Setting Up Drupal 7's Private File System

I just updated the docs on drupal.org and discovered that D7 will take care of the permissions. I was working on my first Drupal 5 to 7 migration earlier today and ran into an issue with the file system I hadn't needed to define previously. Drupal 7 has both a public and private file system path that you can define. This is great for security as you can easily divide what files you want available to the anonymous public and which they should be denied access. Drupal can be used to control delivery to users with appropriate permissions. This is...

SEO Fluff, Marketing & Other Nonsense

I'm the first to admit that search engine optimization is important. I know that there is a lot to be learned about how to drive people to your site and ensure that they keep coming back to it. Two years ago it was estimated that there were 63 billion pages indexed by search engines . How will your site show up in the first pages of Google results if you don't get an edge over everyone else? I know that there really are 'SEO Experts' out there, that know the web well and have seriously researched search engine behavior. But...

Accessibility Critique of the 2010 Open Source CMS Report!

Earlier this year we agreed to sponsor the IdealWare's 2010 report comparing popular open source content management systems , and we're glad to have done so! It is so important to have a review of different systems if only to encourage discussion & debate about software use in the non-profit sector. Why Drupal 7 is Great Earlier this week I boasted on the NOSI discussion list about Drupal 7's accessibility enhancements. I know how much more accessible it was than Drupal 6. I have also done some work to compare it with other popular CMS systems. We've developed a frank...

Running a 15 Month Marathon of Government Accessibility

Preparing a Drupal Presentation with HTML5 & CSS3

In preparing for my live streamed HD session at Drupal Camp Montreal 2010 , I was prompted by someone's tweet or blog post from DrupalCon Copenhagen to try a different approach with this presentation. I'd much rather be facilitating than presenting, but I do have a message I want to spread to the community, so I had to take this seriously. Now the quality of the notes from DrupalCon's are definitely getting getting better. Here's examples from San Francisco & Copenhagen (links removed). There's stuff here that should be borrowed by many other conferences. A few folks I respect have...

Why Bother with Web Accessibility?

I'm happy to announce that the video of my presentation is now online. Thanks DBNStudios for recording it. I'd also like to thank @cobalt123 , @Chris Devers , @Let Ideas Compete , @OlsenWeb , @crizzirc , @mcbeth , @liber , @leshoward , @willem velthoven , @nickhall , @Stefan , @cobalt123 , @Kalense Kid , @Kalense Kid , @PhillipC , @United Nations Photo , @ChrisGoldNY , @Norma Desmond , @Sara G... , @Dan Kunitz , @Gabor Hojtsy , @Christolakis , @Don Solo, @cobalt123 , @Rene Ehrhardt , @patrick h. lauke , @m.gifford , @ , @NJLA: New Jersey Library Association licensing...

Donations to the Ottawa Public Library

OpenConcept has once again made a donation of books to Ottawa's Public Library . In 2008 we made a similar, but smaller, donation but since then the selection of resources have grown considerably. There are now 16 titles in the library's catalog and our donation includes a number of Drupal 7 books which have yet to be distributed. The growth of interest in Drupal is continuing to grow and we believe that it benefits everyone to make resources widely available. Donating books in the past has brought us staff, but also helps our client base. The four Lullabot DVD's we...

WCAG 2.0 AAA - A Journey Not a Destination

I've taken the notes about the process we are going through for our own site & attached it to this Drupal Accessibility Group Wiki Page . Please feel free to edit it. We have gotten a number of RFP's in the past that have stated WCAG 2.0 AAA compliance as one of the requirements that they would like to have in their response. It is great when folks are aware enough about accessibility issues that they can state of of their goals is to achieve the highest level of accessibility for their site. Really, who wouldn't want to have their...

Progress in Accessibility Enhancements for Drupal 7

The list of issues here I'll try to keep updated to reflect the changes in accessibility issues in Drupal 7 prior to release. It's really amazing to see the improvements for accessibility in Drupal 7 over the last two years. There have been some really impressive improvements that are making this an even more inclusive framework for any web development project. I just took a look at the number of issues that have already been fixed & are part of Drupal 7 already and there are 67 (as of Sept 16). That amounts to hundreds of hours of discussion &...

Congrats Web Axe for 5 Years of Podcasting

I was invited by Dennis Lembree and Ross Johnson to contribute some audio for their 84th podcast celebrating the Web Axe 5-year anniversary . They have had a huge impact on the community over that time and really appreciate the work they put into raising awareness about accessibility. Please subscribe to the Web Axe podcast if this content is interesting to you. The following is the text prepared for the podcast. I want to thank Cliff Tyllick for his help on preparing this: My name is Mike Gifford and I am the president of OpenConcept Consulting, an Ottawa-based Drupal shop...