Pratt Web Services

I have wondered for awhile if focussing on a particular niche was the way to go with Drupal. I have a good friend who is working hard on the "Drupal in a Box" concept. Part of the concept involved having templates for lawyers and others in small business that want a bit more than the blog or cookie cutter world offers.

Sometimes you see something so simple and you whack your head.

High Performance = (Skill + Commitment) - Distraction

As I was reading about the US Sailing Team's major advances this little formula in the article caught my eye. And while I was tempted to make some connection to the Olympics currently occuring in Vancouver, my neck of the woods, I resisted out of fear of the IOC tracking me down like they did Verizon and Red Bull.

I came across a Wall Street Journal article this morning on solo consultants.

The key points:

• Think long term
  Many start it out as short term temporary fill-in-the-gap measure. To be successful you need to think about it as permanent.
• Join a network
  Survival means marketing and one of the best and most natural is networking. Be connected
• Have your own space
  Babies crying, dogs barking, etc. These are unprofessional not to mention the need to manage interuptions.
• Think like an entrepreneur
  Business plan, goals, mission statement. Be innovative and track/manage what you do.

So this is a good list. How am I doing as a Freelancer?

I just got an email from one of my clients Tony Chen of SavvyDaddy. I've been playing Website Janitor on his Drupal site for a couple of weeks now. The Chicago Sun Times picked up his fund raising efforts for Disaster Relief in Haiti.

It started as a simple question.  "Should I keep them [a small group of sites]as separate installs or make a multi site  - which I've never done?"

I have several sites setup as multisite. All are for clients that have several domains running. So I'm familiar with the process. And when I worked at Business Objects we ran our subdomains on a multisite installation. But several days ago I decided to make some changes.

I have ten or so small sites - almost brochure like. That were getting to be a pain to keep updated. So I did two things:

"An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves." Bill Vaughn

Simple is good for me.

Be it resolved that I shall, this year, write a poem each day, journal at least five times each week, and write a blog entry each week.

FutureNow's article on using the data in Google Analytics got me thinking. Dumpster diving is a great analogy. There are some really good points about making sure that you are using the metrics. I have a hard time getting most of my clients to set goals for their site. Still I think there are important things that can be learnt. Most of my clients are relatively small. 250 hits a day is pretty good for most of them. But that's all they need.

Or Smashing Magazine comes through again:
Getting Started With Content Management Systems
Anybody contemplating the big picture should read this. It is the most succinct summary of why and more importantly what to think about CMS.

Though this site is not on my hosting, I built it with Drupal through Cpanel and ftp. Used to working on the backbone with shell to move files and compress and uncompress files, it slowed down construction and introduced some interesting challenges. The site development came to me through a system adminstrator/contractor. He supplied me with a psd from a graphic designer that I had worked with before. I worked out the functionality and created the Drupal template from the design.

One of my early sites built with the templating system of Dreamweaver, the Lifeforce site focussed on developing business for the new business. The architecture of the site evolved with the business. Trying to extablish the businesses credentials in a field where there are many fly-by-night operators - the site emphasized the training, insurance, and certification of their employees.