Accudyne Systems specializes in all aspects of custom equipment:

• Development
• Engineering design
• Fabrication
• Systems integration
• Start-up
• Support

We assisted in converting their old static HTML site into a content management powerhouse with the help of Drupal and custom Drupal module programming and provided them with a fresh new look for 2010 and beyond. Easy editing with CKEditor, eye catching images using our Billboards module, and an eye pleasing new design by Leif Osmundson.

Visit the new Accudyne Systems website, in your browser or iPhone/iPad! »

Washingtons Green Grocer is the brainchild of John (Zeke) Zechiel and his wife Lisa. After identifying the need for better produce and deliverables versus store bought goods, John and Lisa planted the seeds for Washingtons Green Grocer in 1994. Every week, Washingtons Green Grocer provides customers with tentative lists of fruits and vegetables that will be available, and each customer can pick and choose what they would like delivered (yep, home delivery!) for that week through their online account.

Providing unmatched service and 100% dedication to custom satisfaction, Washingtons Green Grocer has been wildly popular and has exploded in the DC metro area. They currently serve all of Washington DC and the surrounding suburban areas in Maryland and Virginia from Severna Park to Arlington and all points in between north and south.

How does it work?

Every week, Washingtons Green Grocer selects 12 to 14 different fruits and vegetables and delivers them to your doorstep. On Friday’s, they email customers a tentative list for the next weeks delivery. If there is anything on the list you don’t want, you can log into your account and customize your box. For example, you can choose to receive only 7 items instead of the full box, or substitute items for other items. Each customer can choose exactly what they want and get it without fail every single week. You can also set custom schedules for delivery, such as every other week, or once a month, or schedule around vacation time. It’s all up to the customer!

Application

Such business growth commands the necessity of a powerful web application to tie all the logic together and keep things running smoothly. After getting tired of the shortcomings of their previous system, Zeke contacted us and we started talking about a full redesign of the front end and a re-architecting of the back end. After planning and mind-mapping the application to the last detail, Inclind began work on the project early in the summer of this year.

Their initial website was built on a rigid and inflexible Coldfusion system. The first order of business was getting all the existing data out and into the new system and giving it structure to make it easy to work with. As with all our sites, we begin with a base install of Drupal 6 to build from. Drupal is the best CMF (content management framework) available right now. Other packages that are simply CMS (content management systems- Plone, WordPress, Joomla) are not as adaptable and flexible as Drupal.

To handle the business end of things, Ubercart takes care of the day to day transactions for customers. There are over 5,000 active customers in the system. To make it as easy as possible to get started, we ask for your basic information up front and allow you to pick your items for delivery. After your account is created, a staff member at Washington’s Green Grocer selects the most appropriate truck route for you and you will begin receiving deliverables on the next scheduled day.

At this point, a customer can login at any time and adjust their delivery schedule, items for delivery, or halt deliveries. Customers can also browse recipes on the site and submit their own. Washington’s Green Grocer promotes healthy eating habits and you will find plenty of recipes on their website for that.

Backend

Along with the new visuals and customer functionality, we needed to build and provide lots of cool administrative stuff into the backend for easy management of customers, data, and content.

We also needed to be able to actively map delivery truck routes through Google Maps on demand and be able to filter them in a variety of ways. This helps Washingtons Green Grocer visually assess their delivery routes, their customers, and orders. We also also extended on that to provide filtering tools to narrow it down further to specific routes, specific clients, specific orders or orders with specific kinds of products.

Washingtons Green Grocer staff also have a variety of reporting tools at their disposal for viewing customer trends, requests, future forecasting, and production reports.

Check out Washingtons Green Grocer today!

There are some ‘gotchas’ though if you develop custom Drupal modules like we do. During the install process, Drupal only bootstraps the bare minimum to get the job done. I’ve noticed that if a module’s install routine calls functions outside of the .install file, the expected result tends to fail because files other than .install are not included during this loading process. It seems there is a special case for the file to be included, or you have to specify in your install profile to explicitly include the file (which takes a lot of time to do). To be specific, I have seen this happen with Drupal Boost, Drupal Gallery Assist, and our custom module Billboard, which tipped me off to this problem. The issue has since been fixed in Boost (and Billboard).

For us, the issue was creating custom ImageCache presets during a module’s install routine. This worked perfectly if you were going to the Drupal Modules page and enabling Billboard. What happens was the hook_install() function fired, included a definition file, and created presets based on that file. This fails during a Drupal install profile, where you use a script to install and configure Drupal automatically. This same issue occurs in Gallery Assist, and here is how I got around it:

It was pretty apparent that the code needed to come out of the install function. However, I needed to be sure that where I put the code would be compatible to the module loading process, and I’d need to be sure ImageCache was both installed and loaded before running the following code. Otherwise it would error out, and no ImageCache presets would be created.

