia
* contribute to the continued development of one of the most unique forestation projects in the world
* show your family and friends the live, up-to-the-minute results of where your intelligent money is working for them and for you
* empower focused and dedicated Small Groups in developing countries to create a brighter future on a local and global scale
* increase food quality standards for tens of thousands of participants in four countries (India, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda)
* feel good every time you read our latest newsletter or visit our site and discover what you have helped build
* do your part to make sure your children's children's children can breathe clean air

We deliver real results to you and the communities we work with, plain and simple.

The TIST Project, which actually empowers people th grow the trees and share the Best Practices in Small Groups, was started by Clean Air Action and is aided by The Institute for Environmental Innovation.

Grow Clean Air makes these credits available online for the consumer market in an effort to increase the overall positive impact of the TIST Program, allowing people around the world to quickly and easily offset their carbon footprint.

Very cool! If this interests you, find out why Grow Clean Air is a step ahead of the rest!

I am happy to announce the release of Free Language v2. Read the release announcement on Free Language.

This site is a major upgrade from v1, which was mostly just me putting language-learning resources together. The idea behind v2 is that a community will start to form that is interested in learning languages and letting people know about the best places online, methods and resources for this. Soon I will be integrating a voting aspect to the site.

For now it is possible to comment on the listing there, as well as find podcasts, blogs, links, websites and more resources for learning the following 12 languages:

• Learn Arabic
• Learn Cantonese
• Learn English
• Learn French
• Learn German
• Learn Hindi
• Learn Italian
• Learn Japanese
• Learn Mandarin Chinese
• Learn Portuguese
• Learn Russian
• Learn Spanish

For all the Drupalers out there, the site is running Drupal 4.7 and I used the following contributed modules:

• aggregator2
• captcha
• emailpage
• google analytics
• insert_block
• pathauto (to the max)
• poormanscron
• simplenews
• sitemenu
• tagadelic

I am going to upgrade to Drupal 5 as soon as I can get some funds together to commission the upgrade of aggregator2 to Drupal 5. Or perhaps someone will decide to just do it!

Here is a screenshot of the Mandarin Chinese Tags Page:

WisdomWord V2 was launched in September of 2006.

The clients main interests were:

• Redesign based on existing layout
• Podcasting
• Tags
• Search Engine Optimization
• Multiple Blogs
• easier navigability

The theming work was primarily done by iDonny at CMS Producer. The installation and configuration of Drupal was done here at Conscious Manifestations.

Several extra (non-core) Drupal modules were used in the making of this site, including:

• audio (for podcasting)
• event
• image
• janode (for links)
• pathauto (automatic URL generation for SEO)
• tagadelic

Extensive work was done to optimize the information architecture to best suit search engine placement.

Here is a screenshot of the new site:

Intended Audience

This article is intended for people interested in having a powerful and flexible web presence, but with little knowledge of how to do so. Many of the people that will benefit from this article won't even know what Drupal is... yet.

The intended audience may be interested in creating or updating a website, or in having one deployed by a qualified Drupal developer. Both will benefit from the information and concepts that follow.

I have chosen not to put links throughout the whole article in order to avoid distraction. Instead, I have put links at the end of the article that will help readers find more information regarding the content.

I have added clarifications for potentially new terms throughout the article. Simply hover over the words with a dotted line underneath (like these words) to reveal the additional information.

Preliminaries: Covering General Concepts

In order for the reader to understand why Drupal is a wonderful solution for creating "powerful and flexible" websites that will excel in today's web world, some general concepts must first be addressed. Without a basic understanding of the concepts that follow (which might be as basic as knowing that they exist), it is impossible to grasp how Drupal can be of service when creating a web presence.

We are in the Era of Web 2.0: The Interactive Web

Web 2.0. There are lots of explanations of what this means, but the (very) basic concept is that the web is transforming into something driven by the users themselves. This means anyone surfing the web. You. Your aunt. Your neighbor. A kid in China. And so on...

Times are changing and it is no longer simply the "webmasters" or website owners themselves that are controlling the web. The web is an interactive world.

Web 2.0 is the world of web syndication, podcasting, tagging, social networking, photo sharing, social bookmarking, blogs and wikis galore... and, yes, much more.

Web 2.0 Is An Ally

It is advisable for you to be familiar with (and hopefully even care about) these concepts because as you prepare to release a website into this world, you want to be releasing something that will not only fit in, but also stand out.

Websites that stand out keep the interest of their users.

Websites that keep the interest of their users stand the test of time.

Not only that, but word about and links to these sites circulate more quickly and effectively. For example, if a user likes a page on your site and wants to share it with others, your site will provide tools for them to not only share that article (through social bookmarking or social networking services), but also to syndicate the entire contents of your site with only a few clicks. Once syndicated, your site will start to receive hits from places you never imagined, your traffic will increase and your smile will widen.

Drupal Is Your Friend

Drupal is your friend for many reasons.

Drupal and Web 2.0

The wonderful world of interactive Web 2.0 can be harnessed with a flexible web software such as Drupal.

Drupal does things out of the box that allow you to quickly and easily accomplish such feats as managing a blog or online journal (or several), dishing out a podcast, using keywords to tag your information, syndicating and being syndicated and (you guessed it) much more.

Of course, all of these options might not be interesting to you. You don't have to use them all! Drupal lets you pick and choose what you want to use, and what you don't. That's part of the beauty.

Drupal Adds Loads of Goodness to your Website

Drupal makes lots of things a lot easier.

