OUTSURGING Mag

How You Too Can Become A Drupal Consultant

rajasekharan — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 05:52:42 +0000

Drupal is an awesome content management system. In my book, it is the best content management system ever created. It is the Swiss Army Knife of websites and web applications. In the past I have created an entire community website using drupal within 2 weeks. I recently launched Screen Note which is also a drupal website.

My college recently sent an email to all of placement registered students looking for developers who are familiar with Drupal for a startup in Mumbai which is developing a community website. Many high trafficked websites are powered by drupal.

Drupal has spawned a complete market for web designers and developers. As of today, drupal developers especially are in very high demand. If you have a good enough portfolio, you can have the luxury of charging premium rates for your services.

(Almost) No Coding Knowledge Required

If you can set up a website using drupal, and put together a series of drupal based websites using the countless free modules available at the drupal module repository, you can actually start a career as a drupal consultant. There are a staggering number of modules in the drupal repository for all kinds of feature customizations.

I was able to finish a drupal project that payed very very handsomely (think thousands) in just 2 weeks. The best part is, I didn’t do any coding at all. Nada. I just downloaded, installed and configured the plugins to attain the functionality described by the requirements.

How can you become a drupal consultant?

Play Around With Drupal - Learn how drupal works. Download and install Apache2Triad. That will create a web server in your computer. Install drupal in that server. Learn about nodes, content types, taxonomies and CCK.
Research What Will Be Needed Of You As A Consultant - Go through the requirements of the various drupal projects being posted on many forums. Study many popular websites such as Digg, Technorati, facebook, Youtube and other popular websites. Go through popular websites in the ‘Web 2.0‘ Genre because those are the type of projects for which drupal is being used.
Go Through Module Repository - Spend a day or two just going through the hundreds of modules in the drupal respository. Make sure you bookmark some modules that seem particularly interesting.

The Misuse Of Physical

rajasekharan — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 07:41:19 +0000

In talking about programming, we often use the word physical. Physical memory address, physical file location and of the scope of a variable being restricted to a physical area.

So what were we really talking about when we said physical address of this or physical address of that?

But none of that is really physical is it? The word physical in its true meaning refers to the real world. In the strictest meaning of the word Physical location address of a variable we should actually be referring to that space inside the ram chip 2 micrometers in depth, 3 inches from the left edge and 1 inch from the top edge. That is the physical address of your database abstraction object.

Physical file location – the spiral on the disk that starts in a radius of 10mm from the center of one of the disks in the hard disk all the way to the track that is 9mm from the center. That is the physical address of your index.php file.

The Curse of The Non-Conformist Application

rajasekharan — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 03:20:31 +0000

Of late, I have been seeing many programmers make applications that are straying from what regular software users are used to – they are constantly chosing to make a better way to do this or that. Recently, Mozilla Bespin – the online code editor service that Mozilla started, had many user interface (so called) improvements.

Users never really want a better way to do something. They just want a uniform way. If they spent 5 years learning how to use Windows, they shouldn’t have to spend the next 5 years learning to use the various adventurous voyages programmers have gone out on when designing user interfaces.

Do you need to display hierarchical data? Please use trees. There is nothing wrong with being “cliche” if that is what doing the regular feels like. There are rarely any moments where user interfaces elements are to be invented or even innovated.

Making a good user interface is no more than a matter of using the right widget at the right place.

The Tech Support Desk Joke

rajasekharan — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 03:20:18 +0000

I am sick and tired of tech support desk jokes. No, its not because I can relate to the caller in that joke. I have to be honest though. There was a time when I laughed at these jokes. But then, something happened.

Bob and Paul are employees at a bank. They showed up for work right on time at 10am in the morning. The first customer comes in and picks up a slip and starts filling out a form and goes to the teller and hands the form and his passbook.

Bob, a man in his late 40s, is shocked at what he sees on the slip – the customer filled the slip that is used for depositing money in the account and handed it to the teller. He looks up at the customer through his bifocals down his nose with a smile on his face. He quickly bursts into laughter and shows the slip to his colleague.

The customer who was upset at what happened took his passbook back and left the bank with no money and humiliated in front of others in the queue.

This is a true incident. An incident I witnessed. The customer is none other than me. The true Bob and Paul are the proverbial bald-headed-its-not-my-problem-bureacratic-government-run-bank’s employees at the bank in my college.

I wasn’t born knowing how to use a bank. My father, who works at the Indian equivalent of the Federal Reserve Bank has always shielded me from the rigours of handling bank employees.

Suddenly a realization came across me – I was the teller when I laughed at those jokes.

Is Your Application A Bureacrat Or A Sexy Airhostess?

rajasekharan — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 18:28:09 +0000

Who would you rather deal with? A polite and helpful airhostess who does everything that is in her power to help you or a bureacrat who talks rude to you holding the opinion that he gets paid whether or not he is rude to you? Obviously the former.

What does your application’s validation error messages and information dialogs say?

Do they shout at the user - “You have entered the wrong number of digits. Please enter the right number of digits”. This is the real world equivalent of the bureacrat throwing the application on your face asking you to get a new one.

Or do they let the user know that they are in control – “A phone number is a 10 digit number. Please enter a 10 digit number for the phone number.”?

Word your error messages with that hint of pleasantness.