Drupal has a crucial hook for modules. hook_init() allows you to perform tasks every time the module is loaded. In this case, I wanted to tell it to run a function and check for two default ImageCache presets. If they didn’t exist, create them. This approach solves three issues:

1. Getting around install profile limitations
2. Provide default ImageCache presets for Billboard module when it is enabled
3. Recreate the ImageCache presets if they are accidentally deleted by the user (or developer )

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<?php
 
function mymodule_init() {
    mymodule_create_default_imagecache_presets();
}
 
function mymodule_create_default_imagecache_presets() {
 
    $default_size = imagecache_preset_by_name('mymodule-default');
    $thumb_size = imagecache_preset_by_name('mymodule-thumb');
 
    if (count($default_size) == 0 || count($thumb_size) == 0) {
        if (count($default_size) == 0) { 
            $mymodule_default_size = "600";
            $mymodule_thumbnail_size = "80";
 
            $presets = array();
 
            // Default size.
            $presets['default'] = array (
            'presetname' => 'mymodule-default',
            'actions' => array (
 
                  'weight' => '0',
                  'module' => 'mymodule',
                  'action' => 'imagecache_scale',
                  'data' => array (
                    'width' => $mymodule_default_size,
                    'height' => '',
                    'upscale' => 0,
                  ),
 
              ),
            );
 
            imagecache_preset_save($presets['default']);
            $presets['default']['actions']['presetid'] = db_last_insert_id('imagecache_preset', 'presetid');
            imagecache_action_save($presets['default']['actions']);
            imagecache_preset_flush($presets['default']);
            imagecache_presets(TRUE);
 
        }
 
        if (count($default_size) == 0) { 
            $presets['thumb'] = array (
            'presetname' => 'mymodule-thumb',
            'actions' => array (
 
                  'weight' => '0',
                  'module' => 'mymodule',
                  'action' => 'imagecache_resize',
                  'data' => 
                    array (
                      'width' => $mymodule_thumbnail_size,
                      'height' => $mymodule_thumbnail_size,
                      'upscale' => 0,
                  ),
 
              ),
            );
 
            imagecache_preset_save($presets['thumb']);
            $presets['thumb']['actions']['presetid'] = db_last_insert_id('imagecache_preset', 'presetid');
            imagecache_action_save($presets['thumb']['actions']);
            imagecache_preset_flush($presets['thumb']);
            imagecache_presets(TRUE);
 
        }
    }
 
    return;
}
?>

What that says basically is ‘hey, do our default ImageCache presets exist?’ if not, it will create them at runtime.

I have tested this a handful of times with positive results, and, it works with install profiles since hook_init() is called after Drupal loads. Food for thought for all you Drupal developers out there. If there is a better way to achieve this feel free to leave a comment.

Alutech United provides the most complete line of products and services to help you best protect your home from the elements. For over 16 years Alutech United has helped their dealers protect thousands of homeowners with existing homes, vacation homes or even their new dream homes with only the very best in storm shutter protection.

Last week, Inclind launched their website built on our customized Drupal package. This site was the first site to receive our new Billboard module, and features a unique theme switcher based on click path tracked in your session cookie. We worked with Joe very closely to meet and exceed his needs for Alutech United.

Check out Alutech United today for a rich and informative website on storm shutters and home protection.

NetApplications tracks and monitors tons of information on the internet and you are free to use the information in your own reports. For example, here is the month of October 2009: http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=2. That’s a lot of browsers! Older browsers like Internet Explorer 6 (common with Win2k-XP SP1) and Internet Explorer 5 (pre 2k) are hanging in there.

But how do such old browsers rear their heads a decade or more after their release when newer versions exist? How does Internet Explorer 6 persist?

On the one hand, you have a majority of people who buy a computer and never update it, either the software or the hardware. In such case, these people typically are ‘light’ users, where they generally check email and the news and not much else. Now that computers are available practically everywhere, including Walmart, many of these people will find it harder and harder to not get a new system. They are cheaper, faster, and more affordable than ever before. Those systems will be preloaded with Windows 7, OSX 10.6, or Linux and the newest browser available at the time of manufacturing. ‘Power users’ may not have the latest hardware, but they always have the latest software and keep their current system up to date with operating system updates. Most of them will be running Internet Explorer 7, or the more savvy will have Firefox, Chrome or Opera.