• Structuring your site's content.
• Optimizing for search engine compliance and friendliness.
• Allowing your site to be indexed and searched effectively.
• Allowing multiple users to edit your site.
• Localizing your site for multiple languages.
• Managing discussion forums.
• Implementing polls for user feedback.

This is only a (very) partial list of the out-of-the-box functionality that Drupal has. This doesn't even take into consideration the loads of contributed modules that enhance this core functionality.

Below is a small partial list of what these can allow you to do.

• Create image galleries.
• Use Google AdSense and Amazon.com for revenue generation.
• Manage an online store.
• Maintain an ongoing list of events.
• Use a basic wiki within your Drupal site.
• Create printer-friendly and emailable pages.
• Manage a project or projects.
• Enable enhanced site statistics tools.

Drupal is Dynamic

Content in Drupal is powered by a database. Look-and-feel, or design, is stored separately as files. This in an important separation because it s flexible, fast and "dynamic". Your content can be updated without worrying about design. Your design can be changed without touching the content.

This differs from the "old way" of doing things (which is still used quite a bit) which stored both of these in the same place: on a file. This mean that if you wanted to update the design of the whole site, you had to change every page! Or if you wanted to restructure some of the navigation bars or content, you had to restructure every single page!

Drupal's separation of content and design allows for a level of power and flexibility that puts websites in a category of their own.

Drupal Does Not Lock You In

Since Drupal is so widely used and so many individuals and firms are familiar with it, you are not locked in by a custom website that nobody but the person who designed it knows how to run.

This means that if your web developer decides to retire to an isolated island in the South Pacific, your website can easily be taken over by anyone else familiar with Drupal.

With thousands and thousands of websites using Drupal (and more being released all the time) and a substantial development and user community behind it, you have plenty of available resources to find others capable of handling upgrades, customizations and other web development tasks for you.

Drupal is Your Webmaster's Friend

If you you are not interested in managing your site yourself once it is launched, Drupal will make the life of your webmaster much easier. All of the features above add up to a site that is easily-manageable by people who wouldn't even consider themselves "webmasters".

Updating your site can be as easy as logging in, clicking, writing and clicking again.

Drupal is Your Web Developer's Friend

You might want to set up and configure Drupal yourself. Then again, you might not! Drupal is used by web developers around the world to implement world class websites that manage loads of content and serve a multitude of users.

Drupal is friendly to your web developer (and to you!) because it is truly Free Software.

Drupal is Free Software

Drupal is released under a license call the GNU General Public License. Very simply, this license protects and empowers a software because it is owned by the general public and free to be examined and altered at all levels. Drupal can be truly understood and implemented by web developers because they not only have access to the code at its source, but are also free to modify and enhance it.

Basically, this means that you can do anything you want to the program itself to make it what you need it to be.

This is good for your web developer because s/he can truly customize Drupal for your specific needs.

Not only does Drupal have all of the core and contributed functionality listed above (and much more) but - because of its license - it also allows for customization at all levels.

Drupal has been developed from the start with the idea of flexibility in mind. This means from the inherent flexibility of its very license to flexibility in function and design.

Drupal Knows What You Want/Need Your Website to Do

Most people have an idea of what they would like their website to do. That is why they are looking for a website or a website upgrade in the first place.

Many of my clients come to me with lots of ideas. They usually walk away with a lot more!

All I do is take them through a few of the things that Drupal can do for them... their eyes widen, their synapses fire and they walk away with a new idea of what their website can be.

The community that is constantly working on Drupal knows what people need their websites to do. They are not employees designing an abstract system. They are people who have websites themselves. They are people who needed an extra feature that Drupal didn't have, so they wrote it and contributed it to the community. Then others came along, liked it, used it and improved it.

This approach means that Drupal does more than what people thought they needed and wanted their website to do. Its very design opens up new doors, sparks new ideas and leaves people with a versatile website with a long shelf-life.

Speaking of this...

Let Drupal Do Future Planning For You

You most likely have a general idea about what you want your website to do now, but there are certainly things you'll want or need in a year or two that you don't want or need now. Planning for something you don't know you want or need is quite nearly impossible.

Then again...

Drupal can help with this! I don't mean the web software alone, I mean the greater Drupal community that is constantly and consistently upgrading, patching, searching for new concepts and ideas to integrate, implementing new modules for the latest and most desirable features on the web, updating tired themes to incorporate the developing web standards, and so on.

This is more than any single person or web developer can possible hope to achieve. Yet this is what a living, breathing, free software web application community is doing right now. In fact, Drupal has most likely been improved since you started reading this article!

It sounds amazing because it is amazing.

You want Drupal because Drupal constantly works on and improves itself.

Links for Further Information

Drupal Links

The Official Drupal Website
Browse Drupal's Contributed Modules
Browse Drupal's Contributed Themes
See What Languages Drupal is Ready For
View the Drupal Handbooks
Drupal Forums
Drupal Support
Drupal on Wikipedia
Drupal Showcase Website - Find Websites that Use Drupal

Web 2.0 Links

Info about Web 2.0
What is Web 2.0? - Article from O'ReillyNet.com
Info about Web Syndication
Info about Podcasting
Info about Blogging
Info about Wikis
Info about Content Management Systems
Info about Social Bookmarking
Information about Keyword Tagging

Free Software Links

GNU Website
Free Software Foundation
Free Software on Wikipedia
The GNU General Public License

Drupal-Related Books