On the other hand, you have lots of public service offices like libraries, police departments, public schools and government offices. These institutions have IT departments, and those departments have budgets. A lot of custom software developed in the late 90s and early 2000s (even some still) were tailored directly for Internet Explorer 6. A lot of public school systems cannot afford to upgrade, and upgrading large companies with thousands of people may break the custom software that was developed in IE6 (which would cost thousands upon thousands of dollars in a rather tight economy). Nine times out of ten, desktop upgrades are voted down unless the situation is pretty dire, and also the current operating system needs to have had at least one service pack out. Company-wide upgrades to software will typically require some level of training as well, which means more time, and more money.

In that perspective, even though 23% of all internet users are using Internet Explorer 6, you could probably assume that half of them are institutions that cannot control their desktop environment (as mentioned in the previous paragraph). From there, you could do some more research and analyze data for the website you are working on and determine what kind of visitors they have. Typically we’ve seen numbers between 3-7%.

Well, now what?

The big debate on the internet now is how to handle users who continue to use outdated browsers. Do we leave them in the dust, unable to browse a website? Do we add in conditional code to handle specific older browsers so they have optimal experience? Should a pop up or page be loaded requesting them to get a new browser to view the site? The answer to that is not so simple. The issue is too big for any one developer or designer to make on their own, as most of us are not making sites for our own use, but rather we make them for clients. It’s bad business sense to say oh, you 10% of clients with Internet Explorer 6, you can’t use my site anymore. That could mean a few thousand dollars or more in lost sales, lost business, lost leads. Sure, fine tuning CSS and HTML or proper browser testing in general may feel tedious, but a few extra hours of work is a small price to pay to make clients as successful as they can be.

At least on the upside, it’s trending downward.

What are billboards (banners, header images, et al) you ask? Billboards are the large images you see on various websites that cover the header area. They typically contain marketing statements and imagery relevant to the websites purpose or page content.

Here are is one of my favorite examples:

Visit Southern Delaware Tourism Website

See that set of images just above the content, fading in and out? That is a billboard. With this module, you can create those in a matter of seconds.

After some brainstorming between Shaun and myself, we set out to create something simple, as simple as creating a Page node, without all the aforementioned hassle. After a week of coding, testing, testing and testing, we achieved just that. Now all you have to do is say, I want to create a Billboard, drop in your images (with a cool AJAX in-place uploader, you don’t even have to leave the page), and tell it what pages to display on and you’re done! It couldn’t be any simpler. You also have additional options available to you such as changing how the images display (random image, or fade in/out between images), setting ALT and Title tags for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and select a resize option to size the billboard to (which is controlled and hooked into ImageCache!). Oh, on top of all of that, it’s all output via a single block. That’s right, you can have 100 billboards and just one block. Once you place it in the region, depending on your site theme, it’s ready to go. In the future you will be able to add blocks so you can have a billboard in the header, and also the footer or sidebar if you wish.

We have been taking feedback from our clients over the months, taking notes during training meetings, and analyzing massive amounts of performance data from our servers. It’s been pretty quiet in the blog, Facebook and our Twitter and it’s because we’ve been very hard at work. Over the last few weeks Inclind has been working at refining what we do in order to better serve, better train, and better our clients online presence. The Billboard module is just the tip of the iceberg, a precursor to the ultra-streamlined CMS package we have been putting together. There is so much going on, I couldn’t even begin to write up what will be coming in the next few months.

We’re here to serve you, to help you get things done faster, and make it so you don’t need a PHd to manage your site.

If you have any questions regarding Billboards, Drupal, our refined CMS package or need help managing your content, we are here to help. Give us a call at 302-856-2802, send us a tweet @inclindinc, or stop by our office.

A lot of businesses are using Twitter to connect with clients in new ways every single day. If you’d like to know more, we’d be happy to train you or your staff on how to market your company through Twitter, CoTweet, TweetDeck and a host of other Twitter solutions. Just give us a call at 302-856-2802, or tweet us @inclindinc.

About Twitter:

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. While the service itself costs nothing to use, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees. Source: Wikipedia

New York, NY – CKY has completed mixing their 4th record, tentatively titled Carver City, set for release on Roadrunner Records on May 19. As with all their previous albums, Carver City was produced by the band’s guitarist Chad I Ginsburg. The album was recorded at Studio CIG in the band’s home state of Pennsylvania and mixed by Chad and Phil Nicolo at Studio 4 in Conshohocken, PA. Some of the eleven tracks set to appear include: “Hellions On Parade,” “The Boardwalk Body,” “…And She Never Returned,” “Karmaworks” and “Woe Is Me.”

Singer Deron Miller comments, “Literally all the things that have been keeping CKY strong since our last album – the undying hardcore support of our fans, our unorthodox musical approach and a brand new partnership with Roadrunner Records – have restored an enthusiasm within our band that has never been this extreme. Sobriety, hard work, patching up inner turmoil and a love for what we do has undoubtedly made this the most collaborative and focused CKY effort to date.”

Ginsburg concurs: “The album is more inventive and more layered than our past releases, with the most melodies, textures and riffs of any CKY album. It is by far the most inspired album we have ever made.”

According to Miller, Carver City carries with it a “dark summer vacation vibe,” nostalgic of the band members’ childhood trips to the East Coast beaches. “The fabled town of Carver City has a history of bad luck and misfortune, all the while giving the impression that it’s a pleasant family getaway. Much like CKY’s town of Hellview, Carver City’s events are depicted in the songs, with story lines coming from real life events.”

CKY are planning to tour in support of their Roadrunner Records debut in the spring.

Exciting news for my pals. Our new website for them is going to kick ass.

Do you want to be a rockstar too?

This is where I heard a statement that kind of jarred me.

“Oh I know, I make MySpace layouts….” – it brought my brain to a halt.

It wasn’t anything personal with her, but it was the realization I had that there are likely 1000s of young people just like her also doing the same. Some people are even making a career / making money off making MySpace layouts.

So why is this harmful to impressionable minds?

For starters, MySpace was never designed with the intent that a user would be able to toss the site theme in favor of something of their own design. To make one, you basically have to unlearn everything you knew about HTML and CSS in regards to site layouts or themes. For those who haven’t done anything with websites before, learning all the ins and outs of how to get a myspace layout to work are filling their heads with useless crap. Other social networking sites such as Virb are designed to allow the user to apply their own stylings in a non-insane way. I was actually quite impressed with Virb because it also allows you to disable all custom layouts at your discretion- something MySpace can’t do.

My best advice to her was to ditch MySpace layouts all together, and purchase a cheap web hosting account with WordPress. She would then at least have full access to change anything in the site layout while learning invaluable knowledge and design at the same time. That’s how I got started 12 years ago on Geocities (remember them?).

Could you imagine if there were sites that let you code your own add-ons, and it required you writing some screwed up PHP or Coldfusion that wasn’t accepted anywhere else in the world? How about a home builder who didn’t follow industry standards when building your home?

Can you believe some colleges still teach web design using tables and code generating software? Crazy isn’t it? It was like that when I was there and from what I’ve heard, not much has changed.

The thought of people having to do absurd CSS and table structuring just to make the myspace layout look a certain way just disturbs me. We have standards for a reason, and one of those reasons is to not repeat the sordid browser wars of the 90s which is where a lot of that mess stems from.

So for all you folks out there looking to get into web design, young or old, if you’re going to do something do it right. Refer to the giants: Zeldman, Meyer, Snook, Cederholm, etc… strive for greatness.

Regional web development company Inclind Inc announces the launch of a brand new website this week for DJ Hook of Hook Productions of Bethany Beach, Delaware.Randy Vanderhook (DJ Hook) grew up with an ear for music. He joined the school band in elementary school on drums and continued with them on up through high school marching band for Indian River High School. When he had a chance to guest DJ he jumped at the opportunity and has enjoyed every minute of it since then, and Hook Productions was born.

With a huge library of thousands and thousands of songs (over 60,000!), DJ Hook prides himself on being one of the best DJ’s on Delmarva. Most DJ’s quit learning after figuring out how to hook up their system to a PA (public address speaker system) and still carry around bags and bags of CDs and large heavy rack based rigs. DJ Hook is constantly researching new techniques and using the most cutting edge hardware available, such as a computer based setup with a digital catalogue (making his setup far more compact and smaller than competitors).

DJ Hook has played numerous places in the Newark, DE area including Klondike Kate’s, Kid Shellie’s and East End. He has also performed at many popular hang outs in the beach area including Harpoon Hanna’s, the Chalkboard, Mackey’s, Fagers Island, High Stakes, Mickey’s Family Crab House, Brew River, Magnolia’s, Lifeguard competitions and many other private events such as weddings, anniversaries, birthday parties, corporate events and much more.Their new website (www.hookproductions.net) running on Inclind’s content management system allows Hook Productions to easily update the public on availability with their event calendar and lay out the booking process in detail. The calendar also shows public appearances DJ Hook makes, so you can attend events he will be DJ’ing at like Harpoon Hanna’s famous deck parties in the summer.

To learn more about how DJ Hook can cater your next event, please visit their website at www.hookproductions.net or call (302)-757-HOOK (4665). For more information on custom website development, please contact Inclind Inc. at (302) 856-2802 or online at www.inclind.